The Monmouth Inquirer

THE WHY of SUPERSTITIONS
By H. IRVING KING

MEETING A PIG

It is bad luck to meet a pig while on a journey; and if, on going visiting, you meet a pig on the way it is a sign that you will not be welcome when you arrive at your destination.

These are superstitions—or rather a variation of the same superstition—found to be rather common in Canada and New England and perhaps existing in other localities. Also some fishermen object to meeting a pig when about to embark for the fishing grounds, and some old-fashioned sailors regard the hog askance, if they meet one just before sailing.

This idea that it is bad luck to encounter a hog at the beginning of any enterprise is a mild form of a similar superstition found among the northern nations of Europe, especially among the Scottish fishermen, among whom an intense horror of even the animal's name prevails.

That the hog was connected with moon-worship we know and one writer says in regard to the superstition under consideration, "All animals connected in folklore with the moon are diabolical, a relic of the antipathy of sun-worshipers to moon-worshipers." This antipathy can only have existed, however, among the Northern nations. The most civilized peoples of antiquity, we know, worshiped both the sun-god and the moon-goddess; conceiving a union instead of an antipathy between them. But among the Northern nations sun-worship was prominent; the traces of moon-worship comparatively few. The dwellers on the misty capes of Scotland and Norway had not the same reason to worship the "source of moisture" as the Egyptians had and moon-worship, therefore, may have been considered highly heterodox. As the superstition in question is a Northern one, perhaps the explanation cited is correct.

(© by McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)

(© by McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)