The Sheep-Pig Quotes

“When Babe, the little orphaned piglet, is won at a fair by Farmer Hogget, he is adopted by Fly, the kind-hearted sheep-dog. Babe is determined to learn everything he can from Fly. He knows he can’t be a sheep-dog. But maybe, just maybe, he might be a sheep-pig.”

″‘What’s that noise?’ said Mrs Hogger, sticking her comfortable round red face out of the kitchen window. ‘Listen, there ‘tis again, did you hear it, what a racket, what a row, anybody’d think someone was being murdered, oh dearie me, whatever is it, just listen to it, will?‘”

“When he had driven down to the village and made his delivery to the Produce Stall, Farmer Hogget walked across the green, past the Hoopla Stall and the Coconut Shy and the Aunt Sally and the skittles and the band, to the source of the squealing noise, which came very now and again from a small pen of hurdles in a far corner, against the churchyard wall.”

‘You do never win nothing,’ said Mrs Hogget at tea-time, when her husband, in a very few words, had explained matters, ′ though I’ve often thought I’d like a pig, we could feed ‘un on scraps, he’d come just right for Christmas time, just think, two nice hams, two sides of bacon, pork chops, kidneys, liver, chitterling, trotters, save his blood for black pudding, there’s the phone.”

Babe is the leading role. Babe was a little pig with no mother. He came to live with Farmer Hogget and his sheepdog, Fly. Babe wants to like Fly being a sheepdog. Fly loved Babe and taught him many sheepdog lessons. Babe was a clever and polite little pig.

“In the farmyard, Fly the black and white collie was beginning the training of her four puppies. For some time now they had shown an instinctive interest in anything that moved, driving it away or bringing it back, turning it to left or right, in fact herding it...She set them to work on Mrs Hogget’s ducks.”

But Mrs Hogget wanted to kill Babe. She wanted to make a Christmas dinner for the farmer. One day Babe helped his boss, Farmer Hogget. And he learned to talk to his sheep. Farmer Hogget made a plan. He wanted to take babe to the British Sheepdog Trials.

Lovely story of kindness and consideration trumping bullying and intimidation. Although clearly written in another age it is timeless, without being patronising, suitable for all children.

“All the long summer evening Babe has followed Fly about the yard and buildings, aimlessly, it seemed to the watching farmer, though of course this was not the case. It was in fact a conducted tour. Fly knew that if this foster-child was to be allowed his freedom and the constant reassurance of her company for which he obviously craved, he must quickly learn (and patently he was a quick learner) his way about the place; and that he must be taught, as her puppies had been taught, how to behave like a good dog.”

“You do as I do, ” said Fly, “and you’ll be all rights.” She thought or a moment. “There is one thing though, Babe, ” she said, and she looked across at the back door of the farmhouse, “if I go in there, you stay outside and wait for me, understand?” ‘Aren’t pigs allowed in there?” asked Babe. “Not live ones,” said one of the puppies, but he said it under his breath.