About cats and pigs

Now that the hype and excitement of hosting the Fifa Soccer World Cup 2010 is behind us, some disillusionment is setting in on a number of fronts. Not least is the fact that the magnificent stadiums that were built to host 64 soccer matches over a period of eight weeks are going to cost us some serious money for many years to come. Maybe cats and pigs can tell us something about what happened.

Maybe we should now realise that when we decided to build those stadiums at huge costs we were actually buying a cat in the bag. We did not get for our money what we thought we were paying for.

This expression goes back almost six centuries when nifty salesmen at the town market would persuade people that a bag they were selling them contained a piglet fit for a feast. When the buyer eventually opened the bag it was often only to discover that it actually contained a very scared cat.

To get a cat in the bag simply means to be hugely disappointed with getting something worth a lot less than you bargained for when entering into an agreement or transaction.

That this sort of trickery does not only go back over the ages but  also  has been widespread, is well illustrated by the fact that almost the exact same expression is found in at least 31 languages from Europe to Indonesia.

But then it was and is not only the salesperson who is to blame in this sort of situation. The victim is often equally to blame for buying a pig in a poke (bag): making a blind purchase and not properly interrogating or inspecting what he or she is getting. This expression, according to an article in Wikipedia, was first recorded as early as 1530 describing the risky business of making a purchase without inspecting what you are paying for properly before parting with your money.

It is also true, as in the case of our impressive stadiums, that the truth eventually emerges. And, then the cat is out of the bag, the secret is out in the open.

This ancillary expression to the original cat in the bag, according to the same Wikipedia article was, as far as is known first used in print in an 1760 edition of The London Magazine.

There are those who still believe that we can make the stadiums pay their way. But then, maybe pigs do fly!

This expression, indicating mostly an impossibility and sometimes to describe over-ambition, seems to have become widely used in more modern times, but according to some sources has developed from a centuries-old Scottish proverb.