"Spanferkel Romanze"

Early chronicles describe the animal " to be stubborn and unfriendly". In some parts of the world, pigs were successfully domesticated. But in the Fertile Crescent, the semi-nomadic life of some known early tribes is partly blamed for the failure of domestication. The arid-dry land with limited water sources posed a big problem to pig herds who need a constant high amount of water. Its marauding ways, the type of feeding the animals do, often scavenging with its snout on many unclean things that it often took as feeds, added up to the general repugnance towards the animal and the unlikelihood of domestication. Thus swine was never considered part of livestock in the greater part of the Middle East, instead, pork became a prohibition that later was interpreted more like a religious and a cultural taboo.

In Europe, in the Middle Ages, Jews were often ridiculed as "red men" having skin pigment similar to that of pigs. Even the Jewish religious tradition of circumcision was grossly mistaken to be that process similar to the castration of male pigs. Legends, unfounded claims, and prejudices gave way to the thinking that Jews definitely would not eat their own kind.

Selling pork in the Middle Ages was a brisk business. "Porcatier" (the term for swine merchant in Medieval France), sold pork ensuring that profit would bring money to buy new piglets for the next slaughtering or selling season. Thus Porcatiers have their money, their meat for self consume and the piglets to continue the business, considered luck of sort that the Germans would then equate it to prosperity and that expression; "Schwein gehabt!" -- or to have luck or lucky. Wow, Swerte! etc. (But the typical expressions and metaphor that of a mess or a culture of disarray will always be omnipotent with that term "Schweinerei")

In the German-speaking region of Switzerland, I had a chance once to discuss with a Swiss chef about the traditional cuisine 'Spanferkel", the equivalent of our 'Lechon de Leche", that it must be a piglet (Ferkel), a suckling (Spana) of at least 2-month-old. Regions varied in their recipe and preparation, as he told me that the Italian-speaking region uses more spices like Rosemary in their "Porchetta". But of course, that same meaning of a hearty meal and that of luck is always imbued in the dish.

Incidentally, there is a Chinese character.... 家, it also describes: a “home” is a pig under a roof. In simple terms perhaps, it means "luck dwells in this house!

Asando un lechon. Roasting a suckling pig.
(Photo 1904/ Collecion Arias). Talk about what the Filipino people really gets from the pork barrels of congressmen - I thought they are roasting rate.