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# European legend of the wealthy pig-faced heiress and its French origins
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/siuzhet-o-devushke-so-svinymi-chertami-bytoval-v-evrope-s-davnikh-por/
- Published: 2021-04-14T20:38:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:05:25.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Mores, Ethnography

The tale of the girl with a pig's features has been current in Europe since time out of mind. The urban legend, in one version or another, told of a pregnant woman cursed by a beggar-woman because the haughty rich lady had likened the beggar's children to swine. As a result, a shapely little girl with a pig's snout is born into the world. The only daughter, destined to inherit the family fortune, lives as a recluse and is condemned to solitude by her looks, until she is loved by a man who can see the beauty of her soul behind the porcine visage. The story goes back to two French legends in which a woman who has given offence is made to bear 365 children, or a child with the face of a pig. The folk tale was current not only in France but also in the Netherlands, Ireland and, above all, England. Right up to the middle of the 19th century one meets with reports of a wealthy pig-faced heiress living in this town or that. The curiosity of connoisseurs of such anecdotes was kept warm by fairground showmen, who presented pig-ladies to the public by shaving bears bald and dressing them in women's clothes

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