The Spaniards say, "Echar magaritas a puercos," and this throwing of pearls before swine re-appears in English proverb-lore, and, indeed, much further afield. To "buy a pig in a poke" is to make a purchase without knowing really what one is buying. The alliteration has, no doubt, given the saying an added popularity. In France it is, "acheter chat en poche," or "acheter le chat pour le lièvre," a cat being palmed off as a hare on the incautious purchaser. We see now, too, how a determination to see for oneself would "let the cat out of the bag," and expose the trickery of the proceeding. When a man has heedlessly made a bad bargain he is said, ironically, to have "brought his pigs to a pretty market"--the advantageous sale of his pig being a very important matter to the country cottager, meaning the payment of his rent, the clearing of the score at the village shop, and his general rehabilitation in the ranks of the solvent.[172:A] The generally unsympathetic and unsociable nature of the pig and his human counterparts is expressed in such sayings as: "Feed a pig and you will have a hog," and "What can you expect from a hog but a grunt?" while its "wallowing in the mire," and being well content to have it so,[172:B] has also been utilised as a warning. A bit of homely advice, quaintly put, is found in this--"Do not drive black hogs at night." "Much cry and no wool" is the result of shearing swine, a hopeless task. The adage is often met with. In Fortescue's treatise on "Absolute and Limited Monarchy," written over four hundred years ago, we find a reference to "the man that scheryd his hogge, moche crye and no wull." In a book published in 1597 it runs: "Of the shearing of hogges there is great crie for so little wolle," and we find the saying again in "Hudibras" and many other books, and in old plays. In "Hudibras," too, may be found the equally familiar expression, "wrong sow by the ear," a proverb of great antiquity that occurs frequently in the old dramas. We are told by some etymologists that the sow in question is not porcine at all, but is a large tub with handles. Sowsed meat is meat that has been in pickle in one of these sows. To have got the wrong sow (by the ear or handle for facility of moving) is to have brought the wrong vessel. To confirm this view they quote the old Latin proverb, "Pro amphora urceolus"--instead of the great amphora you have brought me a small pitcher. Either reading will serve the turn, and is of like significance in application--the warning against getting hold of an entirely wrong idea and hammering away at it.