The Pig Club
By M.C.Bradbrook, 1949
The celebration of the Pig Club was one of the prize-winning entries for the Girton Review’s Song Competition in 1949. St.John’s and Girton had at the end of the war joined a Government scheme for institutional Pig Clubs. It was a time of severe meat shortage and the students of that period greatly enjoyed the hams and bacon and sausages that came back to us from the official factory.
The sties were labelled Woodlands, Tower and Orchard. The devoted pigman’s name was Mansfield, Patricia Bridge was the Garden steward and John Strachey was the Minister of Food! Girton had a prize sow named Cleopatra, a truly noble animal. A momento of the Pig Club still survives, on one of the greenhouses. One year, when the Club’s profits were larger than usual, the balance was presented to the Head Gardener, for a much needed new greenhouse. Dr Helen Megaw added a handsome weathervane, in the shape of a pig!
Air: Annie Laurie
Lyrics
The Girton Pigs are bonny
When fattening in the sty.
But bonnier is the bacon
That on our plates will lie.
That on our plates will lie
Whithin a term or tway,
An it were not for the Pig Club
We’d simply fade away.
While Woodlands, Tower and Orchard
Consume the college swill,
The well known Girton figure
Remains a spheroid still,
Remains a spheroid still
(Especially on High):
An it were not for the Pig Club
We’d all lay down and die
Then let us drink to Mansfield,
And to Pat Bridge also,
To Saddlebacks and Essex
Fit for a County Show.
Fit for a County Show,
Gold medals in a row,
And pictures in the papers,
And strachey all aglow!
Napoleon said an army
Will march upon its tum:
So in our Tripos triumphs
The Pig Club’s name should come.
The Pig Club’s name should come
the top of every list,
For ah! without the Pig Club
Our First we should have missed!