H.E. Bates Companion

Fortifying himself with repeated swigs of "medicine," Uncle Silas relates a tall tale to his nephew and the boy's grandparents involving a sow that died in her last litter "singing to the end." The narrator closes by reflecting that "perhaps there are no singing pigs; and perhaps it would be silly, in any case, to cry for them if there were. But then there are a great many people, as my Uncle Silas pointed out, who can't sing either, and I can think of quite a few who do not move me half so near to tears as my Uncle Silas's dying sow and her gentle song." In Evening Standard (August 14, 1956), Sugar for the Horse (1957).