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Knipp sing, and I would be glad to go, so as we may be merry. At noon eat the second of the two cygnets Mr.
The swanlets took charge of the bride while the goshawk dashed down and tied the bridegroom to a tree. Then the herons gathered themselves together into one feather bed and the cygnets placed their mother upon them, and suddenly they all rose in the air bearing the bride away with them in safety towards Prince Florentine's home. Surely a wedding party was never so disturbed in this world.
These swans belong for the most part to either the Crown or the Dyers' and Vintners' Companies, and the practice of "uppings," which consists in marking the beaks of adult birds and pinioning the cygnets, is still, though shorn of some of its former ceremonial, observed some time during the month of June.
Demolish Gog and Magog, put down the civic banquets, break up and melt down the weighty and many-linked chains of solid gold round the neck of my lord mayor and the sheriffs, strip off the aldermen's gowns, make a bonfire of the gilded carriages, wring, if you will, the necks of both swans and cygnets. It is all vanity and vexation. Man is an intellectual animal: he wants none of these gewgaws.
It is true that Ireland's greatest patriots, from Swift to Davis, have been her children; but she has never understood their spirit, never looked on them as anything but strangers to her family. They have been to her stray robber wasps, to be driven from the hive; while to the others they have seemed cygnets among her duckling brood.
He had been Lord Mayor; and on his Show-day the Equipments of chivalry had been more Sumptuous, the Banners more varied, the Entertainment at Saddlers' Hall, where the Lord Mayor was wont to hold his Feast before the present Mansion House was built, the ancient Guildhall in King Street being then but in an ill condition for banquet, Hopwood's Entertainment, I say, had been more plentifully provided with Marrowbones, Custards, Ruffs and Reeves, Baked Cygnets, Malmsey, Canary, and Hippocras, than had ever been known since the days of the Merry Mayor, who swore that King Charles the Second should take t'other bottle.
But perhaps my teacher, the spaewife of Ostree, may know better." And away she hurries to the cave of Ostree, and after a while comes out as white as white can be and muttering over some burning herbs she brought out of the cave. Suddenly Coo-my-dove changed into a goshawk and around him flew twenty-four grey herons and above them flew seven cygnets.
Even to-day, within the beautiful city, the forests, with their grand old trees, still remain, and the fish-pond, called the Vijver, is there yet, with its swans. On the little island, the fluffy, downy cygnets are born and grow to be big birds, with long necks, bent like an arch.
Cygnets are good to eat, and the corporation of Norwich, who boast this treat at their public dinners, are bound, by some old regulation, to present the Duke of Norfolk every year with an immense cygnet pie. The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one of the flock is killed. The Wild Swans of Hudson's Bay furnish the finest quills used for writing.
"The hooper lays from six to eight eggs, and sits upon them for a period of six weeks, when the cygnets come forth covered with a thick down of a bluish-grey colour. While sitting upon her eggs, the swan is exceedingly watchful and shy. She `faces' towards the point whence she most apprehends danger.
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