Donald Alexander Mackenzie gave a lecture on the Scottish pork taboo in 1920[1] when he explained his idea that prejudices against pork-eating could be traced back to a centuries-old religious cult.
When he published these theories in the 1930s, he suggested the taboo was imported to Scotland in pre-Roman times by Celtic mercenaries, influenced by the cult of Attis in Anatolia.
[7] Among the many superstitious notions and customs prevalent among the lower orders of the fishing towns on the east coast of Fife, till very recently, that class entertained a great horror of swine .
[8] Mackenzie disagreed with Edward Burt, whose Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland (1754)[9] discusses an “aversion” to pork in the Highlands, but says it is not “superstitious”.
Because of deforestation, a loss of beech mast and acorns for feeding pigs occurred, and potatoes were not produced in sufficient quantity to offer a useful alternative until the late 18th century.
He summed up: In the years of the 18th century and probably earlier, swine were rarely raised in Scotland, particularly in the Scottish Highlands, and subsequent writers have gone so far as to postulate the operation of a taboo on the eating of pork.
Unfortunately there is almost nothing known today about local sentiments of that era, and we have only the intellectual rationalizations of educated writers who all too easily found an explanation for the scarcity of pigs in the assumption that a 'foolish prejudice' was at work.
[11] In contrast to the alleged tastes of country folk, pigs were supplied to the royal household for the table of Mary, Queen of Scots, from former monastic lands.
(Ardchattan, County of Argyle) Account of 1791–99, volume 6, page 177)[13] Twentieth-century historian Christopher Smout speaks of "a universal superstitious prejudice".