Why mythological pigs matter
A review of PIG by Brett Mizelle (Reaktion series)
The Reaktion series of books about animals and our world is just great. You get the whole animal – as a creature, in world mythology, art and, in the case of the pig, on our plates. It is the mythological pig that interests me most, of course.
Brett Mizelle is fascinated by how we and pigs have interacted in history. Indeed, he thinks that we, pigs and dogs all evolved into the species we now are, together. Once our ancestors settled in particular places each community would have had a midden. This rubbish-tip was a magnet for wild boar who helped themselves to the rich pickings. Before long, they made these places their homes as well. Soon our ancestors included them in the stories they told and the mythological pig was born.
There is a treasure trove of pig information in this book. Aristotle thought that pigs were the animals closest to humans. Pigs were sacred to Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture. Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome, knew he had arrived at the right spot when he saw a sow rootling at the base of an oak tree. It seems that pigs and mythology have always gone together.
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Pigs and Mythology
The image of a sow at the foot of an oak tree is also in the Welsh epic cycle, the Mabinogi. The wizard Gwydion follows a huge sow into an oak woodland and finds her eating rotten flesh at the base of a tree.
Then, he looks up and sees a wounded eagle, whose putrid flesh the pig is eating. It is Lleu (a kind of sun god). Gwydion had been looking for him for a whole year. He gives the eagle strength by singing to him and the tree. Very slowly, the eagle comes down and is transformed back into his human form. It was a mythological pig that led him to where he needed to be.
We are what we eat
Pigs were the first creatures to be industrially slaughtered and packaged. In the early twentieth century the burgeoning population in the US got their meat from CAFOS – Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Or ‘disassembly lines’ as they were also known. The food writer Michael Pollan is quoted as saying that contemporary pig production and slaughter ‘offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism can look like in the absence of moral or regulatory constraint’.
This little piggy .. a sculpted pig of plenty outside Newport market by Sebastien Boyesen
Pigs and Nursery Rhymes
The photo above was taken on a wet weekday in Newport, South Wales. I found this beauty while wandering past the covered market and she is inspired by all the piggy nursery rhymes that you heard as a kid. And there are many – ‘This little piggy went to market…’, ‘To market, to market to catch a fat pig…’ and so on. I was actually looking for another statue. You can read about that adventure here.
Pigs and Storytelling
Here are some of the ways that pigs are like us. They have an episodic memory. Not just remembering what happened but in what order. In other words, the storyline of events. Contact with and attention from other animals (including us) has a de-stressing effect on pigs. Their incarceration and selective breeding for rapid weight gain makes them liable to panic.
There are lots of pigs in Pig Boy, as you would expect. He starts off feeding them and ends up slaughtering one. He is told the story of Henwen, the sow of plenty, by one of his mentors. And then, of course, there is the story of how pigs were present at his birth.
Interested in the wild world of animals and mythology? Click here to find out more.
The Arrival of the Mythological Pig in Wales
The statue of the sow in Newport refers directly to old nursery rhymes. But there is another story of a sow that arrived near Newport from across the sea that is much older. This is the story of Henwen the sow, who arrived after swimming over the Severn Estuary from Gwlad yr Haf (Somerset, in English).
The mythological pig, Henwen, came to our shores and gave birth to all sorts of good things as she ran along our valleys. She brought wheat, apples and bees. Then, to balance out the plenty, she also brought us the monster, Cath Palug, who lives in North Wales.
Pigs Are Rewilding Themselves Somewhere Near You
Some pigs have made a break for freedom, however. There are an estimated 1.5 million wild hogs in Texas alone and escaped wildboar/pig cross animals are making themselves at home in the Forest of Dean in the west of England. Interestingly, in a just a few generations, the escaped domestic pigs revert to wildness. They get faster, hairier and their tusks are bigger.
A couple of porkers I saw at the Cape Clear Storytelling festival in Ireland a couple of years ago.
The author (quoting Claude Levi-Strauss) says that pigs are ‘good to think with’. He sees the vilification of the pig as a guilt reaction on the part of humans who have treated pigs so badly over the millennia. Not all humans, though. On the Pacific island republic of Vanatu, they eat pigs but also revere them as sacred beings. According to Brett Mizzele’s research These islanders are among the happiest communities on the planet!