FABLE AND FOLKLORE 77 



origin of this notion — it was current at any rate in Aris- 

 totle's time, for he writes: "Swans have the power of 

 song, especially when near the end of their life, and some 

 persons, sailing near the coast of Libya, have met many 

 of them in the sea singing a mournful song and have 

 afterwards seen some of them die." Pliny, vElian (who 

 called Greece "mother of lies"), Pausanias and othermore 

 recent philosophers, denied that there was any truth in 

 this statement ; but the sentimental public, charmed by the 

 pathos of the picture presented to their imaginations, and 

 refusing to believe that in reality this bird's only utterance 

 is a whoop, or a trumpet-like note, have kept it alive 

 aided by the poets who have found it a useful fancy — - 

 for example Byron, who moans 



Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, 



Where nothing save the waves and I 



May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; 



There, swan-like, let me sing and die. 



The poets are not to be quarrelled with too severely on 

 this account. It must be conceded that our literature 

 would have been considerably poorer had poets declined 

 to accept all that travellers and country folk told them. 

 Chaucer uses the "swan-song," and Shakespeare often 

 alludes to it, as in Othello: 



I will play the swan and die in music. 

 A swan-like end, fading in music. 



Even Tennyson has a poem on it, picturing a scene of the 

 most charming nature, the pensive beauty of which is 

 vastly enhanced by the bold use of the fable. 



It has required both the hard scientific scrutiny of the 

 past century and a wide scattering of geographical infor- 



