“And now this pale swan in her watery nest,
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.”
And once more, in “The Phœnix and Turtle:”
“Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.”
This superstition, says Douce,[329] “was credited by Plato, Chrysippus, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial. Pliny, Ælian, and Athenæus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More, among the moderns, treat this opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it.” This notion probably originated in the swan being identified with Orpheus. Sir Thomas Browne[330] says, we read that, “after his death, Orpheus, the musician, became a swan. Thus was it the bird of Apollo, the bird of music by the Greeks.” Alluding to this piece of folk-lore, Carl Engel[331] remarks: “Although our common swan does not produce sounds which might account for this tradition, it is a well-known fact that the wild swan (Cygnus ferus), also called the ‘whistling swan,’ when on the wing emits a shrill tone, which, however harsh it may sound if heard near, produces a pleasant effect when, emanating from a large flock high in the air, it is heard in a variety of pitches of sound, increasing or diminishing in loudness according to the movement of the birds and to the current of the air.” Colonel Hawker[332] says, “The only note which I ever heard the wild swan make, in winter, is his well-known ‘whoop.’”[333]
Tassel-Gentle.[334] The male of the goshawk was so called on account of its tractable disposition, and the facility with which it was tamed. The word occurs in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 2):
“O, for a falconer’s voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!”
Spenser, in his “Fairy Queen” (bk. iii. c. iv. l. 49), says:
“Having far off espied a tassel-gent
Which after her his nimble wings doth straine.”
This species of hawk was also commonly called a “falcon-gentle,” on account of “her familiar, courteous disposition.”[335]
Turkey. This bird, so popular with us at Christmas-tide, is mentioned in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), where the First Carrier says: “God’s body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.” This, however, is an anachronism on the part of Shakespeare, as the turkey was unknown in this country until the reign of Henry VIII. According to a rhyme written in 1525, commemorating the introduction of this bird, we are told how: