Pig tooth amulets

I made a necklace out of my pig Sergei's tusk. This is only perhaps half of his tusk - it broke off at one point.

Wild boar tusks have been worn as hunting trophies since ancient times wherever boars have been hunted. They symbolize power and manliness, since boars with their intelligence, strength and willpower are very difficult and dangerous to hunt (even in the age of rifles). In New Guinea, domestic pig teeth are a symbol of men's wealth - the more you have in your necklace, the more important you are. (See what I've written previously about pigs in New Guinea.)

But boar and pig teeth have also been used as magic charms. Those who have read or seen Howard's End will remember that there is primeval symbolism in the form of a wych elm tree, in which the countryfolk have stuck pig's teeth, so that you can chew on the bark to relieve toothache.

Britain and North America: tusks and toothache

In his 1947 book Ozark Superstitions, Vance Randolph gives a study of superstitions among the in his words most superstitious people in the United States. He met a man in McDonald county, Missouri, who kept the blind tooth (the hindmost upper molar) of a pig that he gave his children to wear around their neck whenever they had a toothache. A boar's tusk was believed by others to have the same effect when worn in your pocket; if the toothache was on the right side, you would wear it in your right pocket, and vice versa if it was on the left side. The boar's tooth supposedly also protects against venereal diseases. (The book also accounts of people during the Civil War who believed that seeing a "monstrous black hog" was a death omen, but that belongs in another post ...)

The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 4, No. 13 (Apr. - Jun., 1891), featured an article on "The Amulet Collection of Professor Belucci". Among the hundreds of items it lists: "36. Aids in dentition of infants, five objects. Pig's tooth, bone."

Straightdope.com ("Fighting Ignorance since 1973") explains how in the origins of the tooth fairy, there are pigs: "If an animal eats a lost baby tooth, the new teeth coming in will supposedly resemble that animal's such as a dog's tooth or pig's tooth. Letting the tooth be eaten by mice or rats will ensure that the child grows strong, sharp teeth (such folk rituals were recorded as late as 1929)."

South and Central Asia: tusks and the evil eye

Charles Godfrey Leland in 1891 popularized "Gypsy lore" in his book on Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling. "The pig, as is well known, is a common amulet, the origin thereof being that it is extremely prolific", he writes. Boar's teeth "are regarded as protective against malocchio--a general term for evil influences--especially for women during pregnancy, and as securing plenty, i.e., prosperity and increase, be it of worldly goods, honour, or prosperity."

The amulet on the left is from Vienna. (An illustration from Leland's book.)

On the website All About Sikhs, you can read about similar superstitions among Punjabi peasants: "Eating pork or wearing the teeth of a pig round the neck protects a person from the evil eye and witchcraft. [...] Some women make their children wear round their neck nazarbattus (protectors from the evil eye), [to protect from the evil eye], or sometimes for the same purpose hang pig's teeth round their neck."

Turkmen people, despite being Muslims, raise pigs. (V.G. Moshkova in her study The Tribal Gol in Turkmen Carpets, mentions a specific pattern called dunguz burun, 'pig's snout'.)
In Turkmen wedding traditions, "to escape alien eyes the bride wore a cape covering her head along with amulets and charms which were believed to possess guarding forces. All kinds of wedding clothes had a thread from a camel's wool, a pig's tooth, silver plates, beads with "eyes" fastened to them; the cape was furnished with a sawn-on triangular pouch with coal and salt inside (some nations believe that salt has guarding properties)."

These are only two kinds of boar and pig tooth related superstitions, and I'm sure there are more in other cultures of the world. (Voodoo, perhaps?)

Pigs in the Pergamon Museum

Today I visited the Pergamon Museum here in Berlin. Of course, I scanned all the exhibits searching for pig motifs, and I indeed found a few.

I apologise for the bad quality of some (most) of the photos. Bad lighting conditions, no flash, handheld camera, crappy white balance, and all that.



Above: Double vessel in the form of two little pigs, Assyria, 8th/7th century BCE. They are likely to be domestic pigs, which makes them quite interesting - pigs didn't seem to be all that common in Assyrian arts and crafts. And is there some particular meaning behind the double shape?



Above and below: Boar's head, Babylon, 1st century BCE/year 12 of Nebukadnezar II. It's hard to tell what exact meaning the boar might have in this case.



Below: This piece was described only collectively as one of a number of "riders and animal figures", but it can hardly be anything but a boar. 2nd-1st century BCE, Babylon. The hairiness of the pig suggests that it's likely to be a wild boar.





Below: An object from Luristan, a province in western Iran inhabited by nomadic tribes. These objects are usually offerings from graves. Somewhere between 8th/7th - mid-3rd century BCE. I'm not sure about its function. The similar piece with a deer above it and the nomadic culture of its makers suggest a hunting theme.



Below: A wall relief plate with a jumping boar, Iraq (Ktesiphon area), 7th-6th century. From the intrados of a house in Umm az-Za'âtir. I'm guessing this piece is related to hunting, as well.



Below: Hunting bowl with a Sassanid great king attacked by a boar, Iran, 7th century. Silver, partly gilded. The wild boar as a dangerous adversary. Of course, the king will be victorious in the end ...



Below: A seal stone (to the left) with a wild boar and Pahlavi inscription, Iran, 5th-6th century. To the right is an enlarged image of its impression. I wish I knew what the incription says.

Spider Pig!

After watching The Simpsons Movie, I was at first disappointed that we didn't get to know what happened to Homer's new friend Spider Pig, or Harry Plopper. I assumed he had perished, like a sinful seducer who finds redemption in the last minute and can die and go to heaven, after all ... But then I read that he will make an appearance in the first episode of the new Simpsons season, which changed the symbolism of his role a bit.

