Pliny says, “Some affirm that swans sing lamentably a little before death, but untruly, I suppose, for experience of many has shown the contrary.” But Aristotle says, “Swans are wont to sing, particularly when about to die, and mariners in African seas have observed many of them singing with a mournful voice, and expiring with the notes of their dying hymn.”
Cicero affirmed that Lucius Crassus spoke with the divine voice of a swan about to die; while Homer makes no allusion to their singing, but mentions their “flying round the springs of Cayster, clanging on sounding pinions.” Oppian asserts, “They sing at dawn before the rising of the day as if to be heard more clearly through the still air. They also sing on the sea-beach, unless prevented by the sounds of storms and boisterous weather, which would not permit them to enjoy the music of their own songs. Even in old age, when about to die, they do not forget their songs, though they are more feeble than in youth, because they cannot so well erect their necks and expand their wings. * * *
“They are invited to sing by Favonius, and as their limbs become sluggish and their members deficient in strength when death approaches, they withdraw to some place where no bird can hear them sing, and no other swans, impelled by the same cause, may interrupt their requiem.”
While on the one hand Julius Scaliger vituperates Cardan for “lauding the nonsense of the poets, and the mendacity of the Greeks about the singing of the swan,” Aldrovand cites on their behalf the testimony of one Frederico Pendasio, a celebrated professor of philosophy and a person worthy of credit, who told him that he had frequently heard swans singing melodiously while he was sailing on the Mantuan Lake; also that one George Braun had heard the swans near London “sing festal songs.”
Besides this, Mr. Rennie says, Olius Wormius professed that many of his friends and scholars had heard them singing, and proceeded to give the experience of one John Rostorph, a student in divinity, and a Norwegian by nation. “This man did, upon his credit, and with the interposition of an oath, solemnly affirm, that once in the territory of Dronten, as he was standing on the seashore early in the morning, he heard an unusual and sweet murmur, composed of the most pleasant whistlings and sounds; he knew not at first whence they came, or how they were made, for he saw no man near to produce them; but looking round about him, and climbing to the top of a certain promontory, he there espied an infinite number of swans gathered together in a bay, and making the most delightful harmony—a sweeter in all his life-time he had never heard.”
To this testimony Goldsmith appends his personal opinion in the following words: “Thus it appears that our modern authorities in favour of the singing of swans are rather suspicious, since they are reduced to this Mr. George Braun and John Rostorph, the native of a country remarkable for ignorance and credulity.” Goldsmith’s own belief was that the ancients had some mythological meaning in ascribing melody to the swan, “and as for the moderns, they scarcely deserve our regard. The swan must, therefore, be content with that share of fame that it possesses on the score of its beauty, since the melody of its voice, without better testimony, will scarcely be admitted by even the credulous.”
This better testimony is furnished by Charles de Kay, who says that modern bird-lovers have heard the swans of Russia singing their own dirge in the North, when, having lingered too long before migration, reduced in strength by lack of food, and frozen fast to the ice where they have rested over night, they clang their lives out, even as the ancients said.
Inasmuch as we have record of the Singing, or Whistling Swan from Egypt to Alaska and the Aleutian Isles, with testimony of modern scientists as well as ancient poets in proof of the vocality of this, the largest of singing birds, the question becomes one of quality of song rather than of the actuality of the song itself. M. Montbeillard’s opinion of the whistler’s vocal exertions is thus expressed: “The bursts of its voice form a sort of modulated song, yet the shrill and scarcely diversified notes of its loud clarion sounds differ widely from the tender melody, the sweet, brilliant variety of our birds of song.” And M. Morin even composed a memoir, entitled “Why swans that sang so well in ancient times now sing so badly.” It is probable that the ancients, with due consideration for the difference in size between the swan and all other songsters, may have also given consideration in the same ratio to the theory of the enchantment that distance lends; and it is more than probable that all of this confusion of testimony resulted from confusion of species; for, as Charles de Kay explains, observations of the Mute Swan caused people to assign the song of the dying swan to the most fabulous of fables; while Hearne, who observed the Trumpeter, makes the following vigorous statement: “I have heard them in serene evenings, after sunset, make a noise not very unlike that of a French horn, but entirely divested of every note that constituted melody, and have often been sorry that it did not forebode their death.”
Aldrovand, referring to the structure of the organs of voice as countenancing the poetical creed of the singing swan, says, “For when we observe the great variety of modulations which can be produced from a military trumpet, and, going upon the axiom that Nature does nothing in vain, compare the form of such a trumpet with the more ingenious mechanism of a swan’s windpipe, we cannot but conclude that this instrument is at least capable of producing the sounds which have been described by the ancient authors.”
In distinguishing between the Whistling and Tame or Mute Swans, Bingley describes this strange form of windpipe, “Which falls into the chest, then turns back like a trumpet, and afterwards makes a second bend to join the lungs. The curve being inside the neck of the Whistler or Hooper, instead of being an external adornment, as in the case of the graceful Mute, in whom