7 ms·

I thought one of the most interesting points of the article was towards the bottom. Part of inaccuracy is that you'll be wandering around the village in the gam

I thought one of the most interesting points of the article was towards the bottom. Part of inaccuracy is that you'll be wandering around the village in the game and you'll find adult pigs in pens. It sounds like pigs were mostly free-range and in the woods for their adult life. Later on, as the "wilderness" shrank they transitioned to more of a farm animal.

GiorgioG 4y ago
Not medieval times, but when my grandfather was a kid (nearly 100 years ago now), the pigs would roam his Sicilian town and its outskirts. He was about 6 when he decided to piss off a sow in a field. It mauled him and near killed him.
- masklinn 4y ago
  That's still standard in Corsica (and I think Sicily though less sure), local pigs are partially feral.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Parts of Corsica, other parts seem to be run by a small breed of cattle who keep pockets of human tenders around. Observing the pigs at the Col de Vergio I imagined to notice a pattern of the bigger/older pigs venturing further away into the wild, as if they eventually developed a certain nagging suspicion but were too trusting minds to really act on it.
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      I love this on a deep level. Great writing. ‘Imagined to notice’ is a lovely way of embracing those flights of fancy. The imagery of the older pigs subconsciously coming to a conclusion they’ll never quite get to really touched me. Thank you.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Not exactly "roaming in the town", but just last week I was talking with someone that remembered how - in the late 1950's or early '60's - her family (in Tuscany countryside) had usually three or four pigs that were routinely brought (by her, at the time 8 or 9 years old) to the nearby woods and it happened more than once that one of them would flee and get to the village, and be later brought back by this or that neighbour.
- sequoia 4y ago
  On an extended visit to a small village in Mexico where the pigs would wander, I made a sport of stalking the piglets and attempting to pick them up. I achieved my aim once and the mother sow came charging at me & thereby convinced me to yield up the piglet toot suite. No mauling ensued thank goodness.
  - wincy 4y ago
    FYI, tout suite is a French term meaning immediately. The toot suite sounds like where the hogs go on holiday.
    - robnado 4y ago
      If I may invoke Muphry's law, the french term is "tout de suite"
      - Beldin 4y ago
        Then I'll happily contribute my second improvement of french: suivite. (For the curious, the first one is "toujourd'hui". And yes, this is tongue-in-cheek -- until these catch on and I'm celebrated by the Academy Francaise. Then it's Very Serious Business and was always intended as such, this post notwithstanding)
    - palata 4y ago
      I did not know it was a thing in English! This said, in French it is "tout de suite", but apparently both are correct in English.
      - tempestn 4y ago
        Since the second 't' in tout isn't voiced and the 'de' is very quick and blended in, "tout de suite" sounds like "toot suite" to an English ear, hence the 'de' often being dropped (as well as spellings like the above).
        4y ago
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  oh boy, arent they like 200 kg of angry meat?
  - GiorgioG 4y ago
    Big enough that when the cousin he was with returned with adult help, the sow had shredded all of his clothes and he had bites all over his body.
  - wahern 4y ago
    As a kid I briefly lived in a rented trailer on a smallish farm which grew mustard greens and raised hogs. The owner was missing half an ear, taken by a hog. At least, that was the story he told when he caught me one day about to stick my hand into the hog pen. True account or not, the lesson is true all the same: hogs eat people, and angry or hungry hogs are not to be trifled with.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      But some can be truffled with.
  - rodgerd 4y ago
    The largest domestic breeds push up to 300 to 400 kilos. We had one free-range pig on our farm that was certainly over a quarter-tonne, and she was agile enough that she'd occasionally run down chickens and eat them, and jaws strong enough to chew up cow skulls left over from home-kill. Pigs are generally smart and friendly if they haven't been mistreated. I would not want to mess with one.
    - jimmux 4y ago
      People like to joke about all the native Australian animals that can kill you, but the animal I was most afraid of as a farm kid was the feral pigs. I saw photos of recently shot pigs that were too big to fit on the back of a ute, and often found small trees completely uprooted by them. Fortunately the largest feral pigs I ever ran into were a litter and a small sow that preferred to scatter than stand their ground.
- brezelgoring 4y ago
  I've seen wild hog videos of them charging forward, full tilt against much larger animals. Things that would eat pigs for dinner, I tell you, they don't care and their charges mess you up.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    It is a funny quirk of evolution that herbivores or mostly herbivorous omnivores often end up being more aggressive than predators. The predator would prefer dinner that doesn't fight back!
- yreg 4y ago
  I visited Georgia (the country) a few years ago and their pigs were roaming freely around the villages. Here's a photo I took: https://imgur.com/a/ehETWOK https://imgur.com/a/ehETWOK
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    You could have also looked for pigs and cows at their tea plantations. Kinda surreal view.
    - yreg 4y ago
