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A Thing About Swans

I’m delighted to have Lilian Darcy stop by for a guest post…I hope you enjoy the swans!

Doranna, thanks so much for having me on your blog, to talk about…

Swans!Swans!

Anybody else out there have a thing about swans?

Just pause a minute before you answer this. Chances are, swans are more deeply embedded in your psyche than you thought.

For example, I myself didn’t realize I was afflicted this way until I sat back and thought about childhood fairy tales and classical ballet and my contemporary women’s fiction novel All Dressed Up with its beautiful, swan-like ballet/bridal dress on the cover, and most importantly the swan theme running through my newest book Saving Gerda.

European literature and history is full of significant and symbolic swans. Google swans, and you get 29,000,000 hits. Okay, so some of them are for a Sydney-based Australian Rules football team, and others for an American post-punk band. And this is interesting, too, because, seriously… Swans and football? Swans and punk music? Well, okay, if you want.

On Google Images you get… and I really can’t believe this, but that’s what Google tells me… 49,300,000 hits. Picture after picture. Beautiful, graceful, romantic, quirky.

Here’s some slightly dry stuff about swans:

They are the largest member of the duck family.

There are six or seven species.

The male is called a cob and the female a pen.

In Australia, swans are black.

Their egg incubation takes 35 to 45 days.

Here is what I really want you to know about them:

Their pair bonding is monogamous and often lasts for life. So many of those Google images of swans show a cob and his pen forming a heart with their mirror-imaged white necks. Because of this, they are often a symbol of love and fidelity.

They appear in countless songs and poems and myths and stories. In the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, Zeus came to the Queen of Sparta in the form of a swan and together they conceived Helen of Troy. In an Irish legend called the Children of Lir, a stepmother transforms her stepchildren into swans for nine hundred years. In a Finnish epic, anyone who kills a swan will perish and be sent to the underworld.

“Swan Lake” is one of the best-known ballets ever created, and the re-imagined version directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, with an all-male chorus, is now the longest running ballet ever, in both the London West End and on New York’s Broadway.

“The Six Swans,” one of the hundreds of fairy tales recorded by the Grimm brothers, is at heart a story of love and fidelity. For six years without speaking or laughing a young woman must sew shirts out of nettles for her six brothers, in order to release them from an enchantment which has turned them into swans.

I love the swan on the cover of Saving Gerda. For me, it evokes all those feelings about sacrifice and courage, faithfulness and love and beauty – the things that the book is about, at heart. What makes us brave? Why is beauty important? What does fidelity really mean?

Lilian

Saving Gerda

 Lilian Darcy has written over eighty books for Harlequin, with her McKinley Medics trilogy out now in Harlequin Special Edition. She also publishes women’s fiction, chick lit and mainstream in ebook. Whether straight romance or something else, all her books feature strong characters, strong emotion and complex relationships.When she’s not writing, Lilian loves the outdoors, in her garden, on a hiking trail or at competitive equestrian events. If it’s raining, she likes cooking and music.
You can purchase Saving Gerda and Lilian’s other ebooks through the retailer links at backlistebooks.comYou can find Lilian at www.liliandarcy.com and on Facebook and Twitter (@liliandarcy).

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 at 04:00 and is filed under Bonus Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • http://www.doranna.net Doranna

    Love Swan Lake…love swans! They’re like horses…you watch them being graceful, and they change something inside you.

  • http://www.liliandarcy.com Lilian Darcy

    Yes, so true. I think we could probably all do with just sitting and watching animals more than we do. It’s such a great way of being in the moment.

  • http://www.annegracie.com Anne Gracie

    I remember years ago when I was visiting North Wales I saw a lone black swan (ie from Australia) sailing on the water with a few white swans. I couldn’t get it out of my mind — how did it get there? And where was its mate? Would the other swans attack it? Would it live as a lonely outsider all its life? And how would it cope with the freezing cold winters they have up there?
    I never found out what happened to it.
    Swans are like that — they have a quality about them that engages you, I agree.

  • http://www.trishmorey.com Trish Morey

    I hadn’t thought much about it until this post, Lilian, but there’s something so serene about swans, isn’t there? Love the facts and figures. What I want to know now is why we don’t have white swans Downunder? Isn’t that strange!

    BTW, I adored Saving Gerda. But then I have trouble resisting any Lilian Darcy books. It’s a great read, Lilian. Congratulations on the release!

  • http://www.liliandarcy.com Lilian Darcy

    Now I’m going to be wondering about that black swan in Wales, Anne!

    I’ve always wondered about black versus white swans. You would think there should be grey swans as well, to bridge the gap.

  • 6_penny

    They also do a lot of teaching of the cygnets. Flying lessons are particularly funny, as there is always one kid who is a bit slow and clumsy, and when it finally figures out how to get airborne has foregotten how to stop. The crashing splashdown can be spectacular. I’ve also seen one f the young when walking on land step on its own foot – and try to lift the one that is underneath!
    When they are really little the parents will often give them a ride on their backs – they peek out betseen the wings.

  • http://www.liliandarcy.com Lilian Darcy

    I’ve seen the cygnets on the parents’ backs, but haven’t seen them tread on their own feet! That would be so funny, and the clumsy flying lessons.

    There’s a scene in Saving Gerda where Gerda and her grandmother are feeding swan parents and babies, and Berbie, the grandmother, tells her that an adult male swan’s neck is strong enough to break a man’s arm. So there’s another interesting swan fact!

  • Fiona McArthur

    Love swans, too. Absolutely adore the two swans in the first piccie and of course love Lillians cover. Can’t wait to read Saving Gerda
    Xx Fi