Pig Got Up and Slowly Walked Away, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer, drunk, walks down the street "in tipsy pride" and falls down in the gutter. A pig lies down beside him. A high-toned lady remarks that "you can tell a man who boozes By the company he chooses," and "the pig got up and slowly walked away"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1933 (copyrighted by Benjamin Hapgood Burt)
KEYWORDS: drink humorous animal
FOUND IN: US(MW,Ro,SE) Britain(England) Australia
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Shellans-FolkSongsOfTheBlueRidgeMountains, pp. 58-59, "Friendship with a Hog" (1 text, 1 tune; the first two verses from this song but the last three might be informant John Daniel Vass's expansions of the piece)
Fife/Fife-SaintsOfSageAndSaddle, p. 324, "The Boozer" (1 short text, 1 tune)
DT, PIGINEBR PIGINEB2 PIGENEB3
Roud #7322
RECORDINGS:
Dale Borusky, "Judged by the Company One Keeps" (Recitation: Piotr-Archive #564, recorded 04/19/2023)
Frank Crumit, "The Pig Got Up and Slowly Walked Away" (Decca 313, 1934)
Rudy Vallee, "The Pig Got Up and Slowly Walked Away" (Victor 25092, 1935)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Judged by the Company One Keeps
The Company One Keeps
Pig and the Inebriate
Pig Got Up and Walked Away
Friendship with a Hog
NOTES [121 words]: Judging by the results of a cursory Google study, this bit is passing into oral tradition fairly quickly. - PJS
There are quite a few questions about it. Paul credited it to Benjamin Hapgood Burt, with a 1933 copyright -- yet Hazel Felleman's Best Loved Poems of the American People, published 1936, lists no author. There are four citations, including Felleman's, in Granger's Index to Poetry (where it is titled "Judged by the Company One Keeps"), none of which mentions Burt; one attributes it to Aimor R. Dickson. My guess is that Burt rewrote an older piece, perhaps because Prohibition was ending in 1933.. But it certainly seems to be traditional.
I'd guess it's originally an unusually creative temperance piece.- RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: RcPGUSWA

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