373 



Hone quotes an edition of 1570 (' Every Day Book,' ii. 958), 

 and Lowndes mentions an edition of 1664 with a little variation 

 in the title, chiefly in regard to the orthography ; but of these I 

 have not met with any copy. In those which I have examined, 

 the sexes of swans are distinguished as "Cob" and "Pen." 

 Thus in 1570, and again in 1598, it was " ordeyned " that if 

 any brood be found being led by one swan, the swan and cygnets 

 11 shall be seized for the king, till due proof be had whose they 

 are, and whose was the swan that is away, be it cob or pen " ; for 

 if the swan of one owner paired with that of another, there was 

 a regulation as to the division of the brood in swan-upping time, 

 when the cygnets were allotted and marked accordingly.* The 

 printed rule in 1632 was thus worded: — "§ 7. In all common 

 streames and private waters, when Cignets are taken up, the owner 

 of the Cob must chuse the first Cignet, and the Pen the next, and 

 so in order. But if there be three, then the owner of the Grasse 

 where they breede must have the third, for the spoyle of his 

 Grasse. " At the present day, in the case of a mixed brood, the 

 cygnets are divided between the two owners. 



Nor is it only in the * Lawes and Orders for Swannes " that 

 we find a recognition of these terms to distinguish the sexes. 

 Ben Jonson, in 1611, has the expression " I am not taken with a 

 cob swan like Leda " (' Catiline,' act ii. sc. J) ; and Henry Best, 

 of Emswell, in the East Riding of York, in his ' Rural Economy 

 in Yorkshire,' published in 1641, has a chapter on " Swannes 

 and theire breed," in which he tells us that " the hee swanne is 

 called the cobbe, and the shee swanne the penne" 



As to the derivation of the words, cob is evidently the 

 A. Sax., copp ; 0. Fris., hop; Germ., kopf ; Lat., caput; signi- 

 fying the crown or top of the head, and, in the sense in which it 

 was used by swanherds, having reference to the prominent knob 

 at the base of the bill. Sir John Maundevile uses it for summit, 

 as in the expression "the cop of the hille," as also does Wycliffe 

 in a similar expression, " and they ledden him to the coppe of the 

 hil on which her cytee was bildid to cast him down " (Luke 

 iv. 29). The word was applied also to denote the crest of a bird. 

 The gloss on Gautier de Bibelesworth explains " geline huppee," 

 " coppede hen"; and Elyot gives " * stymphalide,' a coppe of 



* See my lately published article on " Swan-upping," in ' The Field,* 

 Sept. 28th, 1895. 



