Some Beasts of Rept'oach. \o% 



suspicion that these same strict Jews, who would not for the 

 world think of mentioning the name of the pig, used, as a 

 matter of fact, to have it served surreptitiously. Or how is 

 it that we find pigs so numerous in the Judaea of Holy 

 Writ ? Were they all Gentiles' pigs ? 



Not that my suspicion is altogether pure assumption. For 

 — apart from the fact that we never find preachers denounc- 

 ing practices that do not exist — history tells us that the 

 Egyptians tried very hard indeed to keep from pork, but 

 could not do it. They formally anathematised it as " im- 

 pure ; " but formally also they ate it, affecting, by the vast 

 ceremony with which they consumed their bacon, that they 

 were performing a religious rite. They were never tired of 

 saying that it was abominable and vowing it to Tycho, the 

 spirit of evil, but with all this fuss of terrible abnegation, 

 they solemnly gave themselves up twice a year with a pro- 

 fusion of ceremonial and dumb-crambo to eating pigs. And 

 mark the sagacity of the ancient Eg)-ptians, those "serpents 

 of old Nile." On the two authorised pork-days they "sacri- 

 ficed " (so they pleasantly termed it) immense numbers of 

 hogs to their equivalent for Bacchus. But did they destroy 

 them by fire before his shrine ? waste the precious carcase 

 by useless incineration ? Not a bit of it. They gave the 

 bodies to the swineherds. And why ? Why ? To be made 

 into bacon, of course. 



The swineherds lived on the preserved flesh of their 

 charges, and understood these little matters of smoking and 

 curing. Nor is it without significance that the Egyptians 

 were very careful as to the age and condition of the pigs 

 they thus " sacrificed," and that they killed their pigs just 

 as farmers do nowadays, twice in the year. If any one, 

 therefore, would try to convince me that the jolly old 

 Egyptians did not have bacon and ham, brawn, tripe and 

 sausages, chine and pettitoes all the year round, I should be 

 as deaf as a wilderness of adders. Nor do I believe that 