      I had no idea they had tea plantations, that's kinda surprising. Seems I need to go back.
      - MikePlacid 4y ago
        They are probably much harder to come by than in my days, but still exist: https://www.teaandcoffee.net/feature/2061/georgia-works-revitalize-tea-industry/ https://www.teaandcoffee.net/feature/2061/georgia-works-revi... With government support and private-sector interest, Georgia aims to rebuild its once highly regarded and significant tea industry – dating back to the Russian Empire – that was destroyed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In its history, first in the Russian Empire, then in the Soviet Union, Georgia played a crucial role in the tea market, producing at its peak up to 133,000 tonnes of packed tea per year from nearly 70 species, enjoying demand not only within the country, but also in some export destinations, including Mongolia, Iran and Afghanistan. However, this ended with the collapse of Soviet Union, when communism-style, tea-growing cooperatives appeared not to be ready for any competition with import supplies. As a result, the tea industry was almost completely ruined, as annual volume of production dropped to nearly 4,000 tonnes. Approximately 95 percent of tea plantations have been closed, while out of nearly 100 tea factories, only 12 are operating now.
skybrian 4y ago
It sounds a lot like sheep and shepherds. Hopefully, modern ideas of how sheep were taken care of are more accurate?
hardolaf 4y ago
I suspect that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has the pigs in their work accurate to what it was at the time and the author is taking sources about specific regions and then extrapolating over all of Europe. Yes, there are inaccuracies in most games, but I suspect that the author is also themselves inaccurate.
- girvo 4y ago
  What do you base that on? This seems like a pretty long bow to draw; pigs didn’t look like they do now, that’s a pretty accepted fact, even if you might quibble with their other points.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    Probably based on the sheer level of detail and research that went into making that game.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      It’s easy to overlook something and get it wrong. And they also took plenty of artistic liberties, like having highly anachronistic clothing and armor for Hungarian Cumans in the setting.
      - hardolaf 4y ago
        And it's very easy for an author of an opinion piece such as this to overlook something or over extrapolate something or assume that medieval drawings are accurate. In the case of this article, most of what the author has cited is information about the British Isles and then extrapolated that information to cover all of Europe even though regional differences almost certainly existed and things likely changed over time as well. It's not like the world was just static for 600+ years.
        girvo 4y ago
        These are expert historians, not random people posting an "opinion piece". Do you have information they don't that shows that they're wrong here?
PeterCorless 4y ago
Part of this is because without full-time pig herders, the pigs tend to go feral and cause a hell of a lot of damage. There are huge numbers of feral pigs in America. They can be quite dangerous: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco-cal...
ummonk 4y ago
I once read about a medieval case where a sow and her piglets attacked and killed a random villager. The medieval court sentenced the mother to death but concluded that the offspring were too young to know right from wrong and were acting under the influence of their mother, ruling them innocent.
- technothrasher 4y ago
  There's an old book from about 1906 where the author goes through a bunch of old European cases of animals being tried in court for crimes. It's an interesting and bizarre read. https://archive.org/details/criminalprosecut00evaniala https://archive.org/details/criminalprosecut00evaniala
  - mellavora 4y ago
    It also is one of the (potential) bases for laws regarding self-driving vehicles/robots/drones. Because law builds on precedent. And it can be argued that self-driving vehicles are a bit like an animal (has a "mind" of its own, but has a human owner responsible for it).
- ChoGGi 4y ago
  I'm sure it was just a suspended sentence.
linksnapzz 4y ago
The practice, and the woodland used for it, is called pannage. Somebody below pointed out that it's still done in the New Forest in England. You used to have the right to fatten your pigs by letting them go root around in the forest during the late summer/early autumn. Pigs can eat acorns and beechmast just fine without processing; and in the late fall they get brought in and slaughtered. This also keeps underbrush down, fertilizes the forest floor, and is less smelly than keeping the pigs confined. Nicer for the pigs, too. There are lots of places around New England called "hog island", which was usually the place the farmer would row the pigs out to-uninhabited, and filled with oaks and beeches. Pigs are unwilling to swim too far from shore, keeping them on the island (and away from crops!) until bacon time. (Here is an article touching on the practice of pannage, and how it was related to the first indian wars in New England, as well as the Hog Island that I grew up near!) https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/courses/h170_MW_S13/s2/Bonus_Pigs_Conflict.pdf https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/courses/h170_MW_S13/...
jccooper 4y ago
In villages they probably managed to mostly keep the pigs under control, but in towns and cities there do seem to have been free-roaming pigs. They were known to eat babies on occasion, and the French, at least, liked to put them on trial for this (and execute them).

