When Dublin was Terrorised by a Giant Demonic Pig!
While attending the WorldCon, your safety is of paramount importance to the stalwarts managing Dublin 2029. Therefore, should you be menaced by a giant Boar or Pig, of a dark colour, with a whiff of sulphur about it, please let us know. You may have encountered the Dolocher!
You may well have heard of the Liberties district of Dublin, these days regarded as being almost, but not quite, in the city centre. It has a much storied history, not least the origin of its name. Slightly closer to the city centre is the area of Cornmarket, which once contained the Black Dog prison. This was primarily a debtors prison, as the name suggests – the word gaol was used for those convicted of more heinous crimes like murder or rapine. The Black Dog occasionally held prisoners convicted of such severe crimes awaiting execution. And this is where our story starts. Please be aware that like much folklore involving death and the other world, this story involves violent crimes committed against women.
A Wicked Man Gets His Just Reward
At some point in the 1820s or earlier, a man by the name of Olocher was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young woman. If this name sounds slightly French to you, that may not be a coincidence. The area of the Liberties and its surrounds were heavily populated by Huguenots escaping France in the 17th century. They brought many industries with them, notably the linen trade; to this day there are streets in the district called Weaver Street and the like.
The morning he was scheduled to be executed, the wicked Olocher hanged himself in his cell; the sources tell us that by doing this, he “escaped … the disgrace of being conveyed through the streets, exposed to the silent execrations of the multitude, on a cart to … the common place of execution.” This journey would have been across the city from the south-west to the south-east.
The following night, in neighbouring Cook Street, a sentry on the Steps was found paralysed and speechless with fright, with his gun laid to his side. He was taken to the prison hospital where it transpired that he had been paralysed on one side by a stroke. The guard, when he had recovered his wits, declared that he had been attacked by a very large, dark-coloured pig. For the next several nights, guards and sentries alike reported the appearance of this fearsome apparition.
This story now takes a grim turn back to the Black dog prison itself, when the midnight sentries came to relieve their fellows from the previous shift. One sentinel at the prison had disappeared! Searching behind his sentry box revealed what at first appeared to be a figure of a man dressed in the absent sentries clothes. Closer inspection revealed that this was in fact the absent sentry’s gun, with his uniform draped upon it. Naturally it was immediately assumed that the poor Sentry had been devoured by the Great Pig.
The Terror Begins!
The following day, a woman came to the magistrates of the city and swore that she had been attacked by this Frightful Pig in Christ Church Lane. In her testimony she referred to the pig as the Dolocher, the name by which this legendary assailant became known ever since. If you have heard a Dublin accent, the origin of this name will be clear; to the untrained ear, a Dublin person saying ‘the’ may sound like ‘de’, so ‘the Olocher’ morphs into D’Olocher and then Dolocher.
For several nights after this incident, women were attacked around the district by what they described as a giant dark pig. A terrible thought gripped the streets of Dublin; the wretched Olocher, tormented by his hatred of women and blaming them for his demise, had returned from Hell in this hideous form to stalk the streets, seeking to wreak his evil vengeance upon the women of the city.
Such was the terror in the Liberties and beyond that a vigilante group was established to hunt down and dispose of this Infernal creature. A group of men, armed with “clubs, rusty swords, knives and all such weapons as they could lay hands on”, and no doubt also fortified by what we would now call a few jars, set out to kill every single porcine creature in the city. The bailiffs of the city even came to assist them. The following morning left an extraordinary sight; not a city strewn with the bodies of those poor animals but the exact opposite. All the carcasses were gone. This was immediately attributed to supernatural agency, while the obvious explanation, in a 18th century city with extremes of poverty, was not explored.
The timing of our story, in the sense of the seasons, now becomes important. It seems that the previous events took place during the late winter and over the following weeks and months, after the porcine massacre, the Dolocher ceased his attacks. This was attributed to the resolute action of the men of the city, not to the more obvious explanation of the shortening nights of summer. That the latter was the more convincing explanation soon became clear; the Dolocher resumed his foul work the following autumn.
