The Legend of the Demonic Pig of Cornmarket
The legend of the Dolocher monster roaming Cornmarket for innocent victims was tied to the Black Dog Prison, which has its own entry. A man by the name of Olocher was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a woman. The morning he was scheduled to be hanged, he committed suicide and “escaped the disgrace of being conveyed through the streets, exposed to the silent execrations of the multitude, on a cart to Gallows Green” (in those days, the common place of execution, now Baggot Street Lower).
The next night a sentry in Cook Street was found speechless and half paralysed with his gun by his side. He claimed that an apparition in the shape of a black pig had caused his condition, and for the next several nights the guards were called out and confirmed seeing a similar ghostly black pig.
The alarm which these sightings caused was only made worse by something that happened at the Black Dog prison. When a night guard did his rounds he found the guard stationed at the prison missing. All that remained of him was his clothes and gun. People at the time speculated that he had been completely devoured by Olocher who had taken the shape of a black pig, now commonly known as Dolocher.
The day after a woman reported that she saw Dolocher in Christ Church Lane and that it tried to bite, holding onto her cloak with his tusks. She left the cloak behind and escaped. Reports continued for nights on end, with the monster specifically attacking women.
A gang of “brave, resolute fellows” went out into the streets at night with the goal to rid the city of this demonic creature, and they slaughtered every black pig they met. At the time, there were lots of pigs running around Dublin, so much so that the bailiffs were obliged to also go out through the main streets, kill them with pikes, and carry off the bodies on carts.
Dolocher stopped appearing that winter, so the thinking was that one of the pigs killed in the slaughter must have been him. But the next winter he appeared again and continued to attack women, especially in the area around Christchurch. Panic spread, and people were afraid to go out at night.
The story of the Dolocher has a surprising end. One night, a blacksmith returning home from a tavern wrapped himself up in his friend’s wife’s cloak to keep dry in the rain. The friend’s wife then completed the outfit as a joke by adding a black beaver bonnet and sent him on his way. Just as the blacksmith reached Christchurch Cathedral, out rushed Dolocher and pinned him against the wall. The blacksmith was not that easily intimidated and hit Dolocher on the head. The pig creature collapsed on the ground and a few more kicks knocked him out of the fight completely. The smith loudly announced that he had killed the Dolocher and a crowd cautiously gathered. The devil creature was lifted up, and out of a black pig’s skin slipped the sentry who had supposedly been devoured wholly by the monster.
Before he died in hospital, the sentry confessed he had assisted Olocher with his suicide and that the first reports of the demon black pig had inspired him to don the skin of a pig to commit robberies.
Original source: The Dublin Penny Journal, November 1832.
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