On Easter Monday 1834, so reported The Western Times of 5th April, there was, as usual, the Easter fair. The fair was held on the Quay, near to Exeter's Custom House and the sports were, among others, boat-racing, climbing a well-greased pole for a shoulder of mutton and a gingling match. (A gingling match, or more commonly a jingling match, according to Google, is a sport where a jingler jingles a bell and up to a dozen people, who are blindfolded, try to catch him or her.)
But in 1834 there was regrettably no appearance by Toby the pig. Toby seems to have been a favourite with the Exeter crowd. He was one of a tradition of well-documented, sapient, nineteenth-century pigs, mostly called Toby. The Times' reporter was at the fair:
".... we looked in vain for the sapient pig; whether the learned animal had gone out of his mind or had been engaged in any of the learned societies of the metropolis or had gone to graduate at either of the 'ancient universities,' at which there has been an exhibition of much pig-headedness amongst the learned - we know not, all we know is, that Toby was not to be seen in his accustomed haunts, and that our holiday friends who have been wont to add to their stock of knowledge from the fund possessed and diffused by this most learned pig, departed disappointed and dejected."
I thing the 'pig-headedness amongst the learned' at the universities must reflect The Times' attitude to the growing Oxford Movement which was much bothering the good protestants of Exeter and Devon at the time.
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