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The classical legend that the swan sings at death was incorporated into one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 399 in the Perry Index.〔(Aesopica )〕 The fable also introduces the proverbial antithesis between the swan and the goose that gave rise to such sayings as ‘Every man thinks his own geese are swans’, in reference to blind partiality, and 'All his swans are turned to geese', referring to a reverse of fortune.〔Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, (1898 edition )〕 ==The fable and its variations== The fable recorded by Aphthonius of Antioch concerns a swan that its owner mistook for a goose in the dark and was about to kill it until the swan's song alerted him to the mistake he was making. At the start is the claim that this will encourage young people to study, and it ends with the dubious statement "that music is so powerful that it can even avert death".〔Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, History of the Graeco-Latin Fable Vol.1, Brill 1999 (p.41 )〕 Another fable, based on the same folklore and almost as inconsequential, appears in the Perry Index as number 233.〔(Aesopica )〕 In this a man buys a swan and invites guests to dinner so as to hear it sing. When it does not, he orders the bird to be served up at the meal, whereupon its bursts into song and the man blames himself for not having commanded that at the start. Neither fable was much recorded, but Laurentius Abstemius created another in his ''Hecatomythium'' in which the swan is asked by a stork (rather than a goose) why it greets death so ecstatically when most beings fear to die. It replies that it welcomes death as a release from all life's miseries.〔(Fable 13 )〕 Others, however, interpreted the song as a farewell to the joys of life, as in the madrigal "The Silver Swan" by Orlando Gibbons, which also brings in the contrast between swan and goose: ::"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes! ::More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Swan and the Goose」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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