Boor

“ Many of the forests in our own country were infested by wild boars. The Anglo-Saxons seem, from the rude frescoes and prints which are handed down to us, to have hunted this animal on foot with no other weapon but the boar-spear, and attended by powerful dogs ”

“ All day their bodies are cooled and refreshed by water. I wish I were a boar.” Accordingly at night he recounted to the Rishi the troubles of the life of an ape and the pleasures of that of a boar, and begged of him to change him into a boar. The sage, whose kindness knew no bounds, complied with his pet’s request, and turned him into a wild boar. For two whole days our boar kept his body soaking wet, and on the third day, as he was splashing about in his favourite element, whom [135] should he see but the king of the country riding on a richly caparisoned elephant. ”

“ In sober truth, nevertheless, a big old boar when held up at bay, or charging in headlong rushes upon the dogs, his wicked eyes flashing fire, and foam flying from his jaws as tushes clash and champ, presents as pretty a picture of brute-fury and pluck as even a world-hunter may wish to enjoy. ”

“ Walk with me a bit in my tender childhood, bed with me a night and imagine yourself dreaming such incomprehensible horrors. Remember I was an inexperienced child. I had never seen a wild boar in my life. For that matter I had never seen a domesticated pig. The nearest approach to one that I had seen was breakfast bacon sizzling in its fat. And yet here, real as life, wild boars dashed through my dreams, and I, with fantastic parents, swung through the lofty tree-spaces. ”

“ But, Lord, when I think of a huge boar, wicked and unprofitable, who fattens, pastures and wallows upon and in my own meager pittance, in return for which the gormandizer grunts, steps upon my feet, turns me black and blue butting against me, and bites me—is it at all astonishing if then my long face should grow still longer and look sad? ”

“ Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of Gypsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That’s yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help, you have taken drow; shall I tell you your fortune, sir, your dukkerin? God bless you, pretty gentleman, much trouble will you have to suffer, and much water to cross; but never mind, pretty gentleman, you shall be fortunate at the end, and those who hate shall take off their hats to you.”
“Hey, bebee!” cried the girl; “what is this? what do you mean? you have blessed the Gorgio!” ”

“ A boar is blazoned "armed of his tusk" or "armed and langued," when his tongue is shown of a different tincture. Moreover, as Mr. Fox-Davies [pg 44] reminds us in his interesting "Guide to Heraldry," an English boar's head is described as "couped" or erased "at the neck," but the Scotch herald would blazon the same charge as "couped and erased" "close."
The Earl of Vere takes a boar for his crest, in allusion to his name, verre being the Latin for boar. ”

“ To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of fighting again—these were the amusements of that delightful place. ”

“ The tooth of this dead wild boar, in the evening, causes the death of the young hero or heroine, or else transforms them into wild beasts. In popular fairy tales the witch, feigning a wish to comb the head of the hero or the heroine, thrusts into his or her head now a large pin, now a dead man's tooth, and thus deprives them of life or human form. This is a reminiscence of the tusk of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry wild boar who kills the sun, or metamorphoses him, or puts him to sleep.
To represent the evening sun asleep, a curious particular is offered us in the myth of Adonis. ”

“ Then the boar is wonderfully tenacious of life, and has a skin so tough that a sharp weapon and a strong arm are needed to inflict a mortal wound. Even when the animal has fallen, and is apparently dead, an experienced hunter always drives his knife into its throat, as boars have an awkward way of suddenly reviving, leaping on their legs, and dashing through their foes into the bush. ”

“ The largest boar I have ever seen measured six feet four from snout to tail, three feet four at the shoulder, and weighed twenty stone—clean. An old beater of eighty, whose dog had been wounded to the death, when he came up to the monster lying lifeless, got upon the body, took off from his shaven pate the red gun-cover which he used as a turban, and throwing it on the ground, cried out, ‘Now I can die in peace. ”

“ The struggle which follows is terrible; the boar’s tusks tell at every blow, and the water becomes literally red with blood. At length the foremost sportsmen come up, and it is high time they do. Seven dogs are already lying on their backs, with their legs in the air, and almost all bear marks of the boar’s terrible tusks. ”

“ And also her traces are more open in front and straighter behind, and the sole of the foot is not so large as of a young boar, and her bones are not so large nor so long, nor so far the one from the other as those of a young boar, nor go not so deep in the earth, for they be small, and sharp and short, and nearer the one to the other, than a young boar's. ”

“ Tip it him Romanly, child.'
'He has heard it Romanly already, bebee; 'twas by that I found him out, as I told you.'
'Halloo, sir, are you sleeping? you have taken drows; the gentleman makes no answer. God give me patience!'
'And what if he doesn't, bebee; isn't he poisoned like a hog? Gentleman, indeed! why call him gentleman? if he ever was one he's broke, and is now a tinker, a worker of blue metal.'
'That's his way, child, to-day a tinker, to-morrow something else; and as for being drabbed, I don't know what to say about it.'
'Not drabbed! what do you mean, bebee? but look there, bebee ”

“ The boar pulls himself together, feeling that he is to die, and, up to his belly in water, he bravely awaits the pack. With his eye glowing with rage, his bristles erect, he utters grunts of defiance. The fifty dogs throw themselves on to him without a moment’s hesitation ”

“ And if a man see a wild boar the which seemeth to him great enough, as men say of the hart chaceable of ten, he shall say a wild boar of the third year that is without refusal, and whenever they be not of three years men call them swine of the sounder, and if he see the great tokens that I shall rehearse hereafter he may say that he is a great boar. ”

