In Celebration of Swans

The cold grey sky darkens the water and the golden stone of Cambridge.

Winter is digging in  - determined to see the most of itself fulfilled, even though the shortest day is well past. The locals exclaim, with poorly concealed relish, that the worst is yet to come. The sodden south counties are bracing for another cascade because of un-dredged rivers protected by the greens.

With this second half of the season comes a melancholy of holidays over, exam weeks and routines.

Yet out on the bleak, black river sail the swans. Night and day they hold a vigil on the river knowing spring will come.

Heads held high they demurely lift their wings as if to say 'Cold? I glow and welcome the crisp zephyrs'.

Rhythmic bursts of their enormous black feet under the surface get them to shore before the gulls and mallards even notice the dog walker on the bank. Above so serene, below their determined beating makes a little ripple behind, but doesn't flutter a feather.  Their necks never lean forward in an unseemly display of eagerness.  As they sidle up they look at you from one eye, gently swirl in the current and inspect their prospects with the other. There is no clucking or whistling to clutter the air from these mute swans; the ultimate in fowl cool.

They remember the poor little foxie in his little jumper and despise his dependence and weakness against the elements. They hiss a warning as he strains against his harness to snatch at their long necks; growling and panting deep in his chest.

Willow holding Charlie from his instincts

This indignity, ignored, is silenced so they nod their condescension and invite the bread and lettuce to be tossed into the water. The young ones arrive, still wearing traces of their mocha façade, to dash and dive and win the meal. Beaks clash and the elders push them away with a side swirl and look up as if daring the observer to smile at their prodigy's foolish, duck like zeal.

When all is done they let the current carry them away and partners waltz until their necks entwine, confirming their bonds before another season arrives.

Thunder beats as a lamentation of swans from down the river arrive- too late for dinner and unwelcome by the previous guests.  Backpedaling, the courting couples raise up out of the water, beating their wings in a show of force to protect their patch on the Cam. The visitors glance to see no food in the offering and barely touch down before they lift their wings and run down the river, their feet slapping the surface at a volume that would challenge any orchestra's cymbalist. The gulls scatter, those caught in their turbulence spiral out of control and crash into the river. As the swans hit their 30th bound, they lift up and disappear around the bend. Five brilliantly white swans, a meter from the dark river covering the width - tip to tip.

The last few months under their parent's wings.  Little difference between the sexes, Cob and Pen

We turn to leave and are faced with three adult swans blocking our path, preening and digging for roots on the grass. The Foxie plants his feet squarely before me and barks a howl of warning. Two, languidly turn their heads and slide back into the river as the third accepts the challenge.  He raises to his tippy webs and stretches out his wings in full which covers the the wide path and more.

Foxie lifts his head and leans against the lead. Imagining all the toys he has shaken to pieces, he takes a step forward to the glory of shaking that loong neck until those haughty eyes bulge and fly off on their own accord. The swan rears up until I am eye to eye with Charlie's dragon. I laugh, the pup is distracted, hurt that his valiant protection is not required. The swan wags his tail and retreats, slowly curling back down to size as if he just had a few cricks to work out. He turns his back to show he feels no threat and slides into the water.

The Threatened Swan, Jan Asselijin, c. 1650 Hung in Rijks Museum - Amsterdam

See it big at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-4 

We are so thankful that these beautiful beasts - for the word bird seems somehow to small - choose to live so close to us and stay faithful through the dark days, braving out the frost and storms. Every venture from home is made joyful and lent elegance by their presence.

The Swan by Mary Oliver (USA 1935 -)  American swans are not mute - see line 7, the English are.

No zoom needed!

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -

A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Why aren't these beauties on the dinner table at Christmas? Are the English possessed by such a communal appreciation of beauty that there is consensus not to consume this enormous pile of flesh?
Swans in the UK, a very brief History.
(If interested there are myths legends, fairy tales, ballets and operas a plenty that create the legend of the swan to look for.)

