'Pig in Boots' as told by Nanny Piggins

When the third son of a miller is left nothing more than a talking pig in his father's will, as punishment for becoming a vegetarian, he thinks he's had a raw deal. But this pig is a Piggins and therefore should not be underestimated.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Bedtime Stories with me, RA Spratt. Before we begin, there are a couple of things to mention. 

Tomorrow, on the 8th of July at 10.00am Sydney time I’m going to be doing a book launch for Shockingly Good Stories, the book based on this podcast. The launch will be live on Instagram so please feel free to tune in. 

If you’re overseas please triple check the time different, remembering that Australia is so far ahead of North America it’s not just a different hour, we’re a day ahead of you as well. So for you it will be some time in the evening on the 7th. 

Also, I’ll be taking questions. So if you do have a question for me, email it to raspratt@nannypiggins.com 

Okay, that’s it. Let’s get started with today’s story.

‘Pig in Boots as told by Nanny Piggins

It was a lovely summers day. So after a busy morning of running away from the truancy officer, Nanny Piggins and the children relaxing on deck chairs in their back garden while eating banana splits. 

The children could not have been happier or more content, because Nanny Piggins recipe for banana splits was the best in the world. That’s not just in her opinion. It was a scientific fact. You see, normally a banana split was a dessert made of a banana with several scoops of vanilla icecream on top and garnished with crushed peanuts. 

But Nanny Piggins had had the brilliant idea of replacing vanilla ice cream with chocolate ice cream, the crushed nuts with crushed chocolate and the banana with a great big chocolate bar. And the children had to agree this variation on the banana split was delicious.

 They were just savouring the last spoonsfuls of their desserts and enjoying the beautiful blissful sensation of the warmth of the sun combined with a raging sugar high when Nanny Piggins struck up a conversation, ‘Have I ever told you about my great aunt Essie?

‘Um,’ said Michael. It was getting hard to keep track of all Nanny Piggins fabulously glamorous relatives. The children had long wished they had started keeping a written record, perhaps with a wall chart and illustrations, when they first met Nanny Piggins and started hearing about these amazingly spectacular woman. But it was too late to start now, and as Nanny Piggins so often said, it was probably best not to keep a written record in case they should ever be called on to testify in court. Obviously they would then have to burn the wall chart to it couldn’t be used against their nanny. And setting fire to things never went well. If for no other reason that it always gave Nanny Piggins ideas about blasting things, then the next thing you knew you were borrowing a cannon from a war memorial and trying to beat a guinea pig in a blasting race.

‘I don’t think you have mentioned her before,’ conceded Samantha.

‘Have you ever heard the story of Puss in Boots?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Oh yes,’ said all three children. Relieved to hear her mention something they were familiar with.

‘Well that story is a load of old cobblers,’ said Nanny Piggins. 

‘It is?’ asked Derrick.

‘Totally fabricated,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Really?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You see it is a French fairy tale and the French are always doing reprehensible things if they think it adds glamour. Very superficial people.’

‘Nanny Piggins,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t think you can say that about an entire nationality.’

‘Not even if it’s true?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Especially if it is true,’ said Samantha.

‘I’ve been to their museums and art galleries and I know for a fact there are way too many naked ladies for my liking,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘I thought all art galleries were like that,’ said Michael.

‘What is it with artists?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘If the percentage of naked women in real life matched the percentage of naked women in paintings there would be a lot of very cold women walking around.’

‘They usually lie around in paintings,’ said Michael.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘So there would be a lot of cold women not getting anything done. Who would chase the ice cream vans, who would visit the cake shops, who would eat the chocolate if women just sat in bed all day. It’s an irresponsible representation.’

‘It’s probably just because it is easier to paint someone sitting down than someone being blasted out of a cannon,’ observed Michael.

‘True, I suppose,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘Anyway, I digress. Puss in Boots is an outrageous falsehood. For a start it should be called Pig in Boots. Because my great aunt was not a cat. She was staggeringly beautiful so of course, she was a pig.’

‘But she did wear boots, right?’ asked Derrick.

‘Well I suppose you could call them that,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Although she always referred to them as Jimmy Choo ankle cuts with satin crystal embellished mesh.’

‘Did she talk?’ asked Michael.

‘We Piggins don’t talk,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We converse. Sometimes we beguile. And occasionally we denounce.’

‘Did she converse?’ asked Derrick.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s how it all got started. You see there was a very rich miller. Whoever would have thought money could be made from grinding wheat into flour. But apparently it could.’

‘You do need flour to make cake,’ observed Derrick. 

‘True,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s hard to believe that something as wonderful to eat as cake comes from something as disappointing to eat as flour. Anyway, he was rich and then he died.’

‘Oh no,’ said Samantha.

‘Don’t be sad,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He’s fictional so he didn’t feel anything. And him dying is important to getting the story started. Because in his will he left something to each of his three sons. To the eldest he left his mill. To the middle son he left his cart. To the youngest son he left his pig.’

‘That’s an odd arrangement,’ said Boris.

‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The oldest two could use their inheritance to make a living. But the youngest could not. The miller did it to punish the youngest son.’

‘What did the youngest son do wrong?’ asked Derrick.

‘Was he so handsome that his father was jealous?’ asked Samantha.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Again with your obsession with physical appearances. Yes, he was devilishly handsome but that wasn’t why his father was so spiteful. He was angry with his youngest son because – he was a vegetarian.’

‘That made him angry?’ asked Derrick.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It is something weird about the human psyche – when a person decides to do something for personal moral reasons it gives the people around them cognitive dissonance. They see it as implied criticism for what they choose to eat and it makes them angry.

