“Bartholomew Faire,” a rare quarto tract printed in 1641, under that title states, that “Bartholomew Faire begins on the twenty-fourth day of August, and is then of so vast an extent, that it is contained in no lesse than four several parishes, namely, Christ Church, Great and Little St. Bartholomewes, and St. Sepulchres. Hither resort people of all sorts and conditions. Christ Church cloisters are now hung full of pictures. It is remarkable and worth your observation to beholde and heare the strange sights and confused noise in the Faire. Here, a knave in a foole’s coate, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drumme beating, invites you to see his puppets: there, a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antick shape like an Incubus, desires your company to view his motion: on the other side, Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape, or ribbin, in’s hand, shewing his art of legerdemaine, to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cockoloaches. Amongst these, you shall see a gray Goose-cap, (as wise as the rest,) with a what do ye lacke in his mouth, stand in his boothe, shaking a rattle, or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken, that they presentlie cry out for these fopperies: and all these together make such a distracted noise, that you would thinck Babell were not comparable to it. Here there are also your gamesters in action: some turning of a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three halfepeny saucer. Long-lane at this time looks very faire, and puts out her best cloaths, with the wrong side outward, so turn’d for their better turning off: and Cloth Faire is now in great request: well fare the ale-houses therein, yet better may a man fare, (but at a dearer rate,) in the pig-market, alias Pasty-Nooke, or Pye-Corner, where pigges are al houres of the day on the stalls piping hot, and would cry, (if they could speak,) ‘come eate me.’”
Pye Corner.
This is the place wherein Ben Jonson’s Littlewit, the proctor, willed that his wife Win-the-fight should not eat Bartholomew pig:—“Long to eat of a pig, sweet Win, i’ the Fair; do you see? i’ the heart o’ the Fair; not at, Pye-corner.”
“Pye-corner was so called” says Dr. (James) Howel, “of such a sign, sometimes a fair Inne, for receipt of travellers, but now devided into tenements.” It was at Pye-corner as observed before, that the Fire of London ended: the houses that escaped were taken down in October, 1809, and upon their site other dwelling-houses have been erected, together with an engine-house, belonging to the Hope Fire Assurance company,[277] where it stands at present (in 1825). It was estimated in the year 1732, that “the number of sucking pigs then annually consumed in this city, (of London) amounted to fifty-two thousand[278].”
Roast Pig.
“A flower—cropped in its prime.”
Elia, author of the incomparable volume of “Essays,” published “under that name,” by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, indulges in a “Dissertation upon Roast Pig.” He cites a Chinese MS. to establish its origin, when flesh was eaten uncooked, and affirms that “the period is not obscurely hinted at by the great Confucius, in the second chapter of his ‘Mundane Mutations,’ where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the cooks’ holiday.” He premises “broiling to be the elder brother of roasting,” and relates on the authority of the aforesaid MS. that “roast pig” “was accidentally discovered in the manner following”—viz.
“The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the east from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?—not from the burnt cottage—he had smelt that smell before—indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crums of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world’s life indeed, for before him no man had known it), he tasted—crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with a retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue’s shoulders as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig.”
Bo-bo in the afternoon, regardless of his father’s wrath, and with his “scent wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, ‘Eat, eat, eat, the burnt pig, father; only taste—O Lord!’—with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.” The narrative relates, that “Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son’s, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion, (for the manuscript here is a little tedious,) both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the little.