Pig in a poke

[khiemtran]

Earlier today, I heard of a Finnish expression "Like buying a swine in a sack". We soon worked out it was the same as the English "pig in a poke" (based, apparently, on a scam involving selling a cat or some other animal in place of a suckling pig by hiding it in a bag). A quick look at wikipedia reveals remarkably close variants of the same phrase in dozens of languages.

This begs the question, was this the same scam going around medieval Europe (and Indonesia?!) in the same way we get Nigerian scam emails today, or was it just the expression traveling? Just how many times would the scam work anyway?

Comments

[zeborah]

I wouldn't be surprised if it went around and kept working. The Nigerian scam keeps working, after all. What I bet clever swindlers did was have two bags, one with a pig and the other with a cat. Show your mark the one with the pig and when they look away at the distraction your accomplice provides you switch the bags.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I guess it makes sense if there was some sort of illicit reason why the pig had to be in the bag... These piglets just happened to fall off the back of a cart, wink wink. Don't want the wrong people seeing them...

[zeborah]

I always assumed that it was in the bag because if it wasn't in the bag then in the forest before you could say "Pater noster"....