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The Great Escape: The Ballad of the Tamworth Pigs

We asked our house poet Martin Newell to muse on the subject

Martin Newell
Wednesday 14 January 1998 19:02 EST
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Two Tamworth pigs en route one day

From piggery to table

Both saw the hand of chance held out

And grabbed while they were able

Chorus:

"O not for us the butcher's knife

And not for us the stun-gun

For by the time the week is out

They'll know of us in London"

Out of the trailer, through a gap

To run where it might lead them

Since rasher moves are what succeed

Along the road to freedom

Now Tamworth pigs are ginger pigs

Resourceful, quick and gritty

And make up in athletics

What they miss in being pretty

For having gained some distance

From the slaughterhouse's thugs

They swam the River Avon

Like a chinese team on drugs

They foraged in some woodland

In a Malmesbury environ

Their trademark Tamworth trotter prints

Proclaimed these Pigs of Iron

And they became the heroes

Of a sentimental nation

As the Cassidy and Sundance

Of a porcine situation.

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