Discuss: The Trumpet of the Swan

This article is rendered as gracefully as the swans depicted in it.  I love the intricate weave of literary, memory, scientific, environmental, personal.  I also thank you for raising up the name of E.B. White in these pages. I am a fan of his adult essays; with summer upon us, I recommend all read “Once More to the Lake,” one of the most moving essays ever written on generations/mortality/the ongoing nature of our summer rituals.

This line from Audubon’s Birds of North America sent me on a research
that has lasted five years:
.” It is possible that we may have more than two species of Swan within the limits of North America,” This quote and a view of
a John White drawing,(1585 Virginia) which is obviously a
mute swan (cygnus olor)but has a black beak, but a knob, too, which is only seen on Mute swans among the northern swan species. I worked with people at the British Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum and discovered the paints used contained lead and that many paintings, frescoes, etc
have areas of black because the lead degrades after what is now four centuries, in this case.
This discovery lead to the development of two papers on the subject and a tsunami of sorts,
in the field, but also many known
experts have found the theory a
sound one. The Mute swan is native, too, apparently.

I’ve read your evocative article with much appreciation this morning. I particularly like the line “There is a whiff of the nineteenth century in the perfect S curve of their necks,”... which resonates with their elegance so well. Your readers might like to learn more about Trumpeter Swans and to follow the struggle of the Greater Yellowstone (Tri-State) population in detail on our website http://www.trumpeterswansociety.org. This population is facing a serious decline and The Trumpeter Swan Society has just launched a Five-Year Greater Yellowstone Initiative to meet the challenges of assuring their security. We have a host of information on the site and on our Blog trumpeterswansociety.wordpress.com. Just last month we report on an adult Trumpeter shot on its nest site at a pond near Ashton Idaho. It had three eggs, so with the death went hopes for three new additions to this struggling population. Your description of the the Red Rock Lakes area is beautiful and this area and its management is key to the success of our Initiative. I encourage readers to make the journey and see it in person some day!
Peg Abbott, The Trumpeter Swan Society

Lovely capturing of swans as reality and as metaphor. The image of the swan reverberates in my memories of chldhood, I especially loved the story of the seven swans, bewitched brothers who could be restored only through the long suffering and loyalty of their sister who had to remain mute. Who of us hasn’t felt kinship with the ugly ‘duckling’, hoping to someday find that niche where we feel right and beautiful-like swans. My grandmother early nurtured my own love of nature, walking with me in the city park behind her home, where swans glided across a lake. She is forever connected in my heart with swans.

This is delightful, thank you.

Our local lake on the edge of London supports up to 80 resident Mute Swans, a very successful species here in England. Other parts are visited in the winter by Bewick and Whooper (our version of the Trumpeter) swans that fly in from Siberia, they pair for their long lives and indiviuals are recognisable by their yellow beak markings, this established by the naturalist and conservationalist Peter Scott at Slimbridge.

How poor we are without our story tellers, especially our children. Now pschologists tell us what we already knew - that the tone in the voice creates a semi-hypnotic state in the child which opens their minds to the deep implanting of these images, eg: the still waters refecting the new found beauty of the ugly duckling. This is surely still the most powerful fairy tale for the young who need reassurance that they too will bloom into adulthood.

There were professional story tellers in Ireland right up until the last war, weaving their magic around the peat smoke. Swans appear frequently in Irish mythology, notably the Children of Lir who were transformed and doomed to fly for 900 years.

For the Anglo-Irish poet W B Yeats ‘those brilliant creatures’ were a symbol of inspiration:

At sudden thunder of the mounting swan
I turned about and looked where branches break
The glittering reaches of the flooded lake.

Another emblem there! That stormy white
But seems a concentration of the sky;
And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
And in the morning’s gone, no man knows why;
And is so lovely that it sets to right
What knowledge or its lack had set awry,
So arrogantly pure, a child might think
It can be murdered with a spot of ink.

From ‘Coole Park and Ballylee’ 1931

You’re welcome. I love the idea of the storyteller enchanting her listeners through the sound of her voice.  The imagery in the bit of Yeats you quote is so vivid. I reply with this from Mary Oliver:

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?

The Swan
© Mary Oliver. From The Paris Review

I am so moved by your article..I just finished reading “The Trumpeter Swan” to my 3rd grade class as I do every year.  I could only hope that it has half the impact your father’s reading had on you…what a beautiful memory.