THE LATERAL HISTORY OF PIGS
As
related by Sid Kipper
To pig means to eat
gluttonously, although that seems a little unfair, especially if it is pork you
are eating.
Years ago every household
kept a pig. Not the same one, you
understand. They used to keep one
each. They fed them up on slops, and
left-overs, and swill and such that nobody else wanted to eat.
And the pigs used to grub up all sort of slugs and snails for themselves.
Then the pig was killed, and people ate it, which makes you wonder,
doesn't it? Well it should.
We always had pigs.
We always had fleas as well, but that's another matter.
My old father used to show our pigs, but on the whole the pigs weren't
much impressed by what they saw. But
he did once win 'Biggest Pig At The Show', and there was a lot of competition in
those days, I can tell you. The pigs
we always had were Trunch Saddle-fronts, which were rare even then.
They were really nice pigs, they were.
Very friendly and faithful.
I remember one we had
called Clarissa. She was my best
friend, she was. I used to take her
for walks, and save her special food, and talk to her for hours on end.
We were inseparable. Alternate
nights I used to sleep in her sty and she used to sleep in my bedroom.
Then someone told the Vicar about it, and he reckoned that was not
desirable behaviour, and we were forcefully separated.
That was two Christmases ago, and I still haven't got over it, although
the bacon sandwiches were some consolation, I suppose.
Margaret Baker says
"The decorated boar's head, with an apple, orange or lemon in its teeth,
was related to the pig sacrificed to the goddess of fertility, Frey, and mustard
was so essential a condiment that in the time of the Commonwealth, when
Christmas was threatened with extinction, the mustard-makers complained bitterly
that they could find no sale for their wares." 1
In the old days they used
to say that after they'd been slaughtered they used every part of a pig but it's
squeal. That meant that over the
years a European squeal mountain built up, and something had to be done.
It was touch and go for a while, but then they invented the Eurovision
Song Contest, and that sorted it out double quick!
You can keep pigs in barns,
or sties, or arcs, or pokes, but pigs are happiest in - well, let's just say
they're happiest as pigs in shhhhhh, you know what.
According to Brewer
"A pig in a poke' is a reference to a common trick in days gone by of
substituting a cat for a sucking-pig, and trying to palm it off on greenhorns.
If anyone heedlessly bought the article without examination he bought a
cat for a pig, but if he opened the sack he 'let the cat out of the bag', and
the trick was disclosed". 2
Of course nowadays the
animal liberation people would let the cat out of the bag before it got to that
stage, due to them being all against animals being kept in captivity.
Though how they get their cats to the vet's I can't imagine.
The Gone-To-Pottery in
Southrepps is famous for double bottomed piggy banks.
You see, that way you've got a choice of ends to stick your money in.
To get it out again you have to have a poke in a pig, which is something
else entirely, and the animal liberation people would definitely be against
that. If you want to be really
daring you can have "In a pig's arse" inscribed on them.
The piggy banks, that is.
I've always found pigs to
be very intelligent, if rather fixed in their ways.
So how you can be pigheaded and pig ignorant at the same time makes no
sense at all if you ask me, so I'm sorry I mentioned it.
I suppose it would take someone as clever as a pig to work that one out.
I saw recently that they've
done this research where they discovered that coal is good for pigs.
They spent a lot of money to find that out.
Well, they could have saved themselves the bother, because I already knew
that, but they never asked me. It
makes you wonder, don't it? I mean,
who knows what else they're researching that I already know the answer to?
If only I knew the answer
to that!