Swan Song................................

Swan song

Meaning

A final gesture or performance, given before dying.

Origin

This term derived from the legend that, while they are mute during the
rest of their lives, swans sing beautifully and mournfully just before
they die. This isn't actually the case - swans, even the inaccurately
named Mute Swans, have a variety of vocal sounds and they don't sing
before they die. The legend was known to be false as early as the days
of ancient Greece, when Pliny the Elder refuted it in Natural History,
AD 77:

"Observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false."

Nevertheless, poetic imagery proved to be more attractive than
scientific method and many poets and playwrights made use of the fable
long after Pliny's observations. Chaucer included this line in the
poem Parliament of Fowles:

The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth. [The jealous swan, sings
before his death]

Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon no less, used the image in The Merchant
of Venice, 1596:

Portia: Let music sound while he doth make his choice; then, if he
lose, he makes a swan-like end, fading in music.

The actual term 'swan song', with its current figurative meaning,
doesn't crop up in print until the 18th century. The Scottish cleric
Jon Willison used the expression in one of his Scripture Songs, 1767,
where he refers to "King David's swan-song".

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) turned the phrase on its
head in the poem On a Volunteer Singer:

Swans sing before they die; ’twere no bad thing
Did certain persons die before they sing.

If people ever did believe in the 'singing before death' story, few
would now claim to do so. 'Swan-song' is now used figuratively and
most commonly to refer to celebrated performers embarking on 'farewell
tours' or 'final performances'. Those ironic quote marks were never
more appropriate than in the case of Nellie Melba, whose swan song
consisted of an eight year long string of 'final concerts' between
1920 and 1928. This led to the popular Australian phrase - 'more
farewells than Nellie Melba'.