Black swan emblems and popular culture
The
The black swan is the official state emblem of Western Australia and is depicted on the flag and coat of arms of Western Australia. The symbol is used in other emblems, coins, logos, mascots and in the naming of sports teams.
Aboriginal history and lore
Daisy Bates recorded a nyoongar man called Woolberr "last of the black swan group" of the Nyungar people of south-western Australia in the 1920s.[1][2] The website of the Premier of Western Australia refers to Nyungar lore of how the ancestors of the Nyungar people were once black swans who became men.[3]
The
The moral code embedded in Aboriginal lore is evident in a story from an unspecified locality in eastern Australia (probably in New South Wales) published in 1943. An Aboriginal man, fishing in a lagoon, caught a baby bunyip. Instead of returning the baby to the water, he wanted to take the bunyip back to the camp to boast of his fishing prowess, against the urging of his friends. Before he could do anything, the angry mother bunyip rose from the water, flooding swirling water around them, and took back her baby. As the water receded, the men found that they had been changed into black swans. As punishment for the fisherman's vanity, they never regained their human form, but could be heard at night talking in human voices as a reminder to their human relatives of the perils of pride and arrogance.[5]
European myth and metaphor
The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote in AD 82 of rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno ("a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan").[6] He meant something whose rarity would compare with that of a black swan, or in other words, as a black swan was not thought to exist, neither did the supposed characteristics of the "rare bird" with which it was being compared. The phrase passed into several European languages as a popular proverb, including English, in which the first four Latin words ("a rare bird in the land") are often used ironically. For some 1,500 years, the black swan existed in the European imagination as a metaphor for that which could not exist.
The Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh made the first European record of sighting a black swan in 1697, when he sailed into, and named, the Swan River on the western coast of New Holland. The sighting was significant in Europe, where "all swans are white" had long been used as a standard example of a well-known truth. In 1726, two birds were captured near Dirk Hartog Island, 850 kilometres (530 mi) north of the Swan River, and taken to Batavia (now Jakarta) as proof of their existence.[7]: 451
The taking of black swans to Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries brought the birds into contact with another aspect of European mythology: the attribution of sinister relationships between the devil and black-coloured animals, such as a
While the European encounter with the black swan along Australia's west coast in the late 17th and early 18th centuries led to the shattering of an age-old metaphor, their contact on the east coast in the late 18th and early 19th centuries merely confirmed the new post-proverbial view, before turning to account for the black swan as just one more curiosity in the South to be utilised in developing the colonies.
In
Western Australia
Heraldry
The coat of arms of Western Australia includes a black swan as the principal charge on the shield. A black swan on a gold plate or disk has been the official badge of the state since 1876, and is shown on the flag of Western Australia. The coat of arms of Australia (1912 version) shows, in its fifth quarter, the black swan on a gold field, representing the state as one of the original states in the federation.
Although the State Arms were granted in 1969, municipal heraldry had already been using the black swan symbolism since 1926, when the
In the history of the Western Australian Government Railways – the black swan emblem occurred between the 1920s to the 1980s.[10]
Several state authorities have also been granted arms showing a black swan: St George's College at the University of Western Australia (1964, charges), Fremantle Port Authority (1965, crest), and the University of Western Australia (1972, charges). The university had used an assumed version of these arms since 1913, and the university's student guild reaffirmed its assumption and use of a differenced version of the University Arms in 1991.[11] Authorities with assumed arms showing a black swan include Royal Perth Hospital (1936, charge), and the University of Western Australia residential colleges of St Thomas More (charge), Currie Hall (charge) and St Catherine's (charge).
Religious authorities have also used representations of the black swan in their heraldic emblems. Of the two largest denominations in the state, there are the Anglican dioceses of
Philately
The
Decorative arts
Black swans feature as emblems and decorations on many important public buildings in Western Australia. An example is the tower of the Fremantle Town Hall.
