WHOOPER WHOOPER. 255 



In co. Mayo it is believed, according to Swainson, that the 

 souls of virgins remarkable for the purity of their lives 

 were after death enshrined in the form of Swans. 



The ancient superstition that Swans sing before their 

 death is alluded to by Pliny among other writers, who tells 

 us he proved it false through his own observation. It may 

 be that this idea originates in the classical belief that 

 Orpheus became a Swan after death, the Swan being, 

 moreover, the bird of Apollo, the god of Music among the 

 Greeks. Chaucer, referring to the legend, says : 

 But as the Swan, I have herd seyd ful yore 

 Ageyns his dethe shall singen his penaunce. 



Shakespeare has many allusions to the supposed swan- 

 song : 



I will play the Swan, and die in music. 



OTHELLO, act v, sc. 2. 

 A Swan-like end, fading in music. 



MERCHANT OF VENICE, act in, sc. 2. 

 And now this pale Swan in her watery nest, 

 Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending. 



RAPE OF LUCRE CE. 



Although this " death-song " of the Swan has often 

 been deemed to refer to the Mute Swan, there is no 

 doubt that if it were true of any species it would be of 

 the Whooper Swan. As regards the Mute Swan, it 

 has long been considered an erroneous belief, yet the bird 

 in life has in the breeding-season a note which Harting 

 describes as " a soft and rather plaintive note, monotonous 

 but not disagreeable. I have often heard it in the spring, 

 when swimming about with its young." There is, how- 

 ever, nothing to show that the Mute Swan was the 

 one to which the swan-song was attributed, and there is 

 much support for the supposition that the wild Whooper 

 Swan is intended. This, although a northern species, 

 comes south in winter, and undoubtedly has a loud and 

 musical note. It has been urged that sometimes when 

 they have delayed their southern journey too long and 

 have been reduced by lack of food, they have been frozen 

 fast to the ice and so have clanged their lives out. Pallas 

 likens the notes of this species to silver bells, and Olafsson 

 says that in the long Polar night it is delightful to hear 

 a flock passing overhead, the mixture of sounds resembling 

 trumpets and violins. Willughby and Ray, who relate, 

 on the authority of Wormius, a similar story of the sweet 

 singing of a flock of wild Swans, remark that the windpipe, 

 reflected in the form of a trumpet, seems to be so contrived 

 by nature for modulating the voice. Colonel Hawker 



