PIGS
In Ireland the pig has long been understood to pay the rent. Hence, no
doubt, it comes to pass that Irish rents are not always paid up. That an
animal such as the pig, a grunting, groveling wallower in sloughs, should
be so popular a favorite among the Irish does not speak too well for
them. In England the favorite and most bepraised domestic beast is the
dog. The keeping of a pup of some sort is a mark of true English blood.
Dogs in Ireland do not appear to be so popular. The fact is, of course,
that the pig has been thrust down the Irish throat by greedy, grasping
landlordism. Their worships, the factors and agents, perceiving that
good man Patrick was hard put to it for the means of subsistence when he
had satisfied their rapacious demands, informed him blithely that a pig
would make an admirable domestic pet and addendum to the potato-patch,
and, unlike a common dog, could, when you have petted him to a certain
sleekness, be killed and eaten, or salted and sold. So that the wild
Irishman has taken to pig-keeping with a zest which is without parallel
among other races; whereas for dogs he has little or no room. The English
collier, who on being met in a lane with a couple of fine terriers, was
asked by a thrifty land-holder if he, the collier, might not have shown
greater wisdom had he spent his money on pigs rather than on terriers,
replied: “Perhaps so, but a man would look a damned fool going ratting
wi’ two pigs.” One supposes that in Ireland if the people ever do go
ratting, they do it with these same porkers.
Quite apart from questions of sport, however, the pig is certainly not
the sweetest of quadrupeds, and to have him with you continually in the
house, like William had Dora, must be something of a trial, rent or no
rent. It is notable, as indicating the difference between the treatment
meted out to the English and to the Irish, that when a certain woman of
Epping, or some such neighborhood, took to the keeping of pigs on the
Irish principle, she was swooped down upon by the authorities who have
charge of the public sanitation, and compelled to part with her pet.
In Ireland you can maintain familiarly in your kitchen as many pigs as
you like, and nobody will interfere with you. Possibly the relationship
between the Irishman and his pig might be considered reasonable if one
were by any means certain that when the pig has discharged his duties
as a household pet and come squalling to the knife, he were really meat
for the Irishman and his family. I am afraid, however, that in too
many instances the people are so frightfully poor that the bulk and
best parts of the family pig’s carcass pass out of Ireland on to the
breakfast tables of the bloated English, under the name and guise of
Irish provisions. On the whole, one inclines to the view that even as, in
the long run, the Irish would be the happier and the better fed without
the potato, they might with advantage dispense also with the pig. It
sounds like rank heresy, but I commend this suggestion to all thoughtful
legislators. The pig requires neither care nor attention in the matter
of his bringing up; he is a feeder on refuse and garbage; he would just
as soon sleep on your domestic hearth as in the snuggest sty that was
ever built, and, generally speaking, he may be considered a very proper
beast for association with an indolent man. With the potatoes shooting
up merrily forninst your cabin door, and the pig fattening himself
gruntingly and without assistance from yourself, you may well recline in
honeyed ease and never really trouble to do a day’s work. And it follows
that in the course of time you fall irrevocably into the potato-and-pig
habit, and acquiesce in the potato-and-pig standard of living, comfort,
and culture. You vegetate like the tuber, and you grunt and snore and
thrive on nothing, like the porker. It suits the landlords and the
legislators and the philosophers, and it fits in entirely with that taint
of indolence which always lurks in the Irish blood. The farming of one
pig, not to mention the keeping of pigs in cabins, should be prohibited
by Act of Parliament. There would naturally be great howls from the
Irish people, for nobody is loved with a greater love, or treated with
a greater amount of respect in Ireland, than the single pig. But he is
a blight and a mistake, and a failure both economically and socially.
The Irish of America, it is true, have made large fortunes out of him.
There are cities in America that have been built entirely on pig, and the
American pork-packing interest appears to keep quite half the country
going. But how have these things been accomplished? Certainly not by
the breeding and rearing of single pigs in people’s houses. No, the
American Irish have gone in for pig-keeping on wholesale and colossal
lines. They have turned the gentleman that pays the rent out of the
house into fields and pens, they have made a business of the feeding and
fattening of him, and they have erected mammoth factories wherein he
may be slaughtered and salted down by the thousand. Ireland might with
indisputable advantage take a leaf out of the bulky lard-stained book
of Chicago. Irish bacon will always command quite as good a price as
the best American that was ever exported. The English market for it is
practically inexhaustible, but apparently nobody but the Americans has
enterprise or courage enough to exploit that market. In America the pigs
for the packing trade are understood to be fed on apples and pea-flour,
and I have seen it suggested that because they are amply supplied with
these staples, the American pig-feeders will always have the advantage
of possible competitors. There are neither apples nor pea-flour in
Ireland; but there is the potato, and if ever an article of food was
designed for a special sort of beast, the potato was designed for the
pig. The Irish should endeavor to remember that if the potato have any
virtue at all, it was intended for the feeding of pigs, and not of human
beings. The English farmer does not, when the dinner hour draws nigh,
lead forth his wife and children to his hay-chamber for nutriment, and
the Irishman should have just as small a gustatory regard for his store
of potatoes. It is pig-feed, my dear Patrick, pig-feed, and not victuals
at all. If the English peasantry were to take to a diet of chopped hay
and husks to-morrow, the English landlords would not lift a little finger
to prevent them, and within a twelvemonth they would adjust matters by
putting up rents all round. So long as you, the low wild Irish, choose
to be content with the same diet as your household pet, so long may you
remain content, and so long will the landlords look to it that you get
no other food. I do not believe for a moment that Ireland is going to
be regenerated on political, measure-making Parliamentary lines. Her
regeneration will have to come out of herself. So much of it as has
already been accomplished has come wholly out of herself, and not out
of legislation at all. The rest will follow if the Irish people have a
mind to deal as straightly with themselves in the future as they have
dealt with themselves in the past. And I should say that at all costs the
potato-and-pig habit, as it now exists in Ireland, should be broken, and
got rid of, and utterly wiped out.