Lark Rise to Candleford Read Online Free Page B

collecting snails in a pail
for the pig's supper. These piggy crunched up with great relish. 'Feyther',
over and above farming out the sty, bedding down, doctoring, and so on, would
even go without his nightly half-pint when, towards the end, the barley-meal
bill mounted until 'it fair frightened anybody'.
    Sometimes, when the weekly income would not run to a
sufficient quantity of fattening food, an arrangement would be made with the
baker or miller that he should give credit now, and when the pig was killed
receive a portion of the meat in payment. More often than not one-half the pig-meat
would be mortgaged in this way, and it was no uncommon thing to hear a woman
say, 'Us be going to kill half a pig, please God, come Friday,' leaving the
uninitiated to conclude that the other half would still run about in the sty.
    Some of the families killed two separate half pigs a year;
others one, or even two, whole ones, and the meat provided them with bacon for
the winter or longer. Fresh meat was a luxury only seen in a few of the cottages
on Sunday, when six-pennyworth of pieces would be bought to make a meat
pudding. If a small joint came their way as a Saturday night bargain, those
without oven grates would roast it by suspending it on a string before the
fire, with one of the children in attendance as turnspit. Or a 'Pot-roast'
would be made by placing the meat with a little lard or other fat in an iron
saucepan and keeping it well shaken over the fire. But, after all, as they
said, there was nothing to beat a 'toad'. For this the meat was enclosed whole
in a suet crust and well boiled, a method which preserved all the delicious
juices of the meat and provided a good pudding into the bargain. When some superior
person tried to give them a hint, the women used to say, 'You tell us how to get
the victuals; we can cook it all right when we've got it'; and they could.
    When the pig was fattened—and the fatter the better—the date
of execution had to be decided upon. It had to take place some time during the
first two quarters of the moon; for, if the pig was killed when the moon was
waning the bacon would shrink in cooking, and they wanted it to 'plimp up'. The
next thing was to engage the travelling pork butcher, or pig-sticker, and, as
he was a thatcher by day, he always had to kill after dark, the scene being
lighted with lanterns and the fire of burning straw which at a later stage of
the proceedings was to singe the bristles off the victim.
    The killing was a noisy, bloody business, in the course of which
the animal was hoisted to a rough bench that it might bleed thoroughly and so
preserve the quality of the meat. The job was often bungled, the pig sometimes
getting away and having to be chased; but country people of that day had little
sympathy for the sufferings of animals, and men, women, and children would
gather round to see the sight.
    After the carcass had been singed, the pig-sticker would pull
off the detachable, gristly, outer coverings of the toes, known locally as 'the
shoes', and fling them among the children, who scrambled for, then sucked and
gnawed them, straight from the filth of the sty and blackened by fire as they
were.
    The whole scene, with its mud and blood, flaring lights and
dark shadows, was as savage as anything to be seen in an African jungle. The children
at the end house would steal out of bed to the window. 'Look! Look! It's hell,
and those are the devils,' Edmund would whisper, pointing to the men tossing
the burning straw with their pitchforks; but Laura felt sick and would creep
back into bed and cry: she was sorry for the pig.
    But, hidden from the children, there was another aspect of
the pig-killing. Months of hard work and self-denial were brought on that night
to a successful conclusion. It was a time to rejoice, and rejoice they did,
with beer flowing freely and the first delicious dish of pig's fry sizzling in
the frying-pan.
    The next day, when the carcass had been cut up, joints