Queries.
"HOGS NORTON, WHERE PIGS PLAY UPON THE ORGANS."
I should be much obliged by any of your correspondents favouring me with their opinions as to the origin of the above saying. Evans, in his Leicestershire Words, says:
"The true name of the town, according to Peck, is Hocks Norton, but vulgarly pronounced Hogs Norton. The organist to this parish church was named Piggs."
But in Witt's Recreations, of which I have a copy of 1640, the eighty-third epigram is "upon pigs devouring a bed of penny-royal, commonly called organs:"
"A good wife once, a bed of organs set,
The pigs came in, and eat up every whit;
The goodman said, Wife, you your garden may
Hogs Norton call, here pigs on organs play."
Organs from "organy;" French, origan; Latin, origanum.