Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/195

 Rh 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.

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.

Last year, 1886, at St. Just, in Penrith, 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 brealdng vp, and forcibly carrying with it the earth, trees and rocks, which lay anything loosely neere the vpper face of the ground. To confirme the likelihood of which supposed truth, they doe many times digge vp whole and huge timbertrees, 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—