Scotland, (1897-1999)
THE FANCY PIG
- There used to be a pig on Princes Risborough hill:
- A fat white sow on the road, lying quite still.
- Every time I went there, and most of all at night,
- I thought I should see that pig in my yellow head-light.
- But every time, at the top, there had been no pig there,
- Only beech hedges in the cool, waiting air,
- Only leaves stirring in the dark air’s flow,
- And this time again my Thing had let me go.
- What was the pig of mine, this fancy pig,
- With light hairs on her hams, and her udders big?
- Was she once a real sow in a Bucks farm-yard,
- Then pork, ham, trotters, pig’s fry and lard?
- Or was she something in me which I so needed to kill
- That! had to grow her a body on Princes Risborough hill?
- Or was she something else that was neither me nor her
- But a stray twist of fancy on a chalk road’s blur?
- For all I know, she may be lying there still,
- Waiting these seven years on Princes Risborough hill.
- For I never go there now, by day nor yet by night,
- With clutch and brakes and steering, and yellow head-light;
- I never go there now, where often I have been,
- The long beech-twigs lightly brushing my wind-screen.
- But some other woman, with pigs in her to kill,
- May have run down my fancy sow on Princes Risborough hill.
About the Poet:
Naomi Mary Margaret (Haldane) Mitchison, Scotland, (1897-1999), was a poet, biologist, nurse and novelist. She wrote over 90 books covering a wide range of genre including poetry, historical fiction, science fiction, travelogue and autobiography. Mitchison’s finest novel The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) is regarded by some as the best historical novel of the 20th century.
Following her father John Scott Haldane and elder brother J. B. S. Haldane, Mitchison initially pursued scientific career. From 1908 she and her brother started investigating Mendelian genetics. Their publication in 1915 became the first demonstration of genetic linkage in mammals. But while a diploma student at Society of Oxford Home Students (later St Anne’s College, Oxford), the First World War broke out that changed her interest to nursing.
Her husband, Gilbert Richard Mitchison, become a life peer in 1964, she was also entitled to call herself Lady Mitchison, but never used the title herself. Mitchison was a vocal feminist, particularly campaigning for birth control. We Have Been Warned (1935) is regarded as her most controversial work due to explicit sexuality. The book was rejected by leading publishers and ultimately censored. She was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1981. [DES-03/22]