lOO The Poets Beasts. 



it not under the very special protection of St. Anthony,^ 

 the friend of all animals and protector of weddings ? Did 

 they never hear that pork gives the eater acuteness of ear 

 and intelligence ? That a pig's bristles have strange occult 

 influences when the proper arrangements are made for 

 working a charm ? That Rome, " the nameless city," once 

 had the hog, " the nameless beast," for its badge and cog- 

 nisance ? That " please the pigs," now a contemptuous 

 phrase, really means " please the Holy Virgin," or may 

 mean " please the girls " ? ^ To laugh at " a hog in 

 armour " is a poor jest enough even for those who think 

 " hog " means a pig, and wherein lay the joke of a China- 

 man's queue — a lank dependent plait of hair four feet in 

 length — being called a " pig-tail " I never could understand. 

 The pig's tail, by the way, provides the poets with as much fun 

 as it does, when soaped, the clowns who try to catch hold of 

 it, and there is a proverb to the effect that it is beyond the 

 capacity of human ingenuity to convert the caudal appen- 

 dage of a swine into an instrument of sibilation. But this 

 is not the case, as in the city of Chicago I myself saw a 

 whistle made out of a pig's tail, and an excellent one, not 

 one that would merely on occasion emit an exiguous squeak, 

 but a rousing whistle that would fetch every hansom, within 

 a radius of half a mile, to your door. 



That the tail should curl amuses the poets ; but I am 

 not sure that such flippancy is not blameworthy. They do 

 not even care whether it curls to the right or the left. Yet 

 it depended once upon the direction of the twist whether 

 the hog was acceptable in sacrifice or not. AH deities of 

 taste abhorred the twist-sinister. 



In short, I cannot help thinking that there has been 



* " St, Anthony is universally known for the patron of hogs, having 

 a pig for his page in all pictures." — Fuller's Worthies. 



"^ Pigeon maiden (Danish), hog youth of both sexes (Gaelic). Sic aiunt 

 cognoscente's. 



