MY FRIEND THE PIG

Is there a man among us who on running through a list of his friends is unable to say that there is one among them who is a perfect pig? I think not; and if any reader says that he has no such an one for the simple reason that he would not and could not make a friend of a perfect pig, I shall maintain that he is mistaken, that if he goes over the list a second time and a little more carefully, he will find in it not only a pig, but a sheep, a cow, a fox, a cat, a stoat, and even a perfect toad.

But all this is a question I am not concerned with, seeing that the pig I wish to write about is a real one--a four-footed beast with parted hoofs. I have a friendly feeling towards pigs generally, and consider them the most intelligent of beasts, not excepting the elephant and the anthropoid ape--the dog is not to be mentioned in this connection. I also like his disposition and attitude towards all other creatures, especially man. He is not suspicious, or shrinkingly submissive, like horses, cattle, and sheep; nor an impudent devil-may-care like the goat; nor hostile like the goose; nor condescending like the cat; nor a flattering parasite like the dog. He views us from a totally different, a sort of democratic, standpoint as fellow-citizens and brothers, and takes it for granted, or grunted, that we understand his language, and without servility or insolence he has a natural, pleasant, camerados-all or hail-fellow-well-met air with us.

It may come as a shock to some of my readers when I add that I like him, too, in the form of rashers on the breakfast-table; and this I say with a purpose on account of much wild and idle talk one hears on this question even from one’s dearest friends--the insincere horror expressed and denunciation of the revolting custom of eating our fellow-mortals. The other day a lady of my acquaintance told me that she went to call on some people who lived a good distance from her house, and was obliged to stay to luncheon. This consisted mainly of roast pork, and as if that was not enough, her host, when helping her, actually asked if she was fond of a dreadful thing called the crackling!

It is a common pose; but it is also something more, since we find it mostly in persons who are frequently in bad health and are restricted to a low diet; naturally at such times vegetarianism appeals to them. As their health improves they think less of their fellow-mortals. A little chicken broth is found uplifting; then follows the inevitable sole, then calves’ brains, then a sweetbread, then a partridge, and so on, progressively, until they are once more able to enjoy their salmon or turbot, veal and lamb cutlets, fat capons, turkeys and geese, sirloins of beef, and, finally, roast pig. That’s the limit; we have outgrown cannibalism, and are not keen about haggis, though it is still eaten by the wild tribes inhabiting the northern portion of our island. All this should serve to teach vegetarians not to be in a hurry. Thoreau’s “handful of rice” is not sufficient for us, and not good enough yet. It will take long years and centuries of years before the wolf with blood on his iron jaws can be changed into the white innocent lamb that nourishes itself on grass.

Let us now return to my friend the pig. He inhabited a stye at the far end of the back garden of a cottage or small farmhouse in a lonely little village in the Wiltshire downs where I was staying. Close to the stye was a gate opening into a long green field, shut in by high hedges, where two or three horses and four or five cows were usually grazing. These beasts, not knowing my sentiments, looked askance at me and moved away when I first began to visit them, but when they made the discovery that I generally had apples and lumps of sugar in my coat pockets they all at once became excessively friendly and followed me about, and would put their heads in my way to be scratched, and licked my hands with their rough tongues to show that they liked me. Every time I visited the cows and horses I had to pause beside the pig-pen to open the gate into the field; and invariably the pig would get up and coming towards me salute me with a friendly grunt. And I would pretend not to hear or see, for it made me sick to look at his pen in which he stood belly-deep in the fetid mire, and it made me ashamed to think that so intelligent and good-tempered an animal, so profitable to man, should be kept in such abominable conditions. Oh, poor beast, excuse me, but I’m in a hurry and have no time to return your greeting or even to look at you!

