We often walk from Rickmansworth across Moor Park to Pinner. On getting
out of Moor Park there is a public-house just to the left where we
generally have some shandy-gaff and buy some eggs. The landlord had a
noble sow which I photographed for him; some months afterwards I asked
how the sow was. She had been sold. The landlord knew she ought to be
killed and made into bacon, but he had been intimate with her for three
years and some one else must eat her, not he.
“And what,” said I, “became of her daughter?”
“Oh, we killed her and ate her. You see we had only known her eighteen
months.”
I wonder how he settled the exact line beyond which intimacy with a pig
must not go if the pig is to be eaten.