When pigs fly

In his Fourth Book of Gargantua and Pantagruel from 1553, François Rabelais makes the aphorism into a dramatic event, when the giant Pantagruel fights the Chitterlings and its champion, "a huge, fat, thick, grizzly swine, with long and large wings, like those of a windmill.

There are numerous variations on the theme; when an individual with a reputation for failure finally succeeds, onlookers may sarcastically claim to see a flying pig.

When he eventually became a novelist, he started to print every book he wrote with the Dog Latin motto "Ad astra per alia porci" (intended to mean 'to the stars on the wings of a pig').

[10][11][12][13] In Latin this is grammatically incorrect because alia means 'other things',[14][15] while alas would be the accusative form of 'wings' after the preposition per.

[16][17] Steinbeck wrote in a letter that he regarded Pigasus as a symbol of himself, to show he was "earthbound but aspiring [...] not enough wingspread but plenty of intention".

Pigasus was also a flying pig character in the Oz books written by Ruth Plumly Thompson in the 1930s.

His riders gained the gift of poesy, being magically compelled to speak in rhyming jingles while on his back.