Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Description of a Monstrous Pig, 1562


Good God, WHERE IS ITS FACE? This is the most awful picture I've ever seen, and I've seen some gross pig pictures in my day. This one comes courtesy of Robert Martin, a London farmer who had a sow that gave birth to seven normal piglets and one horribly deformed monster, "more monstrous than any that hath bene seene before this time, as you may see by this picture." I'm inclined to agree.

According to the text, the piglet "hath a head contrary to all other of that kynd, it hath a face without a nose or eyes, saving a hole standing directly betwen the two eares which eares be broad and long, lyke the eares of a bloude hound, and a monstrous body, lyke vnto a thing that were lean, without heare. It hath feet very monstrous, with ye endes of them turning vpwards, lyke vnto forked endes." It died two hours after birth.

Fortunately, there was a reason for its disfigurement and death: "let vs be assured that these straunge monstrous sightes do foreshew vnto vs, that [God's] heavy indignation wyl shortly come vpon vs for our monstrous livyng."

I think the same logic can be applied to swine flu, don't you? God's just trying to tell us that unless we clean up our polluted and diseased minds, we will probably die from an incurable virus. Thanks, Renaissance. Glad we cleared that up.

(And thanks to Geoff at Michigan State University for pretty much this entire post. Well done.)

But seriously, WHERE IS ITS FUCKING FACE? It looks like it imploded! Pigs are messed up.

8 comments:

Doug said...

Wow, that is disgusting. Just based on the look of the pig's "face" I'd hazard a guess that the particular sin God was trying to warn us about was sodomy. Then again, aren't we always getting warned about that? Where was the disfigured animal that was supposed to warn us against misrepresenting the value of mortgage-backed securities? I'm just saying sodomy never made me question whether or not I'd get a job.

Justine said...

MAYBE, someone beat that poor mama pig silly when she was preggers.

just a thought...

Sarah Redmond said...

Doug, that was gross. Accurate, but gross.

Do you want to start a blog where we photoshop baby animals into allegorical monstrous births and then write a rationale about the "lesson God doth foreshew vnto us all"?

I think the monster that could symbolically teach us us about the sin of mortgage-backed securities would be a manatee with a partially formed parasitic twin, and the twin wants to get away but it can't because the two manatees share a heart, so it's doomed to stay with the bigger, gluttonous manatee forever and have its life slowly drained away until it shrivels up and dies.

Doug said...

I think that is the PERFECT allegorical representation of the dangers of mortgage-backed securities. You know who could interpret that sign? This guy. He loves manatees, and he's already warned us that God hates dancing.

Sarah Redmond said...

"John Lithgow: Manatee Fan" is the best article title I have ever seen. I thought it was a joke at first, but no. He is such a pioneer.(Remember when he discovered Bigfoot? He's so amazing.)

Anonymous said...

Pigs are by nature incredibly intelligent, affectionate, social animals. They are also genetically very close to humans, thus the reason why diabetics use pig's insulin, and also other parts such as heart valves for humans with heart problems. In biblical times it was dangerous to eat pigs because there was no refrigeration, and people got sick due to parasites that would thrive in the meat in hot weather.Who knows why the poor creature was born deformed. It is rather sad, really.

Anonymous said...

Cyclopia, most likely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopia

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