Our Frightful Conclusion
But now we come to the end of the story, brought about by a blacksmith from the outskirts of Dublin town, who came to the Liberties on business. As you can imagine, given his profession, he was a big man; he is described in the sources as ‘brawny’. Once he was finished his dealings, he naturally went for a celebratory drink with some friends. It was already dark before they left the tavern and it had started raining, leading to the prospect of a damp walk home for our blacksmith, as he had no coat. The wife of one of his drinking buddies offered him a cloak and a bonnet. She apparently whispered to him “Take care of the Dolocher!” as he set off. In the phrasing of the time, this would mean ‘be careful of’, but it could also be taken to mean ‘do him in!’, though that interpretation may be my modern usage influencing me.
I’m sure you can see where this is going; as the blacksmith set out into the night in his feminine attire he was attacked by the Dolocher! The result was inevitable; the blacksmith held off the evil creature with one muscular arm, raised the other and exclaimed “Be ye Dolocher or Devil, or what ye may, take that!” and delivered the creature a massive box in the face. This of course was followed up with a ferocious beating, while the blacksmith roared to the surrounding homes that he had killed the Dolocher. He was soon joined by a vengeful crowd.
When the fight was over, it was found that the creature was in fact a man disguised with the skin from the head and shoulders of a black pig. But who was the man? None other than the original vanished guard from the Black Dog prison. It also transpired that he had been one of the ringleaders of the pig-slaughterers and had in fact been disposing of the pig carcasses (those that they were not immediately stolen) while he did his grizzly work, thus contributing to their mysterious disappearance and adding to the general sense of dread.
Reflections
This was a grizzly and unpleasant story, but yet it rewards examination. There is the first lesson, that someone charged with and rightly convicted of an attack on a woman would blame the victim and her gender for his calling-to-account. Then there is the woman who gave the blacksmith the coat and bonnet. Did she realise that the Dolocher was in fact a man who hated women and prayed upon them and wished to give him retribution by turning his misogynistic rage against him? I like to think so. That’s certainly the style or flavour in which I first heard the story.
The other thing to keep in mind is the timing. The newspaper report which forms the bulk of my source for this grisly tale was published in 1832, but it referred to these events as being some years in the past. Dublin had recently been through the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798, one of the bloodiest episodes in Irish history, and the rebellion of Robert Emmet in 1802. These events in turn took place against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars and indeed the Irish rebellions mentioned were heavily influenced by the French revolution, both politically and materially. Historians have often discussed how frightening or transgressive stories like this one emerge from times of deep uncertainty, when accepted norms and beliefs are challenged. I think it is fair to say that the incidents and the story of the Dolocher reflect that violence and turbulence in Dublin’s previous decades.
My last thought brings me back to my opening comment. The prison guard who played the part of the Dolocher to such horrifying effect was given such a hiding by the crowd who joined the blacksmith that he could barely speak. His testimony was so limited and short that it was not recorded, so we cannot know whether he accounted for all the nefarious activity attributed to the Demonic Pig. So if you find yourself wandering through the Liberties or nearby, tired after a day of Conventioneering, and you get a whiff of sulphur accompanied by grunting and snarling… do not tarry!
My sources for the story are threefold, the first and foremost being told the story as a child. The second was a lengthy article I read in a (disreputable) Sunday newspaper sometime around 1981 or 82. The third is the ‘Dublin Penny Journal’, volume 1, number 22, published on November 24 in 1832. The transcript of this newspaper article may be found here.
The artwork here is by Dylan Kirwan. Dylan is a graduate of the TU Dublin ‘Creative Digital Media’ Degree Programme, delivered on the Blanchardstown Campus.
The text is by Damian Mac Choiligh. He has no qualifications at all for this sort of thing.
My thanks to Prof. Catherine Cox of UCD School of History for her insights into this tale.