Art Photos People Pictures of a Traditional Pig Killing 2

Art Photos People Pictures of a Traditional Hungarian Pig Killing 2

Traditional Hungarian Pig Killing Day photo reportage series by photographer Paul E Williams.

“In 2007 I spent Christmas, as I often did, at the house of actress Mari Törőcsik and her husband film director Gyula Maar in Velem Hungary. After Christmas their neighbours were having a traditional pig killing day and I eagerly went along to photograph it. This was not some morbid wish on my part but I had long wanted to see a tradition that would have been normal throughout the whole of Europe not so many years ago.

Perhaps tradition is a bad word because pig killing days were part of the annual cycle for country families throughout Europe. Pigs, who were great foragers and dustbins for household waste, were reared through the summer and fattened to be eaten in the depths of winter when food stock dwindled. Several families would join in a pig killing and the preparation of salted meats, sausages and other products which they would then share.

Winter Pig Killing

Throughout the winter the pig killings were staggered so that the families had a supply of meat through most of the winter. Apart from being the families dustbin. pigs were also valued because of the low wastage from butchering them. The old maxim was that the only thing left from butchering a pig was its squeak.”

By 2007 few families kept pigs in Velem where as 10 years earlier, when I first stayed there, nearly all families reared pigs for winter meat. The pig was purchased from a pig rearer and under Hungarian law the pig was killed humanly by a vet early on a cold snowy morning of the 28th of December.

Butchering The Pig

A man who specialised in butchering pigs and took a share of the produce came early to start butchering the pig. It was held up on a wood tripod by its back legs and fires were lit under cauldrons of water that would be used to cook meat and offal from the pig for use in sausages and salamis.

The carcass was jointed into meat that was good for salting to make bacon, fresh meat joints for immediate eating and meat and offal that was good for neither and would be used in sausages and salamis. It took all day to butcher the pig and prepare the produce but by the end of the day the family had bacon, joints of meat, blood sausage, white sausage, salamis, kolbasz, brawn and a tiny bucket of scarps for the dog.

Thanks For The Hospitality

I thank the family for letting me watch such an old tradition which has probably stopped now and for the meal we shared in the evening. The families grand parents have died since and the young wife of the family found the effort of the process rather arduous so I suspect that they no longer kill pigs in winter.

Many of the sausages and salamis they produce though are not available commercially so maybe this pressure will keep pig killing alive for a little longer but certainly their children will not carry on the practise. Thanks to all and thanks to Mari and Gyula, who are also dead now, for the hospitality over the years in Velem.”

Paul E Williams 2023