Superstitions common to 19thC Cornish tin miners.

ALTHOUGH Cornish miners, or "tinners" as they are generally called, are a very intelligent, and since the days of Wesley a religious body of men, many of their old–world beliefs still linger. To this day it is considered unlucky to make the form of a cross on the sides of a mine, and when underground you may on no account whistle for fear of vexing the knockers and bringing ill–luck, but you may sing or even swear without producing any bad effect. Down one mineshaft a black goat is often seen to descend, but is never met below; in another mine a white rabbit forebodes an accident. " The occurrence of a black cat in the lowest depths of a mine will warn the older miners off that level until the cat is exterminated."—Thomas Cornish, Western Antiquary, October, 1887.

A hand clasping the ladder and coming down with, or after a miner, foretells misfortune or death. This superstition prevails, also, in the slate quarries of the eastern part of the county.

The miners in the slate quarries of Delabole have a tradition that the right hand of a miner, who committed suicide, is sometimes seen following them down the ladders, grasping the rings as they let them go, holding a miner's light between the thumb and finger. It forebodes ill to the seer.—Esmè Stuart. See "Tamsin's Choice," Longman, June, 1883.

Miners, too, had some superstition in regard to snails, known in Cornwall as "bullhorns;" for if they met one on their way to work they always dropped a bit of their dinner or some grease from their lanthorn before him for good–luck. Miraculous dreams are related; warnings to some miners, which have prevented on particular days their going down below with their comrades, when serious accidents have happened and several have lost their lives. Rich lodes, too, have been discovered through the dreams of fortunate women, who have been shown in them where their male relatives should dig for the hidden treasure.

"'Dowsing' (divining with the rod) is of course believed in here as elsewhere, and some men are known as noted 'dowsers.' A forked twig of hazel (also called a 'dowser') is used by our Cornish miners to discover a vein of ore; it is held loosely in the hand, the point towards the 'dowser's' breast, and it is said to turn round when the holder is standing over metal."

Miners still observe some quaint old customs; a horse–shoe is sometimes placed on a convenient part of the machinery, which each, as he goes down to his day's work, touches four times to ensure good–luck. These must be "Tributers" (pronounced tribut–ers), who work on "trib–ut," when a percentage is paid on ores raised; in contradistinction to "Tut–workers," who are paid by the job.

A miner, going underground with shoes on, will drive all the mineral out of the mine.—Cornubiana, Rev. S. Rundle.

In 1886, at St. Just in Penwith two men of Wheal Drea had their hats burnt one Monday morning, after the birth of their first children.

Three hundred fathoms below the ground at Cook's Kitchen mine, near Camborne, swarms of flies may be heard buzzing, called by the men, for some unknown reason, "Mother Margarets." From being bred in the dark, they have a great dislike to light.

Swallows in olden times were thought to spend the winter in deep, old disused Cornish tin–works; also in the sheltered nooks of its cliffs and cairns. It is the custom here to jump on seeing the first in spring.

A water–wagtail, in Cornwall a "tinner," perching on a windowsill, is the sign of a visit from a stranger.

Carew says—"The Cornish tynners hold a strong imagination, that in the withdrawing of Noah's floud to the sea the same took his course from east to west, violently breaking vp, and forcibly carrying with it the earth, trees, and rocks, which lay anything loosely neere the vpper face of the ground. To confjrme the likelihood of which supposed truth, they doe many times digge vp whole and huge timber–trees, which they conceiue at that deluge to haue been ouerturned and whelmed."

Miners frequently in conversation make^ use of technical proverbs, such as "Capel rides a good horse." Capel is schorl, and indicates the presence of tin. "It's a wise man that knows tin" alludes to the various forms it takes. To an old tune they sing the words

"Here's to the devil, with his wooden spade and shovel,
Digging tin by the bushel, with his tail cocked up."

And on the signboard of a public–house in West Cornwall a few years ago (and probably still) might be read—

"Come all good Cornish boys walk in,
Here's brandy, rum, and shrub, and gin;
You can't do less than drink success
To copper, fish, and tin."

Miners believe that mundic (iron pyrites) being applied to a wound immediately cures it; of which they are so sure that they use no other remedy than washing it in the water that runs through the mundic ore.—A Complete History of Cornwall, 1730.

Looking backwards through the ages we find a time when the old alluvial tin 'streamers' of Cornwall preserved the memory of taboos so strongly as to employ a special set of terms to denote the animals and birds which they might meet with at their work. According to an Elizabethan writer, the owl had to be referred to under such circumstances as a 'braced farcer ', the fox as a 'long tayle ', the hare a 'long ear', the cat a 'rooker ', and the rat a 'peep'. Failure to observe the use of these terms was still punished at this time by the serio–comic enforcement of a fine of a gallon or so of ale. [See Hamilton Jenkin, The Cornish Miner, 52.]

As is well–known, such taboos as these are wont to obtain among hunters in all parts of the world, and far as the cry may seem from Cornwall to India, the connecting link is none the less there for those who have eyes to see it. It is a curious fact, however, that whilst in the East the huntsman still has his code of good omens, in Cornwall only those things which it is unlucky to say or do have been retained in the folk–memory. Thus the hunter of the Orient, whilst dreading the sight or sound of a wild animal, is delighted to meet with a tethered one, and though regarding one woman as unlucky, is much pleased if two women should cross his path. There can be little doubt, however, that Cornwall once possessed a similar belief in fortunate omens and, in common with other Celts, employed a 'triad 'form of expressing them. Not long ago a friend of the writer, when conversing with a Cornish labourer, received definite confirmation of this. 'I can mind how the old people would say,'remarked the man, 'there are three things which are the ugliest sights in the world, and three which are the most beautiful. The first is "a fat slatternly woman, a poor lean horse, and an old scat bal" (disused mine). The other is "a woman with child, a ship in full sail, and a field of corn waving in the wind".' [Per Mr W. D. Watson.]

To have discovered, in the third decade of the twentieth century, an unrecorded piece of folk–lore of this nature is in itself something of a triumph, and that it should have been brought to light by a chance conversation with what English visitors are sometimes pleased to call a 'Cornish peasant'adds enormously to its value and interest.

So likewise are the phenomena of the black dog and the white hare at Wheal Vor [mine], whose appearance was always said to presage some fatal disaster at that mine.

The writer himself recollects being solemnly warned as a child always to speak up clearly when greeted by a miner on his way to work lest the ommission of this light civility should send the man to his labour with a poor heart and with memories awakened, perhaps, of the once dreaded power of the "ill wisher".

When we speak of dowsers today, we generally mean lookig to find water. In Cornwall, it also meant looking for ore in a similar process using a forked stick. The dowsing rod, or forked stick, was held in the two hands on the "Y" forks, with the central straight part pointed upwards to the chest. When the dowsing stick turned its point down, seemingly against the will of the dowser, it meant that what was sought was directly below.