‘Really?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You humans have a never ending run of complex psychological hangups and deep seeded guilt isues when it comes to food. So that’s why he gave his youngest son a pig, you see.’

‘I don’t follow,’ said Michael.

‘He wanted the boy to grow so hungry he would be forced to compromise his principles and eat his pig,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

‘Wow, that’s cruel,’ said Derrick.

‘Father’s in the olden story days had a lot of issues to work through,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘There was no therapy or Oprah back then so they had no way of knowing how to cope with their problems.’

So the poor boy was cast out into the world with nothing more than a talking pig,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They walked along for several days searching for work but there was none to be found. He was a principled boy and he didn’t for a moment consider eating his pig, although he did cast sidelong glances at the Jimmy Choo ankle boots and mention the idea of selling them on ebay. But the pig stomped hard on his foot and soon put a stop to that idea. The boot had a stiletto heel and it is particularly painful to be stomped by a stilellot heel.

After a full week, the boy did begin to smell. So Aunt Essie stopped and insisted that he had to take a bath in the river because she didn’t mind tramping the countryside but she refused to tramp with someone who smelled and had not been left any deodorant by his miserly father’s will.

So the boy stripped down and jumped in the river.

‘All the way to the nudey rudey?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Aunt Essie was a stickler for hygiene. As she was waiting for him to scrub behind his ears she spotted a carriage coming along the road. And this carriage was so ornate and ostentatious. It was surrounded by outriders and escourts she knew at once it must be the carriage belonging to the king.

And in that moment she had a brilliant idea.

She stole the boys clothes. Hid them in a bush. Then waved down the carriage and called out to the king, pleading for help for her master. She said that she was owned by the Duke of Banbury Skittlekins. He had just been robbed of all his money and clothes by a band of fifty highway ruffians.

The king was horrified. He sent his servants to help this Duke and dress him in his own fine clothes and bring him up into his own fine carriage.

When the boy got into he carriage he really did look a treat. Purple velvet suited him. He looked so good that of course the Princess fell in love with him at first site. It was bound to happen the only men she ever saw were the outriders and they were always son horse back, so she only ever saw their bottoms as they passed by the windows of the carriage and for many men this is not their finest angle.

‘Let us take you home,’ said the King. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Ah, um,’ said the boy.

Aunt Essie quickly looked out the window and pointed to the first building she could see. On a distant hilltop there was a castle.

‘He lives over there,’ said Aunt Essie.

‘That’s a lovely residence,’ said the King. ‘And you are a bachelor, you say?’ 

The boy nodded.

The Princess blushed.

Although the boy was secretly terrified because he didn’t own that castle, and he had no idea who did. But he couldn’t imagine that whoever it was would like a king, a princess, a pig and a penniless iterant millers son turning up at their door.’

When they arrived at the castle door. 

‘Just you wait here in the carriage,’ said Aunt Essie. ‘I’ll just pop my head in and make sure the servants rememberd to do the vaccumming.’

She leapt out of the carriage and ran up to the front door. 

‘Now it just so happened that inside the castle lived a real duke,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘And he did like eating bacon and that was the end of aunt Essie?’ asked Michael.

‘Don’t’ be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He was a duke! He had impeccable manors. He would never dream of eating a house guest no matter how delicious they might be or how expensive their designer ankle boots should appear.’

But this Duke was thoroughly tired of living in a great bit castle. There was always so much walking to do, from the kitchen to the dining room to the bedroom. He would sometimes get 30,000 steps in a day just from pottering about the house. He could get 1000 steps if he just had to get up to go to the bathroom in the night. So when a precosious pig turned up on his doorstep and just flat out asked him, ‘can we please have your castle.’ He didn’t even hesitate he cried, ‘Yes! Gave her a big hug and a kiss. Then rubbed his foot because she had stomped on his toes for presumptiosness. 

‘Are you sure,’ asked Aunt Essie. She had read many fairy tales and she didn’t want this oen to degenerate into a multi-generation vengeance tale.

‘Oh yes,’ said the Duke, ‘I’ve been looking at tiny houses on the internet. I’ll buy myself one of those and park it in a nice spot in the forest down by the lake. It will be a much better life for me in my retirement.’

‘So they shook hands on it. The Duke hurried out the back door as Aunt Essie ushed the boy, the princess and the king inside.’

The king was super impressed with everything he saw. All the Princesses previous boyfriends and been annoying boys was long floppy hair, no job ambitiouns, wore pantaloons that hung down too low and listened to terrible music. Here was an actual Duke, with muscle tone like he’d done a days work in his life not to mention a talking pig.

‘Would you like to marry my daughter?’ asked the King.

‘Dad!’ exclaimed the Princess. ‘You’re being embarrassing. We only just met.’

‘This lad is a catch,’ said the King. ‘Youd’ be a fool not to snatch him up.’

‘No,’ said the boy.

‘What?!’ cried Aunt Essie.

‘I can’t in good conscience,’ said the boy. ‘I may look fabulous in the fine clothes. And I may have inexplicably been gifted this spectacular home. But I am just a boy with nothing more to my name than a talking pig and the ability to mill flour.’

The Princess gasped. ‘You can mill flour?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’s aid the oby. ‘I grew up in a mill.’

‘I know how to bake cake,’ said the Princess.

‘And my people love to eat cake,’ said the king. ‘This is match made in heaven.’

‘So they got married. The boy made the flour, the girl made the cake and it was soon the happiest kingdom in all the land. The end time for bed.’