O
APE AS PIPER,
BEVERLEY.ne might count in the churches animal musicians, perhaps, by thousands, and the reason of their presence is doubtless the same as that which explains the frequency of the serious carvings of musicians which adorn the arches of nave and choir throughout the country—namely the prevalent use of various kinds of instrumental music in the service of the church. The animal musicians are the burlesques of the human, and the fact that the pig is the most frequent performer may perhaps suggest that the ability of the musician had overwhelmed the consideration of other qualities which might be expected, but were not found, in the harmony-producing choristers. Clever as musicians, they may have become merely functionaries as regards interest in the church, as we see to-day in the case of our bell-ringers, who for the most part issue from the churches as worshippers enter them.

It may also be that the frequency of suilline musicians may have derisive reference to the ancient veneration in which the pig was held in the mythologies. It was a symbol of the sun, and, derivatively, of fecundity. Perhaps the strongest trace of this is in Scandinavian mythology. The northern races sacrificed a boar to Freyr, the patron deity of Sweden and of Iceland, the god of fertility; he was fabled to ride upon a boar named Gullinbrusti, or Golden Bristle. Freyr’s festival was at Yule-tide. Yule is jul or heol, the sun, and Gehul is the Saxon “Sunfeast.” The gods of Scandinavia were said to nightly feast upon the great boar SÆhrimnir, which eaten up, was every morning found whole again. This seems somewhat akin to the Hindoo story of CrÓrÁsura, a demon with the face of a boar, who continually read the Vedas and was so devout that Vishnu (the sun god) gave him a boon. He asked that no creature existing in the three worlds might have power to slay him, which was granted.

The special sacrifice of the pig was not peculiar to Scandinavia, for the Druids and the Greeks also offered up a boar at the winter solstice. The sacrifice of a pig was a constant preliminary of the Athenian assemblies. As a corn destroyer the same animal was sacrificed to Ceres.

The above explains the recurrence of the pig rather than the pig musician. A pregnant sow was, however, yearly sacrificed to Mercury, the inventor of the harp, and a sow playing the harp is among the rich set of choir carvings in Beverley Minster.The chase of the boar was the sport of September, the ordinary killing season, the swine being then in condition after their autumn feed of bucon, or beechmast (hence bacon), “His Martinmas has come” passed into a proverb. The prevalence of the pig as a food animal had undoubtedly its share in the frequency of art reference.

In the Christian adoption of pagan attributes, the pig was apportioned to St. Anthony, it is said, variously, because he had been a swine-herd, or lived in woods. The smallest or weakling pig in a litter, called in the north “piggy-widdy” (small white pig), and in the south midlands the “dillin” (perhaps equivalent to delayed), and is elsewhere styled the Anthony pig, as specially needing the protection of his patron.

A common representation of the pig musician is a sow who plays to her brood. At Winchester, the feast of the little ones is enlivened by the strains of the double flute. At Durham Castle, in a carving formerly in Aucland Castle Chapel, the sow plays the bagpipes while the young pigs dance. At Ripon, a vigorous carving has the same subject, and another at Beverley, in which a realistic trough forms the foreground.