“Why, they do say, Captain,” was her doleful response, “that all the pegs up-town have a-rebelled, and they’ve a-be, and let one the wother out, and they be all a-gwain to sea huz-a-muz, bang!”
Although this statement was somewhat obscure in its phraseology, and the Keltic byword at the close, wherein the “sense is kindred to the sound,” yet we understood too well that the main facts of the history were as true as if Macaulay had recorded them; so we pretended to dress in great haste, and hurried down to see the war. It was indeed an original scene;
“For chief intent on deeds of strife,
Or bard of martial lay,
’Twere worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array!”
Here a decently dressed woman made many fruitless endeavours to coax out of the brawl five or six squealing farrows, the offspring of a gaunt old dam that, like the felon sow of Rokeby,[134] was “so distraught with noise” that “her own children she mought clean devour.” There a stalwart quarryman, finding all other efforts fruitless, had seized his full-grown porker by the legs and hoisted him on his shoulders to ride home pickaback uttering all the while yells of fierce expostulation and defiance. One hot little man, with a red face and gesticulating hands, had grasped a long pole, and laid about him in mad fury, promiscuously, until a tall and bristly hog rushed at him from behind, and carried him off down the hill seated at full charge like a knight of King Arthur’s Court, with “semblance of a spear,” and tilted him at last head over heels in the bed of the stream. But some way up the hill we came suddenly upon a scene which demanded all our sympathy; help there was none. A panting old woman had singled out her hog and separated him from the crowd; and a fine fat animal he was—four hundred-weight at least—and so unfitted for the slightest exertion, that unless he had resorted to sliding and rolling, it was difficult to conceive how he had accomplished even his downhill journey from the sty. But up hill—as his obdurate mistress appeared to propose,—no, no. There was a look in his eye, as he glanced back at his despairing owner, that seemed to suggest a grunt in strong German emphasis, das geht nicht. He had thrust his snout and half his nose through the bars of a gate; and there he stuck, and manifestly meant to stick fast, while she belaboured him with strokes like a flail. She paused as we approached the spot, and with an appealing look for our assent, she piteously exclaimed, “My peg’s surely mazed, maister, or he’s ill-wished; some ennemie hath a-dond it!” My thought responded to her charge; it was certainly no enemy of the pig that “dond it,” whatsoever he might be to his owner.
We left “her alone in her glory,” and returned to the inn, communing as we went on the store of legend, tale, and history we had laid up for future generations in thus opening a field of achievement for the Boscastle swine. What themes of marvel would travel down by the cottage hearth, there to be rehearsed by wrinkled eld!—the wondrous things always the more believed as they became more incredible. Doubtless the local event would very soon be resolved into demoniac agency, because, ever since the miracle of Gadara, the people have always linked the association of demons and swine; and they refer to the five small dark punctures always visible on the hoof of the hog as the points of entrance and departure for the fiend.[135]
Once in after-life did this fitful freak[136] recur to our minds. We separated, my companion of this ride and myself—I to a country cure, and my friend back to Oxford, “to climb the steep where fame’s proud temple shines afar.” He ascended step by step until he became Dean of the College[137] to which we both belonged. In course of time, after the usual interval, I went up to take my M.A. degree. Now the custom was, and is, that the Dean takes the candidate by the hand, leads him up to the chair of the Vice-Chancellor, and presents him for his degree in a Latin speech. We were all assembled in the appointed place, the Dean, my friend, taking us up in turn one by one. Among the group was a stout burly man, a gentleman commoner, sleek and fat, and manifestly well-to-do in life. With him the Dean had trouble; unwieldy and confused and slow, it was difficult to get him through the crowd and up to his place in time. They passed me in a kind of struggle,—the Dean leading and endeavouring to guide, the candidate hanging back and getting pitched in the throng. Just then I managed to whisper—
“Why, your peg’s surely mazed, maister!”
I was hardly prepared for the result when I “struck the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.” The association came back; the words called up the scene among the swine; and when the crowd gave way, there stood the Dean before the Vice-Chancellor’s chair, greeting him, not with a Latin form, but in spasms of uncontrollable laughter!
To return to the original scene. We ordered Caliban with our ponies to be ready at the door, and we in the meanwhile called on our hostess to produce her bill. She hum’d and ha’d and hesitated, and seemed at a loss to produce the “little dockyment,” which is usually supposed to be a matter of very fluent composition at an inn. It was not until we had again and again explained that we desired her to state in writing what we had to pay, that she seemed at last to comprehend. A deal of scuffling about the kitchen ensued. There was a quick passing to and fro, in and out; there were several muttered discussions of the lower house; a neighbour, who appeared to be a glazier, was sent for; and at last the door opened, and our red pursy little hostess bustled in, bobbed a curtsey, and presented for our perusal her small account, chalked upon the upper lid of the kitchen bellows, which she gracefully held towards us by the snout. Poor old Joan Treworgy! how utterly did thy rough simplicity put to shame the vaunting tariff and the “establishment charges” of this nineteenth century of Messrs. Brag and Sham! The bill, which we duly transcribed, and which was then paid and rubbed out, thus ran:—