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{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}}
[[File:Gravure door Reinier van Persijn.jpg|thumb|right|"''The singing swan''" (1655) by [[Reinier van Persijn]]]]
The '''swan song''' ({{lang-grc|κύκνειον ᾆσμα}}; {{lang-la|carmen cygni}}) is a [[metaphor]]ical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before [[death]] or [[retirement]]. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that [[swan]]s sing a beautiful song just before their death
==Origin and description==
In [[Greek mythology]], the swan was a bird consecrated to [[Apollo]], and it was therefore considered a symbol of harmony and beauty and its limited capabilities as a singer were [[sublime (philosophy)|sublimated]] to those of [[songbird]]s.
[[Aesop]]'s fable of "[[The Swan and the Goose]]" incorporates the swan song legend as saving its life when it was caught by mistake instead of the goose but was recognized by its song.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Complete Fables|last=Aesop|publisher=Penguin Classics|year=1998|isbn=0-14-044649-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/completefables00aeso/page/126/mode/2up |page=127}}</ref> There is a subsequent reference in [[Aeschylus]]' ''[[Agamemnon (play)|Agamemnon]]'' from 458 BCE. In that play, [[Clytemnestra]] compares the dead [[Cassandra]] to a swan who has "sung her last lament".<ref>{{cite web |author=Aeschylus |title=Agamemnon |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0004%3Acard%3D1431 |publisher=Perseus Digital Library |at=Lines 1444–5. |access-date=9 September 2021 |archive-date=9 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210909205311/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0004:card%3D1431 |url-status=live }}</ref>
In [[Plato]]'s ''[[Phaedo]]'', the character of [[Socrates]] says that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. He adds that there is a popular belief that the swans' song is sorrowful, but Socrates prefers to think that they sing for joy, having "foreknowledge of the blessings in the other world".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DPhaedo%3Asection%3D84e |author=Plato |title=Phaedo |publisher=Perseus Digital Library |at=84e–85b |access-date=9 September 2021 |archive-date=9 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210909205313/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0170:text%3DPhaedo:section%3D84e |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Aristotle]] noted in his ''[[History of Animals]]'' that swans "are musical, and sing chiefly at the approach of death".<ref>{{cite book |author=Aristotle |translator-last=Thompson |translator-first=D'Arcy W. |date=1910 |url=https://archive.org/details/historiaanimaliu00aris_0/page/n421/mode/2up |title=Historia Animalium |at=615b |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press}}</ref> By the third century BC the belief had become a proverb.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Arnott |first=W. Geoffrey |title=Swan Songs |journal=Greece & Rome |volume=24 |number=2 |date=October 1977 |pages=149–153 |doi=10.1017/S0017383500018441 |jstor=642700|s2cid=248519337 }}</ref><ref name="Brazil, Mark 2003">{{cite book|title=The Whooper Swan|last=Brazil|first=Mark|publisher=T & A D Poyser|year=2003|isbn=978-0-7136-6570-3|pages=64–65|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b-E6dEYkcwsC&pg=PA64|access-date=13 June 2015|archive-date=23 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160623213920/https://books.google.com/books?id=b-E6dEYkcwsC&pg=PA64|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Ovid]] mentions the legend in "The Story of Picus and Canens":<ref>{{cite web |author=Ovid |publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D14%3Acard%3D320 |title=Metamorphoses XIV |at=Lines 428–430. |access-date=9 September 2021 |archive-date=9 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210909202649/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0028:book%3D14:card%3D320 |url-status=live }}</ref>
{{poem quote |In tears she poured out words with a faint voice,
lamenting her sad woe, as when the swan
about to die sings a funereal dirge.}}It is also possible that the swan song has some connection to the lament of [[Cycnus of Liguria]] at the death of his lover, [[Phaethon]], the ambitious and headstrong son of [[Helios]] and [[Clymene (mother of Phaethon)|Clymene]].
==Ornithological accuracy==
The most familiar European swan, the [[mute swan]] (''Cygnus olor''), although not actually mute, is known neither for musicality nor to vocalize as it dies. This has led some to criticize swan song beliefs since antiquity, one of the earliest<ref name="Arnott, W. Geoffrey 2007">{{cite book|title=Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z|last=Arnott|first=W. Geoffrey|publisher=Routledge|year=2007|isbn=978-0-203-94662-6|pages=182–184|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b4pN4OApWw4C&dq=arnott+whooper+swan&pg=PA183|access-date=19 November 2021|archive-date=22 September 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922071753/https://books.google.com/books?id=b4pN4OApWw4C&dq=arnott+whooper+swan&pg=PA183|url-status=live}}</ref> being [[Pliny the Elder]]: in CE 77, ''[[Pliny's Natural History|Natural History]]'' (book 10, chapter xxxii: ''olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso, ut arbitror, aliquot experimentis''), states: "observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false." Peterson et al. note that ''Cygnus olor'' is "not mute but lacks bugling call, merely honking, grunting, and hissing on occasion."<ref>{{cite book|title=A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe|last1=Peterson |first1=R. T. |last2=Mountfort |first2=G. |last3=Hollum |first3=P. A. D. |year=2001|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Field Guides|isbn=0-618-16675-0 |page=49}}</ref>
However, the [[whooper swan]] (''Cygnus cygnus''), a winter visitor to parts of the eastern Mediterranean,
The whooper swan's nearest relatives, the [[trumpeter swan|trumpeter]] and [[tundra swan]]s, share its musical tracheal loop. Zoologist [[Daniel Giraud Elliot|D.G. Elliot]] reported in 1898 that a tundra swan he had shot and wounded in flight began a long glide down whilst issuing a series of "plaintive and musical" notes that "sounded at times like the soft running of the notes of an octave".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.prairiefirenewspaper.com/2013/01/the-swans-of-nebraska|title=The Swans of Nebraska|work=Prairie Fire|location=USA|date=January 2013|author=Johnsgard, Paul A. |author-link=Paul Johnsgard |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402180913/http://www.prairiefirenewspaper.com/2013/01/the-swans-of-nebraska |archivedate=2 April 2015}}</ref>
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===Idiomatic usage===
The phrase "swan song" has also taken on a metaphorical sense, referring to the final work of a creative artist, especially when produced shortly before death, or more generally to any final performance or accomplishment.<ref>{{cite OED|swansong}}</ref> For example, ''[[Schwanengesang]]'' (''Swan Song'') is the title of a posthumously published collection of songs by [[Franz Schubert]], written at the end of his life
A dramatic or notable achievement by an athlete just prior to their retirement, ==See also==
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[[Category:Swans]]
[[Category:Bird sounds]]
[[Category:Clytemnestra]]
[[Category:Cassandra]]
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