The Wembley Ware range of "fancy ware" was produced between 1945 and 1961 by HL Brisbane and
Literature
Explorers' journals, as a literary genre, often provide descriptions of black swans. For example, in December 1836, Lieutenant Bunbury of the
The early colonist George Fletcher Moore included in his 1831 ballad "So Western Australia for Me" the lines:
- No lions or tigers are we dread to meet,
- Our innocent quadrupeds hop on two feet;
- No tithes and no taxes, we here have to pay,
- And our geese are all swans, as some witty folk say.[15]
The final line recalls an old English saying: "All his swans are turned to geese", meaning all his expectations end in nothing; all his boasting ends in smoke, like a person who fancies he sees a swan on a river but finds it to be only a goose. The phrase is sometimes reversed (as Moore has done): "All his geese are swans", which was commonly applied to people who think too much of the beauty and talent of their children and derived from Aesop's fable "The Eagle and the Owl".[16]
In Gaito Gazdanov's short story Black Swans (1930) the protagonist commits suicide because he has no opportunity of moving to Australia, which he imagines to be an idealised paradise of graceful black swans. D. H. Lawrence wrote in the 1925 short story "The Heritage":
- Jack looked out at the road, but was much more enchanted by the full, soft river of heavenly blue water, on whose surface he looked eagerly for the black swans. He didn't see any.
- "Oh yes! Oh, yes! You'll find em wild in their native state a little way up," said Mr Swallow.[17]
Mollie Skinner, Lawrence's co-author of The Boy in the Bush also wrote the novel Black Swans, published in 1925 by Jonathan Cape in London. She uses Juvenal's phrase "rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno" ("a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan") as its subtitle. It alludes to her heroine, Letty Granville.
The potency of the image of the black swan as a signifier of Westralian nationalism can be seen in this passage from Randolph Stow's "The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea", published in 1965:
- Perth was ancient ... And it was a very special city, cut off from other cities by sea and desert, so that there was not another city for two thousand miles. Among all Australian cities it had proved itself the most special, by a romantic act called the Secession, which the other cities had stuffily ignored.
- Cinderella State, he thought, feeling indignant. That was the reason for the Secession. Because they had ignored his poor Cinderella State, all one million square miles of it.
- Maybe after this war there'd be another war. Western Australia against the world, Black Swan flying.
- 'We shouldn't have gone to Parliament House,' his mother had remarked, 'it seems to have made you political.' ...
- 'When will Western Australia be free?' he wondered.
- 'I don't know,' said his mother. 'Perhaps when Bonnie Prince Charlie comes over.'
- 'Aww.' He grew disgusted at her flippancy.[18]
Place names
Aboriginal languages
The black swan is likely to be well represented in the
English language
The English-language place name "Black Swan" only occurs as a descriptive toponym once: the Black Swan Mine in the arid interior of the state near Laverton.[20]
The more generic toponym "Swan", invariably referring to black swans, has at least 34 examples in Western Australia, almost entirely in the state's south-west.
There are no "White Swan" toponyms in the state, and the toponymist Reed lists only the Swan River as a "Swan" toponym in the state.[24]
The rarer form of Cygnet ("young swan") only occurs in three places, all along the Kimberley coast, where they commemorate the passage of William Dampier and the mutineers on the Cygnet in 1688.[25]
Shipwrecks
With one-third of Australia's continental coastline within Western Australia, the cultural associations reflected in the scattering of shipwrecks named "Black Swan" is surprisingly small. A lone
Eastern Australia
Heraldry
The
Some 77 municipalities across eastern Australia have received grants of arms from the Crown since 1908, but only four include a black swan:
There are three grants of arms to corporations that include a black swan. In 1931, the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) was granted arms with a black swan supporter alluding to the Bank's acquisition of the Western Australian Bank in 1927.[28] In the same year, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons was granted arms with a black swan in the first and fourth quarters, apparently derived from the Australian Arms.[29] In 1965, the Australian Academy of Science was granted arms with a black swan as a crest, alluding to the Academy's "Australianness" and its location in Canberra.[30]
Two religious authorities in eastern Victoria, the Anglican Diocese of Gippsland and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sale, have a black swan as a charge on their diocesan arms.
