I really take umbrage at jokes about dumb animals.

Johnny Longstomach

Tales of Old Gornal
By JosephineJasper 2013

There is little justice in the fact that Gornal is most famous for a somewhat ludicrous piece of Black Country history. Every other story of its past pales beside the one which insists that Gornal folk were apt to "put the pig on the wall to watch the band go by."

Outsiders tend to scoff at this amusing incident and use it as a pointer to the mental capacity of folk responsible for it. Others give it no more credence than a folklore tale which particularly appealed to the Black Country.

After years of controversy as to whether such an incident ever occurred outside the fevered imagination of some ale-sodden Gornal chronicler, we are able, at long last, to substantiate the story and even name the central character.

This information is "far-fetched" - having been carried from the Canadian City of Saskatoon, back to his birthplace by 88-year-old John Thomas Burrows, who was born at Musk Lane, Gornal Wood, in 1886.

Johnny Longstomach

In the tap-room of "The Fiddle," a tavern which his father used long before the turn of the century, John revealed to us the name of the great Gornal character who saw no reason why his pig should not have as good a view of the local band as anyone else.

The perpetrator of Gornal's most famous legend was none other than...Johnny Longstomach!

Mr John Burrows, who left Gornal for Canada in 1912, had a remarkably clear memory of his early days when The Gornals abounded with many weird and wonderful characters, John, despite his years across the Atlantic, still spoke a refined version of the Black Country dialect, and remembered "Lungstummock" as the tallest man - by far - amongst the Gornalites of the era, standing 6ft 7ins in his hob-nailed boots.

"If he stood sidewizz you cud hardly seem him," insisted our informant..."and he never stirred out in a strong wind."

Apparently Johnny Longstomach was a hawker of fruit and vegetables and his round took him to Pensnett and Brierley Hill. He was reckoned to have the most sagacious donkey ever born, for Longstomach spent his takings in the nearest pub as soon as he made a sale and by lunchtime was usually incapable of speech or movement. When he reached this stage of intoxication he would be placed aboard his cart and the donkey would head for home with his master's long legs trailing on to the road as he lay in the back of the cart. The donkey was so well trained that he would back up to the door of Longstomach's cottage and bray three times to let the mistress of the house know that her wandering husband had returned and needed to be assisted into the house.

It seems that Longstomach had a way with donkeys as well as pigs!
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I reckon dumb animal may have been used to distinguish the four footed from the two footed (slaves?)