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Happy Saint Patrick’s Day from Special Collections! How about a turn of the old “Pig in the Parlor” to celebrate?
Nearly all of the immigrants and cultural forces that helped create Arkansas are reflected in the Ozark Folksong Collection preserved in Special Collections, the product of the folklore program led by Mary Celestia Parler for more than 25 years at the University of Arkansas. Among the more than 4600 songs and stories included in the project—all digitized and available to anyone around the world—are some old folksongs that journeyed with the Irish immigrants across the Atlantic. Other songs that originated in America still demonstrate the profound influence of the Irish on American culture.
An old American folk song collected and recorded by folklorists across the country including prominent Ozarks collectors such as John Quincy Wolf and Parler is “Pig in the Parlor.” One early version collected by Parler was shared with her dVance Randolphuring a dance party in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Weare of De Valls Bluff, Arkansas, November 14, 1953: http://digitalcollections.uark.edu/cdm/ref/collection/OzarkFolkSong/id/2863./
The song appears again as “My Mother and Father were Irish,” as sung by D. Lon Moore and collected by Joe Moore in Fayetteville, in 1963. The Ozark Folksong Collection includes 66 songs that either have Irish in title or include mentions of Irish in the lyrics.
Here is another version in the John Quincy Wolf Collection at Lyon College: http://web.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/ashpig1247.html.
The famed folklorist Vance Randolph categorized “Pig in the Parlor” (#522) as a “Play-Party Song” in volume three of his seminal collection, Ozark Folksongs. The version he included in the published collection was gathered at a “backwoods play party” near Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, in 1919. As a play party song, “Pig in the Parlor” was meant for group dancing (although called a game, or “play,” in order to stay out of trouble with local religious authorities), and Randolph includes directions for the callers and the dancers to use.
Pigs were essential means of income for Irish farmers. So common a feature in the life of the small Irish farm was a family pig that the stereotype of living with a pig in the house traveled with the Irish, and their songs, to America. The vast majority of Irish farmers were impoverished renters, and oppressive rent systems often entailed usurious fees for any additions to the property, including a pig sty, or even “luxuries” such as glass windows. The farmers depended on the income generated from the annual selling of a pig, or planned to have the meat available to supplement the often desperately lean food situation exacerbated by the mono-crop culture centered on the potato.
“Pig in the Parlor’s” lyircs can be heard, especially by American listeners more than 150 years removed form the Irish famine and Great Migration, as simply another example of stereotypes of the Irish used to make fun. The lyrics can also be read as alluding to the economic stress of the Irish farmers and the class anxieties that helped spur so many across the ocean in search of greener pastures (so to speak), and maybe even the freedom to build a sty for that old pig. Many Irish did consider their pigs to be clean and docile enough to live in the houses regardless of the necessity. And since the pigs were such “valued” members of the family, they would also presumably spend time in the parlor.
The food and culture blog Irish American Mom includes a fun piece digging a little bit into the meaning the “Irish Pig—a.k.a. The Gentleman Who Pays Rent.”
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