Quotations concerning pigs,
and the sounds thereof
Boss Hawg’s Wild Hog
3-in-1 Multi-Grunt Call
This call is designed to produce the feeding, mating and agitated grunting sounds of wild feral hogs. Easy to blow. Makes deep guttural grunts, soft social grunts that arouse curiosity and the screams of young hogs in distress.
Creates excitement! Appeal to the pack instinct of a hog. Even triggers maternal and herd defense responses. BE READY! Includes lanyard.
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Persuasiveness of Call
These qualities are important factors in enticing a hog away from the shade of a tree, a spot of fresh clover, or a patch of rich rooting-ground and persuading him to trek to the approved feed. Certain terms of endearment or sentiment should enter in, but “honeyed” tones will not add to the score.
Criteria for Judging Hog Calling
One of six criteria for the All American Champion Hog Calling Contest. “The Prairie Farmer” magazine and WLS Radio of Chicago, Illinois, sponsored this contest which was held for the Century of Progress International Exposition at the Chicago Worlds Fair, (1934-35).
Resting his hands on the rail before him, James Belford swelled before their eyes like a young balloon. The muscles on his cheekbones stood out, his forehead became corrugated, his ears seemed to shimmer. Then, at the very height of the tension, he let go like the sound of a great Amen…
“Pig-HOOOOO-OOO-OOO-O-O-ey.” They looked at him, awed.
P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)
English novelist and humorist. Summer Lightening (1929).
Weke, weke! So cries a pig prepared to the spit.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
English dramatist and poet. Titus Andronicus, Act 4, Scene 2, (c. 1584-89).
But first, it was necessary to ring their snouts to prevent them rooting up the meadow. This is an ear-splitting task, for though their snouts are callous, pigs always squeal as soon as handled, and their voices have a note which vibrates the human ear-drum to the point of physical pain.
Adrian Bell (1901-1980)
British farmer and author of autobiographical works based on his life and work in Suffolk. The Cherry Tree (1931).
I am convinced that pigs too have a fantasy life. Last summer’s litter included a little female who thought she was a diva… She projected her fantasy with such piglike conviction that we were forced to acknowledge it. I fully expected to come out of the pen one day and find her on her hind legs, front legs clutched to her full bosoms delivering herself of Brunhilde’s send-off of Siegfried “Zu neuen Thaten.”
Karl Schwenke
U.S. author. In A Pig’s Eye (1985).
Siegfried has accordingly joined the cast. (I make no apology for the Wagnerian nomenclature. No pig-keeper with the smallest operatic leanings can have failed to observe the affinities, both visual and musical.)
E.E. Nott Bower
British author. The Beauty of Pigs.
Let us syng or say our service distinctly,
Not syngynge in ye nose, as pygges.
William De Wyckham
British (1526).
[We pigs] were bless’d as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,
Or grasshoppers that live on noon-day dew
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too…
Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822)
British romantic poet. Oedipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820).
When the pig decides to snort, well, everything will move.
Ian Watters
A British sheep farmer who uses a 500-pound Tamworth hog for herd-tending on his sheep farm.
If you have never heard the hog drivers word of command… Ho-o-o-yuh!… you should know that the first syllable is like a prolonged wail, while the last syllable is hurled out with a snap and a thud, much like the exclamation one might make if suddenly hit in the solar plexus.
Edmund Cody Burnett
“Hog Raising and Hog Driving in the Region of the French Broad River” in Agricultural History, Vol. XX, No.2 (April, 1946).
Never try to teach a pig to sing — it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)
U.S. author of hard science fiction. Time Enough for Love (1975) and The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978).
Editor’s Note
The above aphorism has also been attributed to Mark Twain, Paul Dickson, the very prolific Anonymous and others. I have not been able to traced down these other attributions. If you have factual knowledge of attributions earlier than Heinlein in 1975 please contact me.
Slang, n.: the grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
U.S. writer and journalist. The Devil’s Dictionary (1906).
I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
British director/producer of suspense films.
You’ve got to have appeal as well as power in your voice. You’ve got to convince the hogs you have something for them.
Fred Glanz
1936 World Champion Hog Caller.
