SWANS

31st December 2023

If she be a traitor,

Why, so am I. We still have slept together,

Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,

And, wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans

Still we went coupled and inseparable.

CELIA: As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 3

SWAN (MUTE) (Cynus olor)

Swans appear in 13 different plays and poems, often in connection with the tradition that the swan sung just before its death. Prince Henry at his father’s deathbed in King John described John’s last words, “tis strange that Death should sing. I am cygnet to this pale faint swan, who chants a doleful hymn to his own death”. Lucrece, Emilia in Othello, and the Phoenix and Turtle all contain references to this song of the dying swan. Shakespeare demonstrates his classical knowledge and makes Falstaff refer to Zeus transforming into a swan to rape Leda. Celia compares herself and Rosalind in As You Like It to the inseparable swans who pulled Juno’s carriage.

Swans are symbols of purity and beauty and their down is used as a metaphor for softness. The Duke of York in Henry VI Part 3 compares himself and his men to a swan exhausting itself by swimming against the tide in their attempts to repel the advancing soldiers, “we budged again, as I have seen a swan with bootless labour, swim against the tide, and spend her strength with over-matching waves.”

There are no references to eating swan in Shakespeare but it was a high status foodstuff during the Tudor period. The 1594 Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin contains a recipe for Swan in sauce chaudron for after Allhallowen Day. Swans appear in 2 places in the Geneva Bible of 1599, in the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, in the lists of unclean foodstuffs. The laws of the Jewish Old Testament including dietary rules were not necessarily followed directly by Christians. St Paul made the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law and allowed Christians leeway in observance of all the Jewish rules of behaviour from the Old Testament. Th.e story of the Swan Song, the last beautiful song before death, comes originally from Greek myth, e.g. in Aeschylus Agamemnon and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the story of Picus and Canens, and it is also found in Chaucer in the Parlement of Foules, the Legend of Good Women and Anelida and Arcite.

Mute Swans (Cygnus olor) are the most common swans that we see in Britain today. There are two other swan species which overwinter in parts of Britain, Whooper Swans (Cygnus cygnus) and Bewick’s Swans (Cygnus columbianus bewickii), both of which have a higher conservation threat status that the Mute Swans. Swans appear in heraldry and decorative arts and each year the monarch, currently King Charles, commissions the Swan Marker to count the swans on the Thames in the annual Swan Upping.

More Information

British Trust for Ornithology BTO: Mute Swan, Whooper Swan, Bewick’s Swan, Identifying Winter Swans

Foods of England: Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin

Geneva Bible 1599: Bible Gateway

Perseus Tufts: Swan Song in Aeschylus Agamemnon, Ovid Metamorphoses Picus & Canens

RSPB: Mute Swan, Whooper Swan, Bewick’s Swan

Swan Upping: Royal Swan UK