Pigs might fly...

I often wonder if those pigs will ever fly.

My dad couldn't help but say it whenever I came up with one of my ideas or plans.
“Yes, and pigs might fly.” He’d say.

Pigs might fly - a humourous/sarcastic remark, used to indicate the unlikeliness of some event or to mock the credulity of others; for example, "I might make a start on papering the back bedroom tomorrow". "Yes, and pigs might fly" – and indeed they might. I can’t remember the last time I papered a back bedroom.

Anyway, some of us know that pigs can fly. After all, the newspapers keep talking about 'swine flu' (sorry).

'Pigs might fly', or as some would have it 'pigs may fly', is an example of an adynaton, that is, a figure of speech that uses inflated comparison to such an extent as to suggest complete impossibility. Other examples are 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...' and 'Make a mountain out of a molehill'. Both of which I have done, much to the discomfort of the camel and it was a bloody big molehill in the first place – and you should have seen the size of that mole.

Why pigs? Well other creatures have appeared in similar phrases - 'snails may fly', 'cows might fly' and we all know about Dumbo the elephant… “I’ve seen a horse fly”, but it is pigs have stood the test of time probably because they are both cute and pink, like porky angels.

Lewis Carroll brought up the subject in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865:
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply... "Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly."

Then in 1909, in a humorous attempt (in the way the French find poo humerous) to prove that pigs can take to the air, the pioneer aviator Baron Brabazon of Tara, better known to his friends as John Theodore Cuthbert Moore Brabazon, took a piglet aloft in his private biplane, strapped into a wastepaper basket – a man after my own heart it would seem - mad as a choir of squirrels.

“Pigs might fly” my dad would say whenever I had one of my ideas or plans.
“Pigs might fly.”

And for a while, over the years, I guess they did. Who’d have thought that a kid like me would have had the life I’ve had. Of course it isn’t quite like it was at the moment but I’m still hopeful that I might catch a glimpse of the occasional flying pig.

Yes, my pigs may fly again.