In this village, as in most of the villages in all this agricultural and pastoral county of Wiltshire, there is a pig-club, and many of the cottagers keep a pig; they think and talk a great deal about their pigs, and have a grand pig-day gathering and dinner, with singing and even dancing to follow, once a year. And no wonder that this is so, considering what they get out of the pig; yet in any village you will find it kept in this same unspeakable condition. It is not from indolence nor because they take pleasure in seeing their pig unhappy before killing him or sending him away to be killed, but because they cherish the belief that the filthier the state in which they keep their pig the better the pork will be! I have met even large prosperous farmers, many of them, who cling to this delusion. One can imagine a conversation between one of these Wiltshire pig-keepers and a Danish farmer. “Yes,” the visitor would say, “we too had the same notion at one time, and thought it right to keep our pigs as you do; but that was a long time back, when English and Danes were practically one people, seeing that Canute was king of both countries. We have since then adopted a different system; we now believe, and the results prove that we are in the right way, that it is best to consider the animal’s nature and habits and wants, and to make the artificial conditions imposed on him as little oppressive as may be. It is true that in a state of nature the hog loves to go into pools and wallow in the mire, just as stags, buffaloes, and many other beasts do, especially in the dog-days when the flies are most troublesome. But the swine, like the stag, is a forest animal, and does not love filth for its own sake, nor to be left in a miry pen, and though not as fastidious as a cat about his coat, he is naturally as clean as any other forest creature.”

Here I may add that in scores of cases when I have asked a cottager why he didn’t keep a pig, his answer has been that he would gladly do so, but for the sanitary inspectors, who would soon order him to get rid of it, or remove it to a distance on account of the offensive smell. It is probable that if it could be got out of the cottager’s mind that there must need be an offensive smell, the number of pigs fattened in the villages would be trebled.

I hope now after all these digressions I shall be able to go on with the history of my friend the pig. One morning as I passed the pen he grunted--spoke, I may say--in such a pleasant friendly way that I had to stop and return his greeting; then, taking an apple from my pocket, I placed it in his trough. He turned it over with his snout, then looked up and said something like “Thank-you” in a series of gentle grunts. Then he bit off and ate a small piece, then another small bite, and eventually taking what was left in his mouth he finished eating it. After that he always expected me to stay a minute and speak to him when I went to the field; I knew it from his way of greeting me, and on such occasions I gave him an apple. But he never ate it greedily: he appeared more inclined to talk than to eat, until by degrees I came to understand what he was saying. What he said was that he appreciated my kind intentions in giving him apples. But, he went on, to tell the real truth, it is not a fruit I am particularly fond of, I am familiar with its taste as they sometimes give me apples, usually the small unripe or bad ones that fall from the trees. However, I don’t actually dislike them. I get skim milk and am rather fond of it; then a bucket of mash, which is good enough for hunger; but what I enjoy most is a cabbage, only I don’t get one very often now. I sometimes think that if they would let me out of this muddy pen to ramble like the sheep and other beasts in the field or on the downs I should be able to pick up a number of morsels which would taste better than anything they give me. Apart from the subject of food I hope you won’t mind my telling you that I’m rather fond of being scratched on the back.

So I scratched him vigorously with my stick, and made him wriggle his body and wink and blink and smile delightedly all over his face. Then I said to myself: “Now what the juice can I do more to please him?” For though under sentence of death, he had done no wrong, but was a good, honest-hearted fellow-mortal, so that I felt bound to do something to make the miry remnant of his existence a little less miserable.

I think it was the word _juice_ I had just used--for that was how I pronounced it to make it less like a swear-word--that gave me an inspiration. In the garden, a few yards back from the pen, there was a large clump of old elder-trees, now overloaded with ripening fruit--the biggest clusters I had ever seen. Going to the trees I selected and cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I deposited in his trough and invited him to try it. He sniffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his mouth, and holding them some time before he ventured to crush them. At length he did venture, then looked at me again and made more remarks, “Queer fruit this! Never tasted anything quite like it before, but I really can’t say yet whether I like it or not.”

Then he took another bite, then more bites, looking up at me and saying something between the bites, till, little by little, he had consumed the whole bunch; then turning round, he went back to his bed with a little grunt to say that I was now at liberty to go on to the cows and horses.

However, on the following morning he hailed my approach in such a lively manner, with such a note of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had been thinking a great deal about elder-berries, and was anxious to have another go at them. Accordingly I cut him another bunch, which he quickly consumed, making little exclamations the while--“Thank you, thank you, very good--very good indeed!” It was a new sensation in his life, and made him very happy, and was almost as good as a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on the open green downs.

From that time I visited him two or three times a day to give him huge clusters of elder-berries. There were plenty for the starlings as well; the clusters on those trees would have filled a cart.

Then one morning I heard an indignant scream from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer into his cart with the assistance of the farmer.

“Good-bye, old boy!” said I as the cart drove off; and I thought that by and by, in a month or two, if several persons discovered a peculiar and fascinating flavour in their morning rasher, it would be due to the elder-berries I had supplied to my friend the pig, which had gladdened his heart for a week or two before receiving his quietus.