Swineherd

Swineherds in literature

• Hans Christian Andersen wrote a Fairy tale called, The Swineherd.
• In Greek mythology, Eumaeus was Odysseus' swineherd.
• In the Parable the Prodigal Son, the younger son wastes his inheritance and eventually has to become a swineherd.
• In Lloyd Alexander's books based on Welsh mythology, The Chronicles of Prydain, the hero is a pig keeper, or swineherd.
• The character Gurth, in Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe is a swineherd.
• The main character in the Disney film The Black Cauldron is a swineherd.
• Among Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's most famous work is the poem "Swineherd".
• The protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft's story, “The Rats in the Walls,“ has reoccurring nightmares of a bearded daemon swineherd.
• Mentioned as a class of labourer in the Statute of Labourers 1351
• In the Senchas Fagbála Caisil, "The Story of the Finding of Cashel", one of the earliest medieval Irish texts, the legend of the kingship of Cashel is told through several visions experienced by two swineherds, Duirdriu and Cuirirán.

Swineherds in paintings

• The Swineherd, a 1888 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin

  Swineherds in history

• Denewulf, Bishop of Winchester from 878 or 879 until his death in 908, began his life as a swineherd
• Ivaylo of Bulgaria, a swineherd who spearheaded a peasant uprising and became tsar of Bulgaria