Philately
The transfer of postage-stamp production from the states to the Commonwealth in 1913 has resulted in four issues being produced featuring a black swan design, three commemorating a Western Australian anniversary. In 1929, a stamp designed by
Incidental philatelic illustrations of the black swan include the
Decorative arts
Images of the black swan played only a minor role in the development of Australian decorative arts between the 1890s and World War One. This was a period when Australian flora and fauna decorative motifs were widely used for the first time. Images of
In 1913, the sculptor William Priestly MacIntosh carved a "coat of arms" for each state on the pilaster capitals of the façade of the new Commonwealth Bank headquarters on Pitt Street, Sydney.[34] He included a black swan on a shield for Western Australia, 56 years before the state was granted a coat of arms of a similar design. The Sydney Hospital fountain and the Commonwealth Bank façade are two uncommon examples of the use of the black swan in decorative arts in eastern Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Literature
Black Swan occurs rarely in literary titles. The
- In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
- The black swan of trespass on alien waters.
This poem, the first by
Place names
Aboriginal languages
The black swan is represented in the toponymy of eastern Australia. Several
There are also instances of such names being newly applied today; for example, Hydro Tasmania has adopted Aboriginal names for some parts of its hydro-electric developments, such as Catagunya, meaning black swan.[42]
English language
The English-language place name "Black Swan" occurs as a descriptive toponym in four states, usually as a "name cluster". Queensland has a Black Swan Creek near
The more generic toponym "Swan" invariably refers to black swans. The Gazetteer of Australia
In Sydney, there are thirteen "Swan" street names and one "Black Swan" street name,[46] in contrast to a lone "Swan" street name in Darwin.[47]
The rarer form of Cygnet ("young swan") occasionally occurs. The Gazetteer of Australia records eleven in Tasmania (the densest concentration), five in South Australia and one in Victoria, but Reed's only example is
Shipwrecks
Another cultural association is reflected in the scattering of shipwrecks named "Black Swan". Tasmania has a wrecked schooner (1830) off Prime Seal Island in the Bass Strait and a wrecked fishing boat (1950) off Swansea on the east coast. New South Wales has two wrecks off its northern coast: a cutter near Newcastle (1852) and a paddle steamer (1868) near the Manning River. The name "Black Swan" probably refers to the aquatic characteristics of black swans such as buoyancy and a graceful style, even though the shipwreck record suggests the hope in the name association was not always well founded. There are five records for the more generic "Swan" between 1836 and 1934: one in Tasmania, and two each in Victoria and New South Wales, including torpedo-boat destroyer HMAS Swan, scuttled in 1934.[26]
Sport
Australian rules football
In
The names of two Australian rules football clubs illustrate a contemporary variation of the ways in which cultural references to the black swan have changed and been transformed over time.
The Swan Districts Football Club was established in 1932 at Bassendean, near the industrial and railway hub of the Swan District and a large community of expatriate Victorians. The name associated the club with the place, as did its emblem of a black swan. The club has since played in the West Australian Football League.
The
This is an apparently rare example of Western Australian swan symbolism being transferred eastward, then transformed to symbolise something else, retaining only an echo of its formerly symbolic values. None of the current AFL teams have taken a black swan emblem in allusion to any natural qualities of the bird, and its sole representation in the symbology of the league refers to the largely unresearched phenomenon of late 19th-mid 20th century migration between Western Australia and Victoria – now borne by a club that has emigrated to New South Wales. It is an ironic transformation in the symbolism of a bird that was for so long thought to be non-migratory.
Sailing
The tender to Australia II, the yacht that won the 1983 America's Cup at Newport, Rhode Island, was called Black Swan.[51]
Music
This Section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
Gian Carlo Menotti, in his opera The Medium, named one of his most famous arias "The Black Swan", which is a "dark lullaby" sung by the character Monica.
Perth rock group The Triffids released an album called The Black Swan in 1989.
The American thrash metal band Megadeth released a song entitled "Black Swan" as a bonus track on their 2007 album United Abominations. This song was later re-recorded and re-released on their 2011 album Thirteen.
Singer-songwriter
Singer Thom Yorke of the band Radiohead released a song entitled "Black Swan" on the soundtrack of the 2006 film A Scanner Darkly and, three days later, on his debut solo album, The Eraser.
