Folklore: Pig on the wall

Subject: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: Crane Driver
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 05:18 PM

Friend of mine was born & brought up in Clifton, Brighouse, Yorkshire. She remembers her mother telling of a local annual procession (rushcart?) which couldn't set off unless it was being watched by a pig. A local man who kept pigs would bring one up to the start and stand it on the wall to watch the procession start - they wouldn't set off unless the pig was there watching. Anyone know anything else about this or other traditions from the area? Is there a book by a local historian or suchlike?

Andrew

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: curmudgeon
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 05:34 PM

I might be able to cross-reference this if you can give me the date of the annual procession -- Tom

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: Noreen
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:35 PM

AAAArgh!

I did some detailed research on this just now in Google, and presented it complete with links to various sites, then Mudcat crashed as I was previewing it and I lost the lot! (I know, I used to save long posts in case, but haven't needed to recently.)

Anyway, I have spent pleasant evenings in the Pig on the Wall pub in Droylsden, east of Manchester, where I was told it was to commemoraate a local farmer (pub had been a pig farm?) who put his pig on the wall to see the parade go past.

From Google it appears that this may well be an urban legend- or a rural/village legend- "the next village are so daft they put their pigs on the wall to watch the parade pass" sort of thing. It's a local legend in Dudley, Swindon and the Kippax area of Leeds where there is a mural of said pig on a cottage wall.

Also photographs of pig on wall watching Captain Webb's triumphant procession when he returned from swimming the Channel in 1875.
:0)

So, is there more to this than a story, I wonder?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 09:01 PM

Slightly off-thread intent, but I'm reminded of the quote (Churchill?) that a dog will look up to you, a cat will look down on you, but a pig will look you straight in the eye.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: mayomick
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 05:46 AM

I wonder if the Pig On the Wall name mightn't have come from the bricklayers' expression "pig in the wall"
Check the wall of the pub to see where there is a "pig" in the brickwork From a bricklayer friend of mine .
"The pig in the wall is when two bricklayers build their leads to a certain level but one of them has bedded too high causing the courses to become unequal in number at each end. If it happens it means shame and ridicule for whatever set of Bricklayers it happens to - which will follow them from site to site thereafter."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 10:13 AM

The Pig on the wall, to watch the Band go by, is a local tale in Gornal,nr Dudley. I think it was a reference to the assumed mental state of the local residents !
The Bricklayer connection is interesting though.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,Peter
Date: 12 Nov 11 - 02:13 PM

I was told as a child that this was done at Moira in Leicestershire and taken to see the actual wall.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Nov 11 - 02:45 PM

I heard a friend of my mother's use the expression around 1974 when she was around 70. I guess she grew up with it but I don't know.

Years later I danced outside "The Pig on the Wall" in Droylsden mentioned above by Noreen, with Gorton Morris Men when the pub was opened. I guess that was around 1980

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 12 Nov 11 - 06:06 PM

"Pig On The Wall" is brewed by Black Country Ales

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,John Slater
Date: 14 Nov 11 - 03:18 PM

I have heard the legend of putting a pig on the wall to watch the carnival go past in relation to Brassington, Derbyshire. Interesting to hear it may be an urban myth as all the people that ever told me of this came from the neighbouring village of Parwich!

I've also heard about it at Woodville (I think) but in trying to find a reference to that I came across a reference to a pig being placed in the wall at Moira:

http://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/community/resources/landshapes/transcripts/halllant025.doc

There are no page numbers in the transcrpit, but it's between the 25 mins & 30 mins marks.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,Shippy
Date: 17 Sep 17 - 06:28 AM

re Moira
The wall has long gone but the band that played the village parade used to stop and turn to play
to a pig that was held (front trotters over the wall) by two men. The idea started in the pub like most of them do.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 17 Sep 17 - 11:36 AM

They'd put a pig on the wall to watch the band go past was also said of Castleton in Derbyshire (at least it was in the mid-1960's).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 17 Sep 17 - 03:00 PM

My dad was in the RAF in WW2- he said he had a friend at that time who told him he was from Walsall & that was where they 'put the pig on the wall to watch the band go by'....
Dudley was mentioned in an earlier post, which is close enough maybe?- my geography of that area is a bit hazy.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: Teribus
Date: 20 Sep 17 - 03:22 AM

There is a mention of this (They put a pig upon a wall to see the band go by") in a Johnnie Coppin song about a village/small town in Gloucestershire, Yorkley if memory serves me correct.

"If you should climb to Yorkley Slad
Pause not to question why
They put a pig upon a wall
To see the band go by"

The song I think is called "Warning", with the same name and words as the poem by F.W. Harvey.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pig on the wall
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 01 Jul 23 - 07:44 PM

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!
______________
I reckon dumb animal may have been used to distinguish the four footed from the two footed (slaves?)