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 III, sc. 2. 
And now this pale Swan in her watery nest, 
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending. 
Rare oF LUCRECE. 
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 viclins. 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 mcdulating the voice. Colonel Hawker 