The American alternative-rock band Chiodos released a song entitled "Lexington", which references black swans in the lyric, "All the water in the ocean couldn't turn this swan's legs from black to white."
The American avant-garde band The Blood Brothers released a song entitled "Giant Swan", in which a giant swan is used as a metaphor for society and war, until it is renamed in the lyric, "It's gonna sting like a raw sunrise when the Black Swan's gone."
Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica included a song entitled "Fly With the Black Swan" on their 2007 album Unia.
American band Story of the Year released an album entitled The Black Swan in 2008.
The American ambient band Amber Asylum released a song entitled "Black Swan" on their 2000 album The Supernatural Parlour Collection.
The German death metal/gothic rock band Lacrimas Profundere released a song entitled "Black Swans" on their 1999 album Memorandum.
Modern philosophy
John Stuart Mill in the chapter "Of The Ground of Induction" in his A System of Logic (1843) cited the example of "all swans are white" as a case of incorrect induction based on genuine experiences with erroneous conclusions. "As there were black swans, though civilized people had existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them...The uniform experience, therefore, of the inhabitants of the known world, agreeing in a common result, without one known instance of deviation from that result, is not always sufficient to establish a general conclusion."[52]
Bertrand Russell cited the case of the 'black swan' in his chapter "On Induction" in his 1912 publication The Problems of Philosophy.[53]
"For example, a man who had seen a great many white swans might argue, by our principle, that on the data it was probable that all swans were white, and this might be a perfectly sound argument. The argument is not disproved by the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things often fail to fulfill our expectations is no evidence that our expectations will not probably be fulfilled in a given case or a given class of cases. Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience."
— Bertrand Russell. 1912. "On Induction" The Problems of Philosophy
Karl Popper used the black swan example in his argument on falsifiability in The Logic of Scientific Discovery invoking David Hume.[54]
"The answer to this problem is: as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result, equally negative, may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law (that is, of any law of which it is a counterinstance). Or in other words, from a purely logical point of view, the acceptance of one counterinstance to 'All swans are white' implies the falsity of the law 'All swans are white' – that law, that is, whose counterinstance we accepted. Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counterinstance to – or, rather, against – the corresponding law.This shows that I continue to agree with Hume's negative logical result; but I extend it.This logical situation is completely independent of any question of whether we would, in practice, accept a single counterinstance – for example, a solitary black swan – in refutation of a so far highly successful law. I do not suggest that we would necessarily be so easily satisfied; we might well suspect that the black specimen before us was not a swan."
— Karl Popper "The Problem of Induction" The Logic of Scientific Discovery
References
- ^ Bates, D.M. 'Woolberr: the last of the black swan group', in the Australasian, 3 May 1927. Totemic ceremony of the black swan of the Bibbulmun group; the life story of native who was born during an initiation ceremony (AIATSIS)
- ^ Aboriginal Pages
- ^ Western Australian Government Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- K Langloh Parker). Retrieved 10 February 2007.
- ^ Hurley, P.J., In Search of Australia, Dymocks Book Arcade Ltd., Sydney 1943: 131
- ^ Morris, E.E. (Ed), Austral English, Melbourne 1898; facsimile as Morris’s Dictionary of Australian Words, John Currey O’Neil Publishers, Adelaide 1982: 451
- ^ ISBN 0670900370.
