ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

So, there's this old ballad, meant to be sung as a duet. There's one line that I never quite understood, which is "you know a hog must root." See:

My initial guess was it's the woman in the story describing that she wants her home a certain way, same as a pig wants its wallow a certain way. It occurred to me later that maybe the sense is more like "because I know you will never change."

Could be a sexual meaning, but given the rest of the song that seems unlikely?

zenten,

@ZachWeinersmith rooting is how they look for food, but yeah, I also don't get it

jedidiah,

@ZachWeinersmith Could it mean she will keep him working hard and won’t let him rest? Pigs were worked to root out truffles

4raylee,
@4raylee@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ZachWeinersmith The whole song makes that stanza clearer. She's saying he can't change his ways any more than a hog could not root. She's calling him a liar.

http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/gambling-suitor--ella-shifflet-va-1956-chase.aspx

JoeUchill,
@JoeUchill@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Having a hog root meant letting the hog free into the wild to find its own food and fend for itself.

It lead to a popular Appalachian phrase.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_hog_or_die#:~:text="Root%20hog%20or%20die"%20is,idiomatic%20expression%20for%20self-reliance.

NinjaDebugger,
@NinjaDebugger@mastodon.sandwich.net avatar

@ZachWeinersmith This is a medieval version of "I would do anything for love (but I won't do that)"

Bro's saying he won't go out and presumably cheat on her, and she's like "bull fucking shit you won't."

Same as it ever was.

peltast,

@ZachWeinersmith They're all sexual. Just have to be worded innocuously to get around the societal norms. Translation:

  1. oh, you're courting me again, I told you get lost
  2. I have a big hard dick
  3. You have a big dick and a nice face, but you go out with other women
  4. I'm innocent! I'll be faithful!
  5. Did I mention my big dick?
  6. Yes you're handsome, but you're not fucking me, I know your ways you pig, get lost
mansr,
@mansr@society.oftrolls.com avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Or maybe it's all innuendo. How dirty is your mind?

wikkit,
@wikkit@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Not “I know you won’t change” but “because it’s in your nature”. She doesn’t believe he’ll stay around.

timbray,
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

@ZachWeinersmith [farm family] Hogs are always rooting around looking for food and will dig for it. Thus the truffle finding pigs of France.

timbray,
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Very transactional, that tune.

DrorBedrack,

@ZachWeinersmith i think it's about the hog digging for roots, so the meaning is "you will not rest the house, you will have to work to provide"

ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

@DrorBedrack Oh! That's interesting and makes more sense than any of my ideas!

ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

One other guess would be that she's saying "that's just how it's going to go" ?

None of these sounds perfectly right to me, so I'm guessing I'm just missing something or else it's an old enough song that some of the sense has been lost.

markrstoll,

@ZachWeinersmith I think your first guess is right -- that she knows he'll never change.

ersatzmaus,

@ZachWeinersmith I read it more as “I'm not going to change”: No means no.

samloonie,

@ZachWeinersmith I'm reading it as her belief that his abandoning her to go gambling is inevitable; she said this in an earlier stanza and repeats this by referring to an instinctive behavior in pigs.

LastEquinoxx,
@LastEquinoxx@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Could it be linked to this expression?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_hog_or_die

johnhattan,
@johnhattan@dobbs.town avatar

@ZachWeinersmith seems like a vulger addition to "bird's gotta fly, fish gotta swim".

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