Pig in a poke

Do you ever write something, then sit back and wonder whether you just invented a word or phrase ? Sometimes even the most ordinary word can suddenly look alarmingly new and imagined.

The other week I wrote a letter to the paper, and used the phrase 'pig in a poke'. 

It's not a phrase I use often, and I thought it referred to a medieval concept of someone buying something without first checking carefully, and then finding that they had bought something inferior and different. For example, the seller would say he was selling a pig (valuable) , and the buyer would only find out when he got home and opened the sack that he had just become the proud owner of a cat (not valuable).

The 'poke' comes from the French and means 'bag' or 'sack', and the word is familiar from trouser technology where you have two little sacks or 'pockets'. Hah. 

Anyway, I was pleased with my letter until bloganonymous Colorado son rang to say he did not know the phrase and had had to look it up.  He has been in the States a long time now, and is maybe losing his grip on english English.

I rushed to check, to make sure that it meant what I thought, or was even a bona fide phase.

To my complete astonishment, I discovered that the phrase exists in about forty languages, and the concept is always the same, though the animals differ, maybe according to local cuisine. The Germans have 'to buy a cat in a sack' and that seems to be the Eastern European version, too.

The majority of the languages refer, like German, to what was actually in the bag: the cheap and cheating feline.

Zulu, Estonian, Swedish, Irish, English, Greek refer to what was thought to be in the bag: that tasty expensive sausage kit. 

A few mention fish and hares, but mostly it is pigs and cats centre stage.

What does this tell us ? Was animal fraud so common that it became almost a linguistic universal ? And if it was so common, why weren't buyers more savvy ? After all, they don't even need to open the sack. Just poking the poke might help to see whether you got a pained oink or a peeved miaow before you handed over the shekels.

I will have to be much more careful in future in my choice of phrases. But it was OK when the letter appeared in the paper and I got no complaints. Nobody gave a toss, gave a monkey's, batted an eyelid.


OMG. 
 
It's a minefield.