If we accept the testimony of various pagan writers, pork, of which the ancients were so fond, originally came into use about a thousand years after the deluge, when Ceres, having sown a field of wheat, found it invaded one day by a pig. This so incensed the goddess that she forthwith punished the offender with death, and afterwards, having him cooked, discovered his superior virtues—to set the example of utilising him as food. The usual corn-cob placed in the mouth of a freshly killed porker, therefore, not only reflects the delicacy of his tastes, but is also classic in a measure—a symbol of his intimate relationship with mythology and his place amid the Graces.
By the ancient Egyptians the flesh of the swine was held to be impure. So was that of the camel, the cony, and the hare; so also the fat of the ox or of sheep or of goat. "Every beast of the wood or the hedge or the burrow, over and above the beasts of the chase and the warren, according to the ancient writers, is to be called 'rascal.'" The hog is likewise placed under ban by the Hindus and strict Buddhists, and is still generally regarded as unclean by the Mohammedans. But the Mohammedans and Hindus have no cuisine worthy of the name, and what were a cuisine without the resources supplied by his inexhaustible larder! The religious tenet of the Israelites by which the swine is proscribed as an article of diet is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. The Chinese have ever been fond of his savoury flesh, and it may be said that with nearly all nations he forms one of the leading staples of consumption. With the onion and that priceless herb parsley, which stimulates appetite, facilitates digestion, and renders nearly all sauces more attractive, he forms one of the most indispensable adjuncts of alimentation. Deprived of his lardship, the onion tribe, and parsley, cookery would soon decline, if indeed the skilled practitioner would not find it well-nigh impossible to exercise his art.
Despite what slanderous tongues of the East may utter to his discredit, therefore, the weight of evidence as to his utility remains overwhelmingly in his favour. We do not necessarily require him in our parlours; his true place is the kitchen and the dining-room. Think how unendurable life would be without him! Of all beasts he is the one whose empire is most universal, and whose worth is least attested. It is true that a eulogistic but now unprocurable work of forty-eight pages was written in Modena in 1761 by D. Giuseppe Ferrari, with the title "Gli Elogi del Porco." A treatise entitled "Dissertation sur le Cochon," by M. Buc'hoz, published in 1789, is also cited. But as this appeared in a series of monographs relating to coffee, cacao, and various fruits, and has been passed by without comment, it probably treats the quadruped merely from a sordid point of view, and possesses no interest unless to the husbandman and stock-raiser.
Few have sung his praises, and, with the exception of Southey's colloquial poem, no genethliac has been addressed to him in English rhyme. Monselet has apostrophised him in a poem wherein he terms him "cher ange," and M. Pouvoisin, in "La Mort du Goret," has tenderly referred to him as "mon frère." His oraison funèbre is worthy of Bossuet:
"Fameux par sa naissance et par son éleveur,
Il est mort, le goret, célèbre à tant de titres:
C'est un deuil, mais un deuil qui n'est pas sans saveur;
Versons des pleurs, amis, surtout versons des litres!
Il était si mignon, si lardé, si soyeux:
Nous l'aimions! Maintenant qu'il a subi la flamme,