• Henry IV married Mary deBohun who claimed to be a descendant of the Knight of the Swan. (A french knight who rescued a damsel by a boat pulled by swans.) He then included a motif of the swan in his coat of arms.
• There are many swan 'positions' to describe the shapes of swans in lots of copy cat coats of arms by European nobility in their Medieval Heraldry.
• Swan was a popular feast dish, often being skinned with feathers still intact and 'redressed after cooking with its cavity filled with other smaller roasted birds. Alcohol soaked rolls of fabric were placed in the beak then lit to appear as a fire breathing dragon when served to the table.  
• Henry VII decreed the taking of swan eggs a crime earning a year and a day imprisonment and decreed that the position of swanherd could only be appointed by the King.
• Elizabeth I proclaimed that flying swans must not be taken and awarded the same penalty as for the taking of eggs.
• When the American turkey was introduced it replaced the swan as the large feasting bird.  Its meat was white, tender and juicy compared to the black, fishy tasting toughness of the swan declared in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy as unclean..
• In the mid 19th C the punishment for killing a swan was deportation to Australia.
• Since the 12th C swans have been marked to show who owned them. In later centuries the crown bestowed grants of ownership for those living in the vicinity of favoured courtier's manors. The royal swans remained unmarked.
• Today all of England's swans beside those close to two other owners still claiming ancient grants, belong to the Crown and are managed by the Queen's Swan Marker.
• Swans are not hunted, or cooked without direct permission from QEII.
• The Swan was beheld to represent purity and good because of its bright white raiment. This was so strongly believed that when the black swans were discovered in Australia arguments of logic broke out in scientific journals exposing men's romantic generalisations. (Mill quotes Bacon in  'A system of logic'. Taleb wrote 'The Black Swan' republished in 2005 as an allegory for unpredictable chance.)

'Swan' by Peter Young 

from Jonathan Bart's (Reaktion Books) Animal Series was very helpful for many of the facts and thoughts in the above list.

Finished Reading:

The two friends are represented by the flowers.
Dora for her father's famous poem
Sara for her father's famous addiction

The Poet's Daughters (Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge) by Katie Waldegrave, Hutchinson 2013.

The first third is hard going as the recount and explanations of the tangled lives of the two extended families loosen the story thread too many times but the rest of the book makes the effort well worth your while. A look into the most formidable romantic poets through their daughter's letters and experiences. Female emancipation had just begun to be imagined. If living in our times, the daughters may have outstripped their fathers in academic rigour (Sara) and character observations (Dora). It seems that both may have suffered from eating disorders and addictions to cope with their powerlessness. Both married, Dora had no children and Sara no grandchildren which makes this biography even more precious.

The research  is thorough and makes clear divides between fact and suggestions.

Coleridge "seemed to breath in words" p121

Sara - "on no subject I think is there greater diversity of opinion and practices than that of the conduct of a nursery' she told one friend, 'and on no subject does female vanity shine forth more conspicuously than on that of children and the management of them : every mother thinks her way is the path in to which you should go.'  139-140

Essay to be Intrigued by:  Summary below cut from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Released on April 17, 2007
by Random House

Black swan events were introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book Fooled By Randomness, which concerned financial events.

His 2007 book The Black Swan extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets.

Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the September 2001 attacks as examples of black swan events.

The phrase "black swan" derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno" ("a rare bird in the lands: black and very much like a swan"; 6.165). In English, when the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.

Juvenal's phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers. In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least non-existent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697 the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.

Taleb asserts:

A Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes.

·         First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past              can convincingly point to its possibility.

·         Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'.

·         Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence              after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.

The main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict black swan events, but to build robustness against negative ones that occur and be able to exploit positive ones.

Taleb states that a black swan event depends on the observer. For example, what may be a black swan surprise for a turkey is not a black swan surprise to its butcher; hence the objective should be to "avoid being the turkey" by identifying areas of vulnerability in order to "turn the Black Swans white".

Books by Taleb

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Fooled by Randomness

The Black Swan

Dynamic Hedging – Managing vanilla and Exotic options

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms