The Very Best Pig

 

The Very Best Pig That Money Could Buy

My father used to tell us a story about Kaiser Bill’s pig; it seemed to amuse him more than us. He, like his peers, thought Kaiser as the enemy, to him World War One was a fight against the Kaiser.

When Germany was defeated, the Kaiser lost his title and went to live in Holland, perhaps as an asylum seeker. Anyway, a tribunal had been set up in Britian to sort out claims of business dealings that were in place before the war. Bill, or whatever a demoted Kaiser is called, sent a claim to recover the cost of a prized pig… probably a boar for breeding… 

 

Early in the year, before the outbreak of war, Kaiser Bill sent his farm manger to England to buy the very best British pig that money could buy. He wanted to improve the bloodstock of his personal piggeries. The pig in question should have a pedigree that must go back to the dimness of time with the medals to prove it. The Kaiser’s London agents went on the search for a Gloucester Old Spot breed, which was the popular breed at the time, so they travelled to Somerset to buy the very best pig that money could buy. They found a prize pig that the Gloucester Old Spot Society committee said was worth its weight in gold… which of course they would say if the Kaiser was to buy him.

Kaiser Bill was sent news that the pig had been found, and when the money was sent, the pig was off to the port for shipment to Hamburg. But the port officials were unmoved at the sight of the very best pig that money could buy, because there was swine fever in the land, and sending him would go against old King George’s rules and regulations. So back the pig went to Somerset and the very best pig that money could buy was put back in his pen. As time went on the managers of the Kaiser’s piggeries lost hope for their bloodlines to be improved; but one day in July, the restrictions were lifted, so the very best pig that money could buy, was sent to the port and loaded aboard the ship. But the ship was prevented from sailing because of the outbreak of war! And so, the now German pig was interred by the government as a prisoner of war. Of course, there would be no money sent to Germany under the circumstances of war.

The British tied a blue ribbon around the very best pig that money could buy’s neck and set a collection box upon its back, and for three long years, it collected money for the British Red Cross society. Then one, dark night, the crazy Kaiser sent over a Zeppelin, and the Zeppelin rained bombs on London and killed the very best pig that money could buy! Oh dear! The guns of Flanders boomed on for a time and then came the Armistice… and then the Enemy Debts Tribunal in London, where Britons and Germans came to wrangle over the pre-war debts.

Among them were the ex-Kaiser’s agents, wanting the very best pig money could buy, or their money back instead! So began the letters to the Somerset farmers… but they retorted that the Kaiser had not only cooked his own goose, he killed his very own pig as well! The tribunal, however would not have this, so the farmers gathered again to discuss the problem. They simply sent a bill to the Kaiser for the cost of maintaining the very best pig that money could buy for three long years, and the tribunal, in its wisdom, decided that it made matters even. And there was no more argument over the very best pig that money could buy.

 

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Maybe some of this is true, but I doubt much of it is. Monolougues were popular humour back in those days, and obviously my father had learned this one off by heart. It’s a fair bet that it also rhymed. He must have thought it funny, laughing at Kaiser Bill, the enemy, to belittle him. My father recited it often, so often that it stuck in my brain… but I guess some of it, I ‘interpreted.’.