[418] Lib. viii. cap. 9.
[419] Dugdale, p. 317.
But of the feathered tribe which we meet with figured on these textiles, there are three that merit an especial mention through the important part they were made to take, whilom in England at many a high festival and regal celebration—we mean the so-called “Vow of the Swan, the Peacock and the Pheasant.” From the graceful ease—the almost royal dignity with which it walks the waters, the swan with its plumage spotless and white as driven snow, has everywhere been looked upon with admiring eyes; and its flesh while yet a cygnet used to be esteemed a dainty for a royal board, on some extraordinary occasions. To make it the symbol of majestic beauty in a woman, it had sometimes given it a female’s head. Among the gifts bestowed on his son, Richard II. by the Black Prince, in his will were bed-hangings embroidered with white swans having women’s heads. To raise this bird still higher, in ecclesiastical symbolism, it is put forth to indicate a stainless, more than royal purity; and as such, is often linked with and figured under the Blessed Virgin Mary, as is shown upon an enamelled morse given in the “Church of our Fathers.”[420]
Besides all this, the swan owns a curious legend of its own, set forth by some raving troubadour in the wildest dream that minstrel ever dreamed. “The life and myraculous hystory of the most noble and illustryous Helyas, knight of the swanne, and the birth of ye excellent knight Godfrey of Boulyon,” &c., was once a book in great favour throughout Europe; and was “newly translated and printed by Robert Copland, out of Frensshe in to Englisshe at thinstigacion of ye Puyssaunt and Illustryous Prynce Lorde Edwarde Duke of Buckyngham—of whom lynyally is dyscended my sayde lorde.”[421]
[420] T. ii. p. 41.
[421] Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, ed. Dibdin, t. iii. pp. 152-3.
While our noble countryman boasted of an offspring from this fabled swan, so did the greatest houses abroad. In private hands in England is a precious ivory casket wrought on its five panels, before us in photography, with this history of the swan. Helyas’s shield and flag are ensigned with St. George’s cross; the armour tells of England and its military appliances, about the end of the fourteenth century; and the whole seems the work of English hands. At the great exhibition of loans in this museum, A.D. 1862, one of the many fine textiles then shown was a fine but cut-down chasuble of blue Sicilian silk, upon which was, curiously enough for what we have said about the birds before which the “Vow” was made, figured, amid other fowls the pheasant. The handsome orphreys upon this vestment were wrought in this country, and good specimens they are of English needlework during the fourteenth century. These orphreys, before and behind, are embroidered on a bright red silk ground, with golden flower and leaf-bearing branches, so trailed as, in their twinings, to form Stafford knots in places, and to embower shields of arms each supported by gold swans all once ducally gorged. From these and other bearings on it, this chasuble would seem to have been worked for the Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham. At Corby Castle there is an altar frontal of crimson velvet made for and figured with the great Buckingham and his Duchess both on their knees at the foot of a crucifix. Amid a sprinkling of the Stafford knot, for the Duke (Henry VIII. beheaded him) was Earl of Stafford, the swan is shown, and the Lord Stafford of Cossey, in whose veins the blood of the old Buckingham still runs, gives a silver swan as one of his armorial supporters. At Lincoln cathedral there were:—A cope of red cloth of gold with swans of gold;[422] and a cope of purple velvet having a good orphrey set with swans.[423]
In mediæval symbolism, as read by Englishmen, the swan was deemed not only a royal bird, but, more than that, one of the tokens of royal prowess. Hence we may easily understand why our great warrior king, Edward I., as he sat feasting in Westminster Hall, amid all the chivalry, old and young of the kingdom, on such a memorable day, should have had brought before him the two swans in their golden cages:—“tunc allati sunt in pompatica gloria duo cygni vel olores, ante regem, phalerati retibus aureis, vel fistulis deauratis, desiderabile spectaculum, intuentibus. Quibus visis, rex votum vovit Deo cœli et cygnis, se proficisci in Scotiam,” &c.[424] And then solemnly made the “Vow of the Swan,” as we described, p. [287] of the Catalogue.
[422] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282.
[423] Ibid.