Alice and the baby pig

In a slightly less known passage of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice notices that the baby she is carrying around has turned into a pig!

'The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had a very turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose: also its eyes were getting extremely small for I a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. “But perhaps it was only sobbing,” she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears.

No, there were no tears. “If you’re going to turn into a pig, my dear" said Alice, seriously, “I’ll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now!” The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.

Alice was just beginning to think to herself, “Now, what am I to do with this creature, when I get it home?” when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it any further.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. “If it had grown up,” she said to herself, “it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.” And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, “if one only knew the right way to change them—” when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire-Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.'

Had it been me, I would have been happy to bring the little piggy home and take care of it ...

Here is the whole book, with illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell.

The Forest in Winter

From the directors: “This darkly comedic short film perverts a well-known fairy tale into a bizarre fable that is poised to traumatize a new generation of children and adults.”

Concept/design: Jake Portman, Bill Sneed
Story: Charlie Short
Music/sound design: Braincloud

They have obviously watched a lot of Yury Norstein animations. The subtitles don't do the Russian narration any justice, but that was probably fully intentional ...

Chrum.com - Pigs we are!

Chrum is a design firm from Warsaw that specializes not least in all kinds of swinish motifs - often sarcastic and humourous, playing with the nasty stereotypes about pigs ... and sometimes unexpectedly heartwarming.

They have some very nice T-shirts.

Under Milk Wood

"The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons through the dozy town. The sea lolls, laps and idles in, with fishes sleeping in its lap. The meadows still as Sunday, the shut-eye tasselled bulls, the goat-and-daisy dingles, nap happy and lazy. The dumb duck-ponds snooze. Clouds sag and pillow on Llaregyb Hill. Pigs grunt in a wet wallow-bath, and smile as they snort and dream. They dream of the acorned swill of the world, the rooting for pig-fruit, the bagpipe dugs of the mother sow, the squeal and snuffle of yesses of the women pigs in rut. They mud-bask and snout in the pig-loving sun; their tails curl; they rollick and slobber and snore to deep, smug, after-swill sleep. Donkeys angelically drowse on Donkey Down."

Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood - A Play for Voices

Read the whole text at Project Gutenberg, or, even better, buy the book or borrow it from your local library.
I read it in high school, and it made a deep impression on me, as did a collection of short stories by Dylan Thomas as I read them during my early university years. I had forgotten about this part with the pigs, though, until I came across a quote from it on PiggyPoop.com. (Yes, it's exactly what you think - natural fertilizer made from piggy excrements. But the recipe on their site for "Piggy Poop Tea" is NOT what you think.)

Pig doodlings

This seems to be the day for not very serious posts to this blog.
Here are some pigs I doodled when I had a bit of gouache paint left:




(Click to see them big)

Pugna Porcorum

Pugna Porcorum ("The Battle of the Pigs") was written around 1530 by the domenican monk Johannes Leo Placentius from Liège, under the pseudonym "Publius Porcius, Poet". It is a great masterpiece of Latin-language alliteration. In its 253 hexameters, every word begins with 'p'.

The poem is composed in a style called ‘grotesque’ or ‘Macaronic’ verse, a burlesque form in which two or more languages are mixed. In Pugna Porcorum, Placentius adds Latin endings to words of his local language, and uses them in Latin constructions.

Apparently, it often appears in a compilation of "risqué and bawdy tales, macaronic verse, student drama, and nonsense writings on the subjects of sex, food, wine, women, history, religion, science and the medical and legal professions".

When I studied Latin in secondary school, I waited in vain for a chance to research it, and now I've forgotten too much of my Latin to understand very much of it without tedious dictionary wrestling.

It seems hardly any other people on teh Internets have read and understood it, either, because I can't find any reviews of it that would say anything about the plot. Well, it's probably something nasty, anyway ...

Read the whole poem on Mori's Humor Page.

Porcopolis has some illustrations to the work.

Henrik Vibskov's lovely piggy scarves

Fashion designer Henrik Vibskov has used his famous "piggy" pattern on various pieces of garments - from elegant suits to T-shirts, and also for a series of men's scarves clearly inspired by keffiyehs/shemaghs:



(Images found randomly on the net)

They are hailed in burshuy blogs and discussion forums - "finally we can wear those great-looking Arab scarves without making the wrong political statement!" - and only the most hypocritical pretentiously PC wannabe-leftist people and your average Zionists can consider calling them offensive. Because they're cute.

If you would consider paying 108 Euro for a scarf, you can get one from Très Bien Shop (based in Sweden, shipping worldwide). They have the red and white and the red and black varieties.

They used to have the one in blue and black, as well, though it's not very well matched in the picture on the left.

Even better, you might consider commissioning my mum to weave by hand a similar, but different, even nicer and totally unique scarf with a pig pattern (or any pattern you like). At least I am considering it ...

Ben and Orlando

The photographer Traer Scott has in his series Sentients portrayed humans and animals and the often deep emotional and psychological bond they share.

This picture is of Ben and Orlando:



Scott writes: "Orlando fell off a truck bound for the slaughterhouse when he was just a mere 200lb pig. He was taken to animal control and was going to be killed. A Massachusetts family rescued him and made a home for him on their farm. Orlando now weighs over 500lbs. The family's son Ben became very close with Orlando, sometimes when he was younger, the two would sleep together at night."

Visit his website for many more interesting photographs.