Sucking Pig (I), The

DESCRIPTION: "You all have heard of the Christmas Goose and the wallowing Great Pie"; now the singer will tell you of the Wonderful Pig, which on the day it was born ate "a field of turnip tops and forty tons of taters." Almost impossible to cook, it feeds many
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1900 (Bodleian broadside Harding B 11(4299))
KEYWORDS: lie corpse death work food talltale animal worker food humorous | pig
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North,South))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Purslow-MarrowBones, p. 100, "The Wonderful Sucking Pig" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1615 and 8083
RECORDINGS:
Jack Elliott, "The Sucking Pig" (on Elliotts01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(4299), "The Wonderful Sucking Pig," T. Taylor (London), 1859-1899
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)
NOTES [151 words]: The collectors [of the Jack Elliot version], 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
I too suspect this to be inspired by (if not a rewrite of) "The Derby Ram," but it's clearly an independent song. What I don't really understand is why Steve Roud splits the Elliot version song (#8083) from "The Wonderful Sucking Pig" (#1615), which has many versions. The only difference I can see is that the Elliot begins with the line "O it's nose was as long as Temple Bar," which does not occur in "The Wonderful Sucking Pig," but the Taylor broadside mentions the Temple bar, although in a different way. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: RcTSuPig

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