“ If a pig tumbled in, he was sure to be drowned.
So the mother stopped two, who were running a race,
Saying, “Children, take care, ’tis a dangerous place!
Walk soberly on till you’re safe past the water.”
“Why, ’tis but a well, and pray, what does it matter?”
[Pg 15]
[Pg 16]
Said the obstinate animal, foolish as ever,
But thinking himself very cunning and clever.
He made up his mind that whatever befell
He would run on before, and jump over this well.
“For,” says he, “cats and dogs can jump ever so high,
And frogs live in the water, and why should not I? ”

“ Idomeneus of Crete, we are told, awaiting the onset (which proved but partially effective) of Æneas and Deiphobus,
Stood at bay, like a boar on the hills that trusteth to his strength, and abides the great assailing throng of men, in a lonely place, and he bristles up his back, and his eyes shine with fire, while he whets his tusks, and is right eager to keep at bay both men and hounds. [166]
165. Erhard, Fauna der Cycladen, p. 26.
166. Iliad, xiii. 471-75.
The boar is a solitary animal. Like Hal o’ the Wynd, he fights for his own right hand ”

“ Amongst the impersonations of natural phenomena in the Aryan mythology, the wild boar represented the "ravages of the whirlwind that tore up the earth." The boar is an animal connected with the storm and lightning, in all the Indo-European mythologies. Kelly says:—"Boars are winds, and their white flashing tusks were looked upon by the southern Aryans and the Greeks, as well as by the Germans, as images of the lightning." There exists yet a traditionary superstition very prevalent in Lancashire and its neighbourhood to the effect that pigs can "see the wind." ”

“ It is not, however, only at certain times and under certain circumstances that the boar is dangerous: a boar, especially one of the large old breeds, is by no means a safe animal to venture near at any time, and we have more than once seen sows almost equally savage ”

“ But men do not take them to the curée nor are they judged as of the hart or other beasts of venery.
A boar can with great pain live twenty years; he never casts his teeth nor his tusks nor loses them unless by a stroke.83 The boar's grease is good as that of other tame swine, and their flesh also. Some men say that by the foreleg of a boar one can know how old he is, for he will have as many small pits in the forelegs as he has years, but of this I make no affirmation. ”

“ In Barbary I have seen the Moors in the day-time take this animal by the ears and pull him towards them, without his attempting any other resistance than that of his drawing back: and the hunters, when his cave is large enough to give them admittance, take a torch in their hand, and go straight to him; when, pretending to fascinate him by a senseless jargon of words which they repeat, they throw a blanket over him, and haul him out. He seems to be stupid or senseless in the day, or at the appearance of strong light, unless when pursued by the hunters. ”

“ Boar. It appears that in former times boar-hunting was a favorite recreation; many allusions to which we find in old writers. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the destruction of a wild boar ranked among the deeds of chivalry, [364] and “won for a warrior almost as much renown as the slaying an enemy in the open field.” So dangerous, too, was boar-hunting considered, that Shakespeare represents Venus as dissuading Adonis from the perilous practice ”

“ How strange they look as they wander through the forest, sometimes a few together, at other times twenty or thirty, or even larger numbers!
That morning we got into new and fresh tracks of the wild boars; the earth was all uprooted by their snouts. ”

“ I never dreamed it was our game, but was still intently listening for the crashing charge I was beginning to know so well. Looking in the direction of the rustling, I was thunderstruck to see three magnificent grey old boars following one another in single file down hill, straight to my tree. The almost cat-like noiselessness with which large and clumsy animals [Pg 102] can move about in thick covert, is almost more wonderful than the tremendous noise even small ones make when so minded. I picked out the leading boar, fired, and with a thundering rush they were gone. ”

“ A Hound, who in the days of his youth and strength had never yielded to any beast of the forest, encountered in his old age a boar in the chase. He seized him boldly by the ear, but could not retain his hold because of the decay of his teeth, so that the boar escaped. ”

“ The wild boar is also a formidable foe, not to flocks, but to cultivated fields, where it does great damage; besides, it is a brutal beast, rather dangerous to meet in the depths of a forest. In size and shape it closely resembles the common pig, the chief difference being in the boar’s coarse, blackish-red coat; its dorsal bristles, stiff and strong and standing up in anger in a horrible looking mane ”

“ The young wild boar is a fine and delicate game, also, when a year old. The ancients submitted{188} those they could take away from their mother to castration, and left them afterwards to run about the woods, where these animals became larger than the others, and acquired a savour and flavour which made them preferable to the pigs we rear.”—Sonnini. ”

“ Once upon a time in a certain country there was great concern about a wild boar that was destroying the peasants' fields, killing the cattle, and ripping people apart with its tusks. The king promised a large reward to anyone who could free the land from this plague, but the beast was so large and strong that no one dared to go near the woods where it lived. Finally the king proclaimed that whoever could capture or kill the wild boar should have his only daughter in marriage. ”

“ Joy filled the hearts of the woman and her son at the fall of their enemy, and they beat upon the drum and danced for gladness. Then the lad cut up the flesh of the boar, and smoked great portions of it. Moreover, he made a raft, and placed thereon bristles which he had plucked from the dead boar's back. And he said to the bristles, "The waves and the wind will carry you to distant countries. Wheresoever ye see men who bear no marks of mourning ye must not land. ”

“ The wild boar is generally admitted to be the parent of the stock from which all our domesticated breeds and varieties have sprung. This animal is generally of a dusky brown or iron-gray color, inclining to black, and diversified with black spots or streaks. The body is covered with coarse hairs, intermixed with a downy wool; these hairs become bristles as they approach the neck and shoulders, and are in those places so long as to form a mane, which the animal erects when irritated. ”

“ Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible head of a wild boar! Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair! ”