Black swan emblems and popular culture

The black swan (Cygnus atratus) is widely referenced in Australian culture, although the character of that importance historically diverges between the prosaic in the east and the symbolic in the west.

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.

[4] 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.

[5] 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").

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.

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 Governor Phillip, soon after establishing the convict settlement some sixty years later and 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) away at Botany Bay on the east coast, wrote in 1789 that "A black swan, which species, though proverbially rare in other parts of the world, is here by no means uncommon ... a very noble bird, larger than the common swan, and equally beautiful in form ... its wings were edged with white: the bill was tinged with red.

"[7] A contemporary, Surgeon-General John White, observed in 1790, "We found nine birds, that, whilst swimming, most perfectly resembled the rara avis of the ancients, a black swan.

[8] 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.

The Colony of Western Australia produced its first postage stamps in 1854, and in contrast to the usual practice within the British Empire, they featured, not a portrait of Queen Victoria, but an image of the black swan.

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".

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.

One example is Kurrabup in the Nyungar language, or "black swan place", being the local Aboriginal name for the Wilson Inlet upon which the town of Denmark is situated in the South West.

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 1954, the centenary of the first Western Australian stamp was marked by a commemorative issue in a similar style to the original one-penny Black Swan.

Australian motifs were popular in the Queen Anne Revival or Federation architectural style of the period, but the black swan is rarely seen among the kookaburras, eucalyptus leaves and rising suns.

[33] 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.

The State Library of New South Wales catalogue lists only ten fiction titles, one of which is an English-language translation of Thomas Mann's 1954 work The Black Swan (Die Betrogene in German[35][better source needed]).

[49] 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.

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.

The tender to Australia II, the yacht that won the 1983 America's Cup at Newport, Rhode Island, was called Black Swan.

[51] 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.

The American thrash metal band Megadeth released a song entitled "Black Swan" as a bonus track on their 2007 album United Abominations.

Singer-songwriter Tori Amos released a song entitled "Black Swan" as a bonus track on her 1994 UK CD single "Pretty Good Year".

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.

Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica included a song entitled "Fly With the Black Swan" on their 2007 album Unia.

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.