To Market, To Market...

  by Stoker

... to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again, jiggety jig”

is one of the more ancient English nursery rhymes, dating at least from the time of Elizabeth I.  Unlike many of those old songs it does not have a hidden meaning – unless our readers know otherwise – such as “Ring-a-ring of roses” which is about the 1665 plague year; we sneeze and all fall down because we are dead!

But “To Market, to Market” has a certain painful edge to me, involving not buying, but selling fat pigs. My father, a farmer, did not want sons who were sentimental about animals and at about the age of 13 I was given two orphan piglets to rear by hand, initially from a bottle, and then later as they grew into strong young white porkers, by twice daily  charging of their food and water troughs.  But alas, his son was indeed rather sentimental and so decided that these piggies (Pinky and Perky, inevitably*) should stay on the farm and be used as breeding stock.

One day I was doing my Saturday morning chore of cleaning out their shed when a misunderstanding occurred and I was not only knocked over by Pinkie but then rolled into the heap of the very thing I was cleaning up (very good for roses). In a fury I found my father and said that there had been a change of policy in the Stoker Pig Business, and they were to go to market the following Saturday.  “Are you sure?” “Yes”. He booked them in, and the lorry to take them. That Saturday morning we went together to the local Yorkshire market town, which still had its livestock market in the centre of the town, adjacent to the town market place.  Sellers and buyers and auctioneers could walk across the pens on narrow board walks – how the Health and Safety Inspector would love that now.  We did so; to the pen containing two white sows . When they saw who it was, they looked up in that friendly cheerful way that pigs have, expecting no doubt a bucket of pignuts to descend to them. 

 I realised with horror the reality of what I had done.  “Can I withdraw them?”  “No.”  “Can I buy them?”  “No”.  The tears came, but were suppressed quickly.  I realise now my old man was probably as upset as I was, but if his son was to be a farmer, here was a lesson to be learned.  Indeed, he made me watch as the auctioneer came along the boards, and in about 50 seconds flat of incomprehensible auctioneer rat-a-tat staccato disposed of Pinky and Perky to a pigmeat dealer to finish fattening up.

Just as well, I think, I never did become a farmer. I did contemplate becoming an auctioneer but I haven’t the voice for it (and would never be able to contemplate selling a distressed boy’s pigs.) My brother eventually took the farm over, but he never gave his animals, mostly pigs - hundreds, thousands of pigs - names. Never get on first-name terms with anybody you might end up eating is a good rule in life.  And none of us discussed that soon after these piggy events my father adopted an orphan calf who he called “Monty”. She grew into a beautiful black cow, loyally followed him around the home paddock and farm buildings, and lived a restful cheerful life on the farm for many years. Ha!

Last week, as it happened, I was in that northern market town with time to fill. Walking in the market place I heard the distant strange staccato rattle of a first class auctioneer in prime form.  It was the Friday cattle market; a shadow of its former self of fifty years ago, but other than a state of the art electronic particulars board with seller and weight and number (of the beasts being sold, not the seller) very little has changed.  The same slightly red-cheeked, maudlin farmers standing in the ring with their cattle, hoping for a good price but also saying goodbye to animals they have known for eighteen months or more; the auctioneer’s clerk beadily watching for missed bids; and ageing men in wellies and overalls and flat-caps busy tapping their noses or tugging their ears or rubbing their chests. Not because they have strange itches, but to indicate to the man with the gavel that they are bidding.  It’s almost impossible to work out who is, but the auctioneer knows, and he knows when to bang down the gavel and shout a name, and then “Next. Lot 86! ”

It is amazing that the market survives on the site where it has been for hundreds of years; the local council would love to move it to a site on the ring road.  The great landowner who owns the freehold of the market and much of the town would also like to move it but is mindful of the historic location and the money it still brings into his tenants’ shops in the town centre; maybe also mindful that the site would perfectly suit a Waitrose or Sainsbury but after nearly 500 years of ownership, he can wait. The farmers probably like it where it is as they can spend some of their proceeds in the pubs after the sale; and their wives like it where it is as they can shop. And also drag their menfolk out of the pubs before things get out of hand. The dealers who come to buy would like it to move; getting large trucks in and out of a fundamentally medieval streetscape is always a nightmare. And many of the local residents, and the council’s Health and Safety Department, neither group much enamoured of strange smells, frightened animal noises, odd substances on the roads, and occasional  escaping sheep, would like it gone.

But if it goes, it will end.  On market days the great sheds of the cattle and sheep markets are at best 20% occupied and the outdoor pig pens, no longer with those board walkways, are hardly used at all. Much of it is indeed a slightly odd car park except for market days on Tuesday and Friday.

And visitors?  Go if you can to your local livestock market; it is the last gasp of a highly traditional ancient part of life.  Some of us do have memories of how things were, and are rather attached to those memories, memories of some sorrow it is true, but that is part of life and growing up.  Soon, no doubt, farmers will cease to bring their animals, nor will the dealers come, and the auctioneer and his clerk will get on with the much more remunerative business of selling houses from their smart offices in the square.  The market will close, and only one failed pig keeper will remember the tragedy that happened here.

*Pinky and Perky were singing puppets in a much loved children’s TV show in the 1960’s.