Cygnets, Young Swans

Swan meat has been regarded as a luxury food in England since at least the reign Elizabeth I. A recipe for baked swan survives from that time. "To bake a Swan Scald it and take out the bones, and parboil it, then season it very well with Pepper, Salt and Ginger, then lard it, and put it in a deep Cfin Rye Paste with store Butter, close it and bake it very well, and when it is baked, fill up the Vent-hole with melted Butter, and so keep it; serve it in as you do the Beef-Pie."
Many the cultural aspects refer to the Mute Swan Europe. Perhaps the best known story about a swan is The Ugly Duckling fable. The story centres around a duckling that is mistreated until it becomes evident he is a swan and is accepted into the habitat. He was mistreated because real ducklings are, according to many, more attractive than a cygnet, yet cygnets become swans, which are very attractive creatures. Swans are ten a symbol love or fidelity because their long-lasting monogamous relationships. Like the famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal.
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen Troy was conceived in a union Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen Sparta. Other references in classical literature include the belief that upon death the otherwise silent Mute Swan would sing beautifully - hence the phrase swan song; as well as Juvenal's sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan", from which we get the Latin phrase rara avis, rare bird.
The Irish legend the Children Lir is about a stepmother transforming her children into swans for 900 years. In the legend The Wooing Etain, the king the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king Ireland and Ireland's armies. The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.