Tales of Three Pigs

Few animals have been more important to the subsistence of the early settlers than the pig. Easy to keep, they could thrive on almost any diet from grass and roots to fruits, vegetables, grain, milk and food waste or as the American settlers referred to it, slops. Pigs were carried aboard ships to supplement the crew’s diet. They were put on deserted islands as food for shipwrecked sailors or to be used by passing ships that were low on supplies. Many town and even city dwellers kept a pig. They were quiet, clean and took up little room. They could even be made into house pets until they became too large and had to be converted into such necessities as bacon, ham, roasts, sausages and lard. Even the hair was utilized for brushes and as a binding agent in plaster, his skin made fine leather, his head made cheese and his feet, jelly. And his tail was roasted and eaten. In fact the only part that could not be used was his squeal!

About a hundred and fifty years ago a family by the name of Brown lived on an isolated homestead above the community of Lakelands and like most settlers they had a pig which resided in a pen a hundred feet or so from their cabin. One summer day when the pig had reached the weight of about fifty or sixty pounds, Mr and Mrs Brown journeyed to Parrsboro for supplies. This was an all day trip and they left the children at home.

Two of the older boys took this opportunity to experiment with the family gun. They loaded it with a charge of powder and a musket ball but then remembering that it was said to have a severe recoil, were afraid to fire it.

They knew that being a muzzle loader it had to be fired to unload it, so they looked for something to tie it to. They settled on the saw horse, a device used to hold long wood while it was being sawn into stovewood. Lashing the gun to it, they tied a string to the trigger and fired the gun. It was not until sometime later that they discovered that they had inadvertently shot the pig. Now what could they do?

They decided to tell their father that something, a bear maybe, had taken the pig and they carried it into the nearby woods and hid it. A week or so later the smell of the rotting pig led the father to its corpse and the still visible bullet wound told the story of it’s demise. What is not told however is the fate of the guilty parties.

Many years ago this writer found the following yarn in an old magazine. Apparently an old farmer in or near Lornedale, Nova Scotia, was driving home with his horse and cart one evening when a little girl of about eleven or twelve years appeared on the side of the road. She was barefoot and dressed in a simple cotton dress which was soaked in blood from a large wound on her neck and shoulder. She stretched her arms appealingly toward him as if to ask for help but the timid settler whipped up his horse and drove off as fast as he could. Sometime later another settler was driving along the same road and also happened upon the little girl. He stopped his horse and climbed down from his cart to help her but she had disappeared.

No blood or even tracks showed on the dusty road. The settler was mystified and finally concluded that he must have been dreaming. When he mentioned his experience to the timid neighbor, the latter rather shamefacedly, told him of his own experience. It turned out that they were not the only ones, this had happened to many other travelers as well and the girl always disappeared as soon as they stopped.

The article went on to describe how in the early nineteen-thirties, an old farm hand had died in the Canadian West and while on his deathbed he told this story.

When he was thirteen or fourteen his family had a homestead near Lornedale. NS. His parents had gone to the settlement and left him and his eleven year old sister on the homestead. He had neglected to feed the pig and the animal had gotten out of its pen and now he had to try get it back in.

He took the axe and knocked some poles off the pen and enlisting his sister’s aid, tried to drive the pig back inside. When the pig rushed by his sister and into the woods he became so enraged that he stuck the unfortunate girl with the axe and killed her.

Then to hide his crime he related how he had buried her in the bed of a nearby brook and told his parents that a bear had carried her off. Bears were the settler’s arch enemies, so he was believed and his crime was never discovered, however his conscience bothered him so that he did not want to die without confessing his guilt.

An elderly neighbor told me about an old lady, a widow or a spinster, who lived near the Springhill Coal Company rail line. This old lady had a pig which was about ready to be butchered when it got out of its pen and was killed by the coal train.

Apparently the old lady wanted the Railroad Company to pay her for the pig but they refused. Her house was near a siding where the train usually stopped and between the two was a slight upgrade. He related how the old lady had rendered the pig’s carcass down to obtain the fat and every night she would grease the tracks so that the locomotive could get no traction and the rails had to be sanded. After a few nights my neighbor told me they finally paid her, a matter of about two dollars. Little enough money for the company but likely a good deal for the old lady.

From Ed Gilbert’s collection