Good-Bye, Pork !

Tahiti Bewails the Passing of the Common Village Pig

THE fortunes of war, which have sub verted the whole structure of human society, have exalted the South Sea Islands pig to the highest degree in the aristocracy of the animal world.

No longer is he a mere appendage of the farmyard, to be turned loose at night to forage for himself in neighbours’ gar dens. He is carefully cherished and pampered, housed or tethered; for he represents real golden coin of the realm, as though he had been touched by the hand of Midas himself.

He does not bear the guinea stamp nor the serial numbers of official currency.

For this reason, he has become the Company of Thieves—especially in the night-watches preceding the festivals of Noel and New Year. In the noise of revelry issuing from motor cars, passing in the night, we can often detect the despairing cries of our ravished pigs, vicariously bewailing their untimely end.

Gone are the days of gargantuan feasts, when hecatombs of pigs were offered up to invincible trenchermen, who fell on the field, only to rise again day after day, until the last joint of pork was vanquished. Nowadays, ribs and rashers are sparingly meted out —in ex change for prodigious sums of money, amid much clamour, at the morning market, by wary-eyed Chinese butchers.

In the happy old days—when life was simple and rum had not yet become the chief comestible of a wedding feast —the young couple almost disappeared in an inundation of pigs. Everyone was ex pected to stay until the last pig had been consumed.

Dogs from near and far, summoned by the relay signal system common to dog dom, carried to the most remote dis tricts souvenirs in the form of thigh bones, so that the whole island became filled with osseous memorials of the auspicious occasion.

Those spacious days have passed for ever. Now, a meagre pork-chop is an expensive and rare luxury!