GiorgioG 4y ago

Not medieval times, but when my grandfather was a kid (nearly 100 years ago now), the pigs would roam his Sicilian town and its outskirts. He was about 6 when he decided to piss off a sow in a field. It mauled him and near killed him.

masklinn 4y ago
That's still standard in Corsica (and I think Sicily though less sure), local pigs are partially feral.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Parts of Corsica, other parts seem to be run by a small breed of cattle who keep pockets of human tenders around. Observing the pigs at the Col de Vergio I imagined to notice a pattern of the bigger/older pigs venturing further away into the wild, as if they eventually developed a certain nagging suspicion but were too trusting minds to really act on it.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    I love this on a deep level. Great writing. ‘Imagined to notice’ is a lovely way of embracing those flights of fancy. The imagery of the older pigs subconsciously coming to a conclusion they’ll never quite get to really touched me. Thank you.
jaclaz 4y ago
Not exactly "roaming in the town", but just last week I was talking with someone that remembered how - in the late 1950's or early '60's - her family (in Tuscany countryside) had usually three or four pigs that were routinely brought (by her, at the time 8 or 9 years old) to the nearby woods and it happened more than once that one of them would flee and get to the village, and be later brought back by this or that neighbour.
sequoia 4y ago
On an extended visit to a small village in Mexico where the pigs would wander, I made a sport of stalking the piglets and attempting to pick them up. I achieved my aim once and the mother sow came charging at me & thereby convinced me to yield up the piglet toot suite. No mauling ensued thank goodness.
- wincy 4y ago
  FYI, tout suite is a French term meaning immediately. The toot suite sounds like where the hogs go on holiday.
  - robnado 4y ago
    If I may invoke Muphry's law, the french term is "tout de suite"
    - Beldin 4y ago
      Then I'll happily contribute my second improvement of french: suivite. (For the curious, the first one is "toujourd'hui". And yes, this is tongue-in-cheek -- until these catch on and I'm celebrated by the Academy Francaise. Then it's Very Serious Business and was always intended as such, this post notwithstanding)
  - palata 4y ago
    I did not know it was a thing in English! This said, in French it is "tout de suite", but apparently both are correct in English.
    - tempestn 4y ago
      Since the second 't' in tout isn't voiced and the 'de' is very quick and blended in, "tout de suite" sounds like "toot suite" to an English ear, hence the 'de' often being dropped (as well as spellings like the above).
      - 4y ago
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
oh boy, arent they like 200 kg of angry meat?
- GiorgioG 4y ago
  Big enough that when the cousin he was with returned with adult help, the sow had shredded all of his clothes and he had bites all over his body.
- wahern 4y ago
  As a kid I briefly lived in a rented trailer on a smallish farm which grew mustard greens and raised hogs. The owner was missing half an ear, taken by a hog. At least, that was the story he told when he caught me one day about to stick my hand into the hog pen. True account or not, the lesson is true all the same: hogs eat people, and angry or hungry hogs are not to be trifled with.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    But some can be truffled with.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  The largest domestic breeds push up to 300 to 400 kilos. We had one free-range pig on our farm that was certainly over a quarter-tonne, and she was agile enough that she'd occasionally run down chickens and eat them, and jaws strong enough to chew up cow skulls left over from home-kill. Pigs are generally smart and friendly if they haven't been mistreated. I would not want to mess with one.
  - jimmux 4y ago
    People like to joke about all the native Australian animals that can kill you, but the animal I was most afraid of as a farm kid was the feral pigs. I saw photos of recently shot pigs that were too big to fit on the back of a ute, and often found small trees completely uprooted by them. Fortunately the largest feral pigs I ever ran into were a litter and a small sow that preferred to scatter than stand their ground.
brezelgoring 4y ago
I've seen wild hog videos of them charging forward, full tilt against much larger animals. Things that would eat pigs for dinner, I tell you, they don't care and their charges mess you up.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  It is a funny quirk of evolution that herbivores or mostly herbivorous omnivores often end up being more aggressive than predators. The predator would prefer dinner that doesn't fight back!
yreg 4y ago
I visited Georgia (the country) a few years ago and their pigs were roaming freely around the villages. Here's a photo I took: https://imgur.com/a/ehETWOK https://imgur.com/a/ehETWOK
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  You could have also looked for pigs and cows at their tea plantations. Kinda surreal view.
  - yreg 4y ago
    I had no idea they had tea plantations, that's kinda surprising. Seems I need to go back.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      They are probably much harder to come by than in my days, but still exist: https://www.teaandcoffee.net/feature/2061/georgia-works-revitalize-tea-industry/ https://www.teaandcoffee.net/feature/2061/georgia-works-revi... With government support and private-sector interest, Georgia aims to rebuild its once highly regarded and significant tea industry – dating back to the Russian Empire – that was destroyed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In its history, first in the Russian Empire, then in the Soviet Union, Georgia played a crucial role in the tea market, producing at its peak up to 133,000 tonnes of packed tea per year from nearly 70 species, enjoying demand not only within the country, but also in some export destinations, including Mongolia, Iran and Afghanistan. However, this ended with the collapse of Soviet Union, when communism-style, tea-growing cooperatives appeared not to be ready for any competition with import supplies. As a result, the tea industry was almost completely ruined, as annual volume of production dropped to nearly 4,000 tonnes. Approximately 95 percent of tea plantations have been closed, while out of nearly 100 tea factories, only 12 are operating now.