- ^ Scott, Sir Peter (Ed), The World Atlas of Birds, Colporteur Press, Balmain 1982: 200
- ^ "Northam Puts Farm Animals In Arms". The Daily News. 18 August 1953. p. 7. Retrieved 9 November 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ Rob Clark The History of the 'Mucky Duck' pp.7 – 21, issue 263, 2009/10 -Australian Railway Historical Society. Western Australian Division (1985), The Westland, The Division, retrieved 27 December 2013
- ^ Annual Report 1991, Guild of Undergraduates, University of Western Australia, Crawley 1992: 6
- ^ Eastick, M., Comprehensive Colour Catalogue of Australian Stamps, Victoria Stamp Traders, Malvern 2003: WA1-WA4
- ^ Stateline – Western Australia – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
- ^ Bunbury, Lt. Col. W. St Pierre and Morrell, W.P. (Eds), Early Days in Western Australia: being the letters and journal of Lieut. H. W. Bunbury, 21st Fusiliers, Oxford University Press, London 1930: 72
- ^ Durack, M., quoting Moore in 'The Governor's Ball', in Bennett, B., & Grono, W., Wide Domain: Western Australian themes and images, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1979: 47
- ^ Brewer, E. Cobham, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898. http://www.bartleby.com/81/7059.html
- ^ Lawrence, D. H., 'The Heritage', in Bennet and Grono, Wide Domain: Western Australian themes and images: 63
- ^ Stow, R., The Merry-go-Round in the Sea, Penguin Books, Ringwood 1985: 135
- ^ Songs of the West
- ^ Map Names of the State's interior, however see the naming of the Swan River in 1780 as the Black Swan River in Harmer, T. (17..-18; graveur). Graveur (1780), Plan of the island Rottenest lying off the west coast of New Holland; Black Swan river on New Holland opposite Rottenest island / from Vankeulen; writing by T. Harmar, A. Dalrymple, retrieved 27 December 2013
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Map Names of the State's south-west
- ^ Map Names of the State (Swan River region)
- ^ Streetsmart Perth 1993 Street Directory, Dept of Land Administration, Perth 1993
- ^ Reed, A.W., Place Names of Australia, Reed Books Pty Ltd., Frenchs Forest 1973: 203–204
- ^ a b Reed, Place Names of Australia: 76
- ^ a b National Shipwreck Database Archived 9 July 2009 at the Library of Congress Web Archives
- ^ "HMS Swan (reef)". Archived from the original on 7 June 2007. Retrieved 21 June 2007.
- ^ Low, C., A Roll of Australian arms: corporate and personal, borne by lawful authority, Rigby, Sydney 1971: 11
- ^ Low, A Roll of Australian arms: 6
- ^ Low, A Roll of Australian arms: 5
- ^ Eastick, M., Comprehensive Colour Catalogue of Australian Stamps, Victoria Stamp Traders, Malvern 2003: 11–183
- ^ 'Detail of Public Park Fountain', in Stephen, Ann (Ed), Visions of a Republic: the work of Lucien Henry, Paris, Noumea, Sydney, Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney 2001: 220–221
- ^ Fraser, H., and Joyce., R., The Federation House: Australia’s own style, Lansdowne, The Rocks 1986
- ^ Earnshaw, Beverley, An Australian sculptor : William Priestly Macintosh, Kogarah Historical Society, Kogarah 2004
- ^ Die Betrogene (in the German Wikipedia)
- ^ McQueen, H., The Black Swans of Trespass: The Emergence of Modernist Painting in Australia 1918–1944, Alternative Publishing, Sydney 1979
- ^ Reed, Place Names of Australia: 86
- ^ Station names – New South Wales Rail
- ^ Penrith, New South Wales
- ^ "Maroochy, Queensland". Archived from the original on 26 January 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
- ^ Baron Heads, Victoria Archived 6 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Hydro-Electric development, Tasmania
- ^ "Place name detail: Black Swan Stream". New Zealand Gazetteer. New Zealand Geographic Board. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
- ^ Map names of New South Wales
- ^ Reed, Place Names of Australia: 203–204
- ^ 2003 Sydney & Blue Mountains Street Directory, 39th edition, UBD, Macquarie Park 2003
- ^ Darwin, includes Katherine & Nhulunbuy, 2004/2005 Phone Directory & Street Directory, PDC Directories, Darwin 2004
- ^ Western Australian Jumpers Archived 28 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 10 February 2007.
- ^ Heritage guernseys up for auction 5 July 2007.
- ^ Sydney Swans – A Brief History Archived 1 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 10 February 2007.
- ^ Bruce Stannard (28 September 1983). "New port Goes Mad For Bond". The Age. Archived from the original on 4 September 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2007.
- ISBN 978-1440090820.
- ISBN 9781605200255. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
- OCLC 62448100 Logik der Forschung 1934 The Problem of Induction Archived 30 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine