"The Scots (Lowlanders), till within the last generation, disliked swine's flesh as an article of food as much as the Highlanders do at present. Ben Jonson, in drawing James's character,[187] says he loved no part of a swine."[188]
[187] King James VI of Scotland and I of England.
[188] Ben Jonson's reference is in _A Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies_.
Dr. Johnson wrote in his _A Journey to the Western Highlands in 1773_:
"Of their eels I can give no account, having never tasted them, for I believe they are not considered as wholesome food.... The vulgar inhabitants of Skye, I know not whether of the other islands, have not only eels, but pork and bacon in abhorrence; and, accordingly, I never saw a hog in the Hebrides, except one at Dunvegan."
"In the year 1691 a question was put, 'Why do Scotchmen hate swine's flesh?' and", says J. G. Dalyell,[189] "unsatisfactorily answered, 'They might borrow it of the Jews'." As the early Christians of England and Ireland did not abhor pork, the prejudice could not have been of Christian origin. It was based on superstition, and as the superstitions of to-day were the religious beliefs of yesterday, the prejudice appears to be a survival from pagan times. An ancient religious cult, which may have originally been small, became influential in Scotland, and the taboo spread even after its original significance was forgotten. The Scottish prejudice against pork existed chiefly among "the common people", as Dr. Johnson found when in Skye. Proprietors of alien origin and monks ate pork, but the old taboo persisted. Pig-dealers, &c., in the Highlands in the nineteenth century refused to eat pork. They exported their pigs.[190]
[189] _The Darker Superstitions of Scotland_ (London, 1834), p. 425, and _Athenian Mercury_, V, 1, No. 20, p. 13.
[190] The south-western Scottish pork trade dates only from the latter part of the eighteenth century. There was trouble at Carlisle custom house when the Lowland Scots began to export cured pork, because of the difference between the English and Scottish salt duty. "For some time", complained a Scottish writer on agriculture, in June, 1811, "a duty of 2s. per hunderweight has been charged." Dublin was exporting pork to London in the reign of Henry VIII. A small trade in pork was conducted in eastern Scotland but was sporadic.