Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/401

 Rh whistlers were heard over their heads as they were going to work they would not go down the pits that day. If a man be killed in a coal-pit, his fellows will not go to work again till he is buried; not as a sign of mourning, but out of superstitious dread. Ten or twelve years ago, the Rowley Regis Colliery Company summoned six of their men at the local police-court for refusing to work in compliance with this custom. The case was not pressed; and the only plea of the prosecutors was that the men had signed an agreement not to observe the custom except as regarded the pit itself in which the accident had happened, whereas the defendants worked at another pit in the same colliery, not at the one where the death occurred.

If anyone stole any trifle from the body of a man killed in the pit, it was believed that the ghost of the deceased would haunt him at his work till he had made restitution. For the dark mysterious pit, rather than the cheerful upper world, is the chief scene of the phantoms of the collier's imagination.

"They had a belief," says Mr. Lawley, "that there were beings called 'mining dwarfs,' who, if well treated, would occasionally do the miner^s work in the silent hours of the night, but if ill treated would break his tools, drop the roof, ignite the fire-damp, and play all kinds of mischievous pranks. 'Knockings' in the mine were frequently heard proceeding from these dwarfs; and these usually preceded some accident. These 'Knockers' were said to help the miner and give him the warning, on condition that he never sought to discover their identity or show too inquisitive a mind respecting their doings. If he did, they would do him hurt, and leave him to do his work without further assistance from them."

The disused coal-pits were said to be inhabited by "Raw Head and Bloody Bones." These, I am told, are a kind of creatures which are half human, half animal, and very dangerous to man. They would sometimes come out of the pits