The "Tale" installment of Barclays' "Fluent In Finance" campaign of the early 00s presented us with an enticing marketing hook; a sort of demented take on Jackanory, as delivered by a lone Samuel L Jackson wandering through a snow-covered woodland. Jackson regaled us with a cautionary fable about a guileless pig who meets his match in a legion of ravenous bears, albeit one comprised so heavily of idioms and analogies as to seem borderline unintelligible. Jackson's story gets pretty bizarre, so let's try and decipher it as we go along.
"This little piggy went to market..."
The opening to a traditional children's nursery rhyme, in which each line is counted out upon an infant's toes, and each toe linked to one of five corresponding pigs who each met various fates. Of course, the notion of a pig going to market is in itself kind of sinister, as it's a scenario that seldom bodes well for the pig. Already we have a sense of an innocent heading off to their doom.
"He had a monkey on his shoulder and a skip in his step."
A seemingly contradictory mishmash of idioms. To have a skip in one's step suggests that someone is happy and carefree, but to have a monkey on one's back (or shoulder) implies the opposite, indicating that someone is beset by a persistent problem or bad habit of which they need to be rid. This becomes less confusing when we consider that "monkey" is also a Cockney slang term for 500 pounds sterling, suggesting that this little piggy is financially quite well off. The fact that his "monkey" is positioned on his shoulder (of all places) is foreboding, suggesting that there is trouble for the pig on the horizon. Perhaps his problem is his simple naivety, which is about to land him in a dangerous predicament indeed.
"On the way he met a matador. "You going to market?" the matador said. "Indeed I am," said the pig. "Where you going?" "Home," said the matador. "Today's a bear market and I'm a bull man."
There's nothing in this enigmatic exchange that can't be explained with a little investor jargon. A "bull market" refers to a market on the rise, marked by economic growth and stability, whereas a "bear market" refers to a receding market. Naturally, the bear market is the riskier of the two to invest in. They are so-called for the attacking motions each animal makes when it goes on the offensive; a bull attacks by thrusting its horns upwards into the air, whereas a bear swipes its claws in a downward motion. Obviously, an optimist like the pig is liable to get eaten alive in a bear market; our malaise is reinforced by the indication that there are predatory animals (whether literal or not) up ahead.
"The little piggy skipped on. Soon he found himself being turned over and under by hungry bears. They ate the shirt from his back, turned his monkey into a hill of beans."
To take the shirt from someone's back means to plunder their economic resources to the point of causing them serious hardship. A hill of beans is something of negligible value. So clearly, the pig did not do well by investing his £500 in the bear market.
"The moral of this is this: don't go to market unless you know who you're dealing with."
Self-explanatory. All that's left is for the pig to exit, pursued by a bear.
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