The death of a fat pig is as great an event in Spanish families, who generally fatten up one, as the birth of a baby; nor can the fact be kept secret, so audible is his announcement. It is considered a delicate attention on the part of the proprietor to celebrate the auspicious event by sending a portion of the chitterlings to intimate friends. The Spaniard’s proudest boast is that his blood is pure, that he is not descended from pork-eschewing Jew or Moor--a fact which the pig genus, could it reason, would deeply deplore. The Spaniard doubtless has been so great a consumer of pig, from grounds religious, as well as gastronomic. The eating or not eating the flesh of an animal deemed unclean by the impure infidel, became a test of orthodoxy, and at once of correct faith as well as of good taste; and good bacon, as has been just observed, is wedded to sound doctrine and St. Augustine. The Spanish name _Tocino_ is derived from the Arabic _Tachim_, which signifies fat. [Sidenote: PORK OF MONTANCHES.] The Spaniards however, although tremendous consumers of the pig, whether in the salted form or in the skin, have to the full the Oriental abhorrence to the unclean animal in the _abstract_. _Muy puerco_ is their last expression for all that is most dirty, nasty, or disgusting. _Muy cochina_ never is forgiven, if applied to woman, as it is equivalent to the Italian _Vacca_, and to the canine feminine compliment bandied among our fair sex at Billingsgate; nor does the epithet imply moral purity or chastity; indeed in Castilian euphuism the unclean animal was never to be named except in a periphrasis, or with an apology, which is a singular remnant of the Moorish influence on Spanish manners. _Haluf_ or swine is still the Moslem’s most obnoxious term for the Christians, and is applied to this day by the ungrateful Algerines to their French bakers and benefactors, nay even to the “_illustre Bugeaud_.” The capital of the Estremenian pig-districts is _Montanches_--mons anguis--and doubtless the hilly spot where the Duke of Arcos fed and cured “ces petits jambons vermeils,” which the Duc de St. Simon ate and admired so much; “ces jambons ont un parfum si admirable, un goût si relevé et si vivifiant, qu’on en est surpris: il est impossible de rien manger si exquis.” His Grace of Arcos used to shut up the pigs in places abounding in vipers, on which they fattened. Neither the pigs, dukes, nor their toadeaters seem to have been poisoned by these exquisite vipers. According to Jonas Barrington, the finest Irish pigs were those that fed on dead rebels: one Papist porker, the Enniscorthy boar, was sent as a show, for having eaten a Protestant parson: he was put to death and dishonoured by not being made bacon of. [Sidenote: A MEAT OMELETTE.]