Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/143

 Superstitions. 1 3 1 ^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 trib- ut-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.