Aeschylus, G.B. Shaw at it again

Wed Apr 13 13:44:52 UTC 2011

Some more singin' pigs before Heinlein:

1840 _Cleave's Penny Gazette_ (London) (Nov. 28) [4]: (As easy back a pig to
sing)/ As check a sot in his career.

1862 _Continental Monthly_ II (Dec.) 762: Barnum sat in his office....He had
before him...a letter from a man who owned a wife with three arms (to be had
cheap), and another from the fortunate proprietor of the great Singing Pig.

1894 _The Salt Lake Herald_ (Oct. 28, 1894) 19: "New attraction...the
singing pig from Ceylon -- m-m-m." Mary followed him into the dime museum.

1916 _Evening Public Ledger_  (Night Extra) (Philadelphia) (Sept. 14)
11: That night the 259 wise men held a powwow or meeting and decided to tell
the king to get some pigs - put them in gold cages and have them sing for
him. This was done and the pigs sang so sweetly that Obla Ouchla was
delighted and that night he went fast asleep for many moons.

1928 Scudder Klyce _Dewey's Suppressed Psychology_  (pvtly. ptd.) 196 [GB:
not confirmed]: [A]n innate autocrat can no more write a genuine description
of what democracy is that a pig can sing _Hail Columbia_.

1944 _The Billboard_ (Mar. 25) 14: CAPT. ARNOLD'S ANIMAL CIRCUS— including
that famous "Singing Pig Salome,'" trained dogs, monkeys and that goat that
does a tight-wire act.

1956 _The Listener_ (BBC) LV 476 [GB: not verified]: So we must remember
this also as the week in which Dad Grove tried to give up smoking: in which
we saw that lady from Leatherhead impersonating Mme. de Stael: in which a
singing pig was entered for the male voice in the Eisteddfod.

1971 Jessamyn West _Crimson Ramblers of the World Farewell_  (N.Y.:
Macmillan) 231:
Boy,...you can no more play the violin than a pig can sing. And while
there's no harm I can see in a pig's trying to sing, calling himself a
nightingale is another matter entirely.

JL

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 8:54 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Aeschylus, G.B. Shaw at it again
>
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>
> Heinlein sounds right for the exact quote (although he wrote "Never
> /attempt/ to teach a pig..."), as it shows up in "Time Enough for
> Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long" (1973, p. 51 in the hardcover).
>
> By 1981, the quote was popular enough to show up on T-shirts
> advertised in a bunch of magazines, although I only found them in
> Mother Jones from 1982. Al Kooper wore the shirt on the cover of his
> Championship Wrestling album. It also shows up on posters and "sign[s]
> behind the desk" through the late 1970s and 1980s. I doubt Kooper was
> a vector--the T-shirts likely were more popular than the record. The
> MIT Science Fiction society used to sell them for fund-raising,
> although I can't pin it down other than between 1983 and 1986. One of
> my classmates used to wear one.
>
> I picked up the "19th century" line from one of the posts concerning
> both pig quotes that claimed to have looked into it. It seems to be
> inaccurate for the exact formulation. But there is an 1877 precursor:
>
> http://goo.gl/XgvKW
> Punch. Volume 72. July 7, 1877
> Diary of My Ride to Khiva. p. 309/1
> > Slight jealousy between the Learned Pig and the Musical Mouse. Whenever
> the Pig begins to practise with his letters (as he has to do every day), the
> Musical Mouse begins to whistle and sing, just to put him out, and make him
> wild. This annoys the Pig, who spells things wrong, and doesn't answer
> questions properly. Consequently, I am obliged to beat the Pig. Whereupon he
> grunts piteously, and spells out, "Cuss that Mouse I" If I could only smooth
> matters over, and bring them together, it would be a fortune!
>
> The piece is signed "Theophilus Queer", but it was republished the
> same year, as a separate volume, by F.C. Burnand. http://goo.gl/ZQ9nm
>
> There might be some underlying "teach a pig to sing" expression
> bubbling up before Heinlein, although I found little evidence of it.
> The only GB hit:
>
> http://goo.gl/0RUpL
> The Pacdific Printer. Volume 15:1. January 1916
> Printers' Troubles and the Remedies. p. 24
> > "The statement is very often made that 'what printers need is education.'
> This is unquestionably true, and it is a pretty safe bet that you are one of
> the printers who need it most.
> > "It is about as easy to 'educate' a printer as it would be to teach a pig
> to sing the Star Spangled Banner at feeding time.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Fred means the one about teaching a pig to sing.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu
> >wrote:
> >
> >> The "pig" quote is in the Yale Book of Quotations, under Robert A.
> >> Heinlein.
> >>
> >> Fred Shapiro
>
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