November, 1850.
"_Please the Pigs_" is a phrase too vulgarly common not to be well known to
your readers. But whence has it arisen? Either in "NOTES AND QUERIES," or
elsewhere, it has been explained as a corruption of "Please the _pix_."
Will you allow another suggestion? I think it possible that the pigs of the
Gergesenes (Matthew viii. 28. _et seq._) may be those appealed to, and that
the invocation may be of somewhat impious meaning. John Bradford, the
martyr of 1555, has within a few consecutive pages of his writings the
following expressions:
"And so by this means, as they save their pigs, which they would not
lose, (I mean their worldly pelf), so they would please the
Protestants, and be counted with them for gospellers, yea, marry, would
they."--_Writings of Bradford_, Parker Society ed., p.390.
Again:
"Now are they willing to drink of God's cup of afflictions, which He
offereth common with His son Christ our Lord, lest they should love
their pigs with the Gergenites." p. 409.
Again:
"This is a hard sermon: 'Who is able to abide it?' Therefore, Christ
must be prayed to depart, lest all their pigs be drowned. The devil
shall have his dwelling again in themselves, rather than in their
pigs." p. 409.
These, and similar expressions in the same writer, without reference to any
text upon the subject, seem to show, that men loving their pigs more than
God, was a theological phrase of the day, descriptive of their too great
worldliness. Hence, just as St. Paul said, "if the Lord will," or as we
say, "please God," or, as it is sometimes written, "D.V.," worldly men
would exclaim, "please the pigs," and thereby mean that, provided it suited
their present interest, they would do this or that thing.