Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1894 — STRENGTH OF THE SWAN. [ARTICLE]

STRENGTH OF THE SWAN.

A Blow of It* Wing Sufficient to Break a Man’s Log. We all know the tradition about the power of a swan’s wing—that its blow would break a man’s leg. 1 questioned a man who has much to do with swans about the credibility of the tale, and he told me that he, for one, was ready to believe it, and thought that any other man who had received such a blow from a swan’s wing as he had suffered would be likely to believe it also. He was summoned from his cottage by the news that one of the cygnets was in trouble. A boy had been amusing himself with the elegant sport of giving the cygnets meat attached to a long string. When the cygnet had swallowed the meat well done the boy would pull it up again by means of the string. It was great fun for the boy, and the cygnet was unable to express its feelings intelligibly. On the occasion in question, however, the lump of meat stuck. It would not come out, and the boy, fearing consequences, had let slip the string and bolted. The cygnet did its best with the string by swallowing several yards of it, but began to choke before it got to the end. At this juncture my friend wae summoned to its aid, and simultaneously, as it appeared, the stately parent of the cygnet, that was swimming on the pond close by, perceived

that something was amiss with its offspring. It swam to the bank and commenced making its way to the young one’s assistance. But the swan's method of progression on land is as awkward and slow as on the water it is graceful and swift. The swan herd was the first to reach the cygnet, and, soon seeing the trouble, had calculated to remove it before the parent came up with him. But his calculations had underrated the length of the string or the pedestrian speed of the swan. Just as he had succeeded in extricating the lump of meat from the gullet of the distressed youngster the old bird caught him a blow with its wing on that part of the person which is most exposed to attack when a man is stooping and the onset is made from behind. He was knocked over on his face, and, continuing the impetus received from the swan by scuttling over the grass on his hands and knees, was able to escape from the bird’s fury, which was soon transferred to solicitude for its little one. But the blow had been sufficiently powerful to make the sitting posture uninviting for several days and to incline him to give credence to any legend about the strength of a swan’s wing.