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The spirits of the mine were as firmly believed in amongst the miners as the woodland and meadow sprites were by the dwellers on the country side. They were generally called knockers, and any sound heard ins the stillness of the earth, that was evidently not the work of a fellow-toiler, was at once attributed to supernatural agency. The miners assert that these fairies may be. frequently heard assiduously at work in the remoter parts, and that by their knocking they draw the attention of the workmen to the richest veins of ore. In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1754 we found a curious letter from a mine-owner, and the extract we give shows that the belief in such beings was not by any means confined to the rude and uncultivated miners, men a great part of whose lives were spent in the bowels of the earth, far removed from the cheering light of day, and who were in an especial degree under the influence of superstition :--
" People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature, will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of knockers in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable people, not to be seen but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines ; that is to say, they are types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents which happen to us. Before the discovery of the Esgair y Mwyn mine, these little people worked hard through day and night, and there are abundance of sober honest people who have heard them. But after the discovery of the great mine they were heard no more. When I began to work at Lwyn Lwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time, that they frightened away some young workmen. This was when they were driving levels, and before we had got any ore, but when we came to the ore they then gave over, and I heard no more of them. These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, although we cannot and do not pretend to account for them. We have now (October 1754) very good ore at Lwyn Lwyd, where the knockers were heard to work. But they have now yielded up the place, an are heard no more. Let who will laugh ; we have th greatest reason to rejoice and thank the knockers, o rather God, who sends these notices." In the coal districts ne meets with a similar belief in goblin miners. The spirits are ordinarily of a friendly disposition, and perform such kindly offices for their human fellow-wor ers as assisting to pump up superfluous water or loosening masses of coal. Of course one can readily see that when the men went to their work and found their toil diminished, owing to a heavy fall of coal in the working, supersti, tion would at once have material to work on. Some of these spirits would ' appear to have been of less amiable disposition, and the sounds heard were at times the warnings, and forerunners of coming disaster. As the fairies of the household or of the moonlighted forest glades were of uncertain and variable natures, though inclining on the whole to beneficence, so the spirits of the earth were divisible into those of gentle race and others of fierce and malevolent disposition. In Milton's "Comus" we find these earth spirits referred to in the following passage : " No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity ; " and in Pope's prefatory letter to the " Rape of the Lock " we find a further allusion-" The four elements are inhabitated by spirits called sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of the earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in air, are the best-conditioned creatures imaginable." |