Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/150

 dignity with which it walks the waters, the swan with its plumage spotless and white as driven snow, has everywhere been looked upon with admiring eyes; and its flesh while yet a cygnet used to be esteemed a dainty for a royal board, on some extraordinary occasions. To make it the symbol of majestic beauty in a woman, it had sometimes given it a female's head. Among the gifts bestowed on his son, Richard II. by the Black Prince, in his will were bed-hangings embroidered with white swans having women's heads. To raise this bird still higher, in ecclesiastical symbolism, it is put forth to indicate a stainless, more than royal purity; and as such, is often linked with and figured under the Blessed Virgin Mary, as is shown upon an enamelled morse given in the "Church of our Fathers."

Besides all this, the swan owns a curious legend of its own, set forth by some raving troubadour in the wildest dream that minstrel ever dreamed. "The life and myraculous hystory of the most noble and illustryous Helyas, knight of the swanne, and the birth of y^e excellent knight Godfrey of Boulyon," &c., was once a book in great favour throughout Europe; and was "newly translated and printed by Robert Copland, out of Frensshe in to Englisshe at thinstigacion of y^e Puyssaunt and Illustryous Prynce Lorde Edwarde Duke of Buckyngham—of whom lynyally is dyscended my sayde lorde."

While our noble countryman boasted of an offspring from this fabled swan, so did the greatest houses abroad. In private hands in England is a precious ivory casket wrought on its five panels, before us in photography, with this history of the swan. Helyas's shield and flag are ensigned with St. George's cross; the armour tells of England and its military appliances, about the end of the fourteenth century; and the whole seems the work of English hands. At the great exhibition of loans in this museum, 1862, one of the many fine textiles then shown was a fine but cut-down chasuble of blue Sicilian silk, upon which was, curiously enough for what we have said about the birds before which the "Vow" was made, figured, amid other fowls the pheasant. The handsome orphreys upon this vestment were wrought in this country, and good specimens they are of English needlework during the fourteenth century. These orphreys, before and behind, are embroidered on a bright red silk ground, with golden flower and leaf-*bearing branches, so trailed as, in their twinings, to form Stafford knots in places, and to embower shields of arms each supported by gold swans