The Mule is not without its legend. One of the oddest of these accounts for its obstinacy and its incapacity for breeding.
When the Holy Family was about to travel into Egypt, St. Joseph chose a Mule to carry them. He was in the act of saddling the animal, when it kicked him after the fashion of Mules. Angry with it for such misconduct, St. Joseph substituted an ass for the Mule, thus giving the former the honour of conveying the family into Egypt, and laid a curse upon it that it should never have parents nor descendants of its own kind, and that it should be so disliked as never to be admitted into its master's house, as is the case with the horse and other domesticated animals. This is one of the multitudinous legends which are told to the crowds of pilgrims who come annually to see the miraculous kindling of the holy fire, and to visit the tree on which Judas hanged himself.
SWINE.
The Mosaic prohibition of the pig—Hatred of Swine by Jews and Mahometans—A strange use of bacon—The prodigal son—Resistance to the persecution of Antiochus—Swine hated by the early Egyptians—Supposed connexion between Swine and diseases of the skin—Destruction of the herd of Swine—The locality of the event discovered—Pigs bred for the monasteries—The jewel of gold in a Swine's snout—The wild boar of the woods, and the beast of the reeds—The damage which it does to the vines—General account of the wild boar of Palestine—Excellence of its flesh.
Many are the animals which are specially mentioned in the Mosaic law as unfit for food, beside those that come under the general head of being unclean because they do not divide the hoof and chew the cud. There is none, however, that excited such abhorrence as the hog, or that was more utterly detested.
It is utterly impossible for a European, especially one of the present day, to form even an idea of the utter horror and loathing with which the hog was regarded by the ancient Jews. Even at the present day, a zealous Jew or Mahometan looks upon the hog, or anything that belongs to the hog, with an abhorrence too deep for words. The older and stricter Jews felt so deeply on this subject, that they would never even mention the name of the hog, but always substituted for the objectionable word the term "the abomination."
Several references are made in the Scriptures to the exceeding disgust felt by the Jews towards the Swine. The portion of the Mosaic law on which a Jew would ground his antipathy to the flesh of Swine is that passage which occurs in Lev. xi. 7: "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you." But the very same paragraph, of which this passage forms the termination, treats of other unclean beasts, such as the coney (or hyrax) and the hare, neither of which animals are held in such abhorrence as the Swine.
This enactment could not therefore have produced the singular feeling with which the Swine were regarded by the Jews, and in all probability the antipathy was of far greater antiquity than the time of Moses.
How hateful to the Jewish mind was the hog we may infer from many passages, several of which occur in the Book of Isaiah. See, for example, lxv. 3, 4: "A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick;