A common representation of the pig musician is a sow who plays to her brood. At Winchester, the feast of the little ones is enlivened by the strains of the double flute. At Durham Castle, in a carving formerly in Aucland Castle Chapel, the sow plays the bagpipes while the young pigs dance. At Ripon, a vigorous carving has the same subject, and another at Beverley, in which a realistic trough forms the foreground.
PIGS AND PIPES, RIPON.
The “Pig and Whistle” forms an old tavern sign. Dr. Brewer explains this as the pot, bowl, or cup (the pig), and the wassail it contained. The earthenware vessel used to warm the feet in bed is in Scotland yet called “the pig,” and to southern strangers the use of the word has caused a temporary embarrassment. If this explanation is not coincident with some other not at present to hand, the carving of the pig and whistle in the sixteenth century carving in Henry VII.’s chapel shows that the corruption of the “pig and wassail” was accepted in ignorance as far back as that period.
PIG AND WHISTLE, WESTMINSTER.
But too much stress is not to be laid upon the pig as a musician, for at Westminster the bear plays the bagpipes, just as at Winchester the ape performs on the harp. In the Beverley Minster choir an ape converts a cat into an almost automatic instrument by biting its tail.
APE AS HARPIST, WESTMINSTER.