“The Sucking Pig”
Description
Of a giant pig, which takes 7000 men to butcher, and seven years to remove a trotter; its bones yield 7000 bags of flour. Cho: "O, perhaps you may think that/O, it's not all true/But I don't care a fig/What I say, I know it's true/About this suckling pig"
Notes
The collectors, MacColl & Seeger, considered this song a barrack-room rewrite of "The Derby Ram," and obviously the parallels are very strong. But as the actual words, except for the chorus, seem to be somewhat independent, I split them. Still, cognate stories of big animals that are hard to kill and cook are common, so do look at the cross-references. - PJS
Cross references
- cf. "The Derby Ram" (subject, plot)
- cf. "The Grey Goose" (subject, plot)
- cf. "The Killing of the Big Pig (Iso Sika)" (subject, plot)
Recordings
- Jack Elliott, "The Sucking Pig" (on Elliotts01)
References
- Roud #8083
- BI, RcTSuPig