skybrian 4y ago

It sounds a lot like sheep and shepherds. Hopefully, modern ideas of how sheep were taken care of are more accurate?

hardolaf 4y ago

I suspect that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has the pigs in their work accurate to what it was at the time and the author is taking sources about specific regions and then extrapolating over all of Europe. Yes, there are inaccuracies in most games, but I suspect that the author is also themselves inaccurate.

girvo 4y ago
What do you base that on? This seems like a pretty long bow to draw; pigs didn’t look like they do now, that’s a pretty accepted fact, even if you might quibble with their other points.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  Probably based on the sheer level of detail and research that went into making that game.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    It’s easy to overlook something and get it wrong. And they also took plenty of artistic liberties, like having highly anachronistic clothing and armor for Hungarian Cumans in the setting.
    - hardolaf 4y ago
      And it's very easy for an author of an opinion piece such as this to overlook something or over extrapolate something or assume that medieval drawings are accurate. In the case of this article, most of what the author has cited is information about the British Isles and then extrapolated that information to cover all of Europe even though regional differences almost certainly existed and things likely changed over time as well. It's not like the world was just static for 600+ years.
      - girvo 4y ago
        These are expert historians, not random people posting an "opinion piece". Do you have information they don't that shows that they're wrong here?

PeterCorless 4y ago

Part of this is because without full-time pig herders, the pigs tend to go feral and cause a hell of a lot of damage. There are huge numbers of feral pigs in America. They can be quite dangerous: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco-cal...

ummonk 4y ago

I once read about a medieval case where a sow and her piglets attacked and killed a random villager. The medieval court sentenced the mother to death but concluded that the offspring were too young to know right from wrong and were acting under the influence of their mother, ruling them innocent.

technothrasher 4y ago
There's an old book from about 1906 where the author goes through a bunch of old European cases of animals being tried in court for crimes. It's an interesting and bizarre read. https://archive.org/details/criminalprosecut00evaniala https://archive.org/details/criminalprosecut00evaniala
- mellavora 4y ago
  It also is one of the (potential) bases for laws regarding self-driving vehicles/robots/drones. Because law builds on precedent. And it can be argued that self-driving vehicles are a bit like an animal (has a "mind" of its own, but has a human owner responsible for it).
ChoGGi 4y ago
I'm sure it was just a suspended sentence.

linksnapzz 4y ago

The practice, and the woodland used for it, is called pannage. Somebody below pointed out that it's still done in the New Forest in England. You used to have the right to fatten your pigs by letting them go root around in the forest during the late summer/early autumn. Pigs can eat acorns and beechmast just fine without processing; and in the late fall they get brought in and slaughtered. This also keeps underbrush down, fertilizes the forest floor, and is less smelly than keeping the pigs confined. Nicer for the pigs, too. There are lots of places around New England called "hog island", which was usually the place the farmer would row the pigs out to-uninhabited, and filled with oaks and beeches. Pigs are unwilling to swim too far from shore, keeping them on the island (and away from crops!) until bacon time. (Here is an article touching on the practice of pannage, and how it was related to the first indian wars in New England, as well as the Hog Island that I grew up near!) https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/courses/h170_MW_S13/s2/Bonus_Pigs_Conflict.pdf https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/courses/h170_MW_S13/...

jccooper 4y ago

In villages they probably managed to mostly keep the pigs under control, but in towns and cities there do seem to have been free-roaming pigs. They were known to eat babies on occasion, and the French, at least, liked to put them on trial for this (and execute them).