No body of workers are more easily moved by trivial events than the hardy superstitious miner of South Wales. After every explosion we hear of many miraculous escapes due to strange dreams and visions on the part of those rescued, and that many a sad event has been carefully warned to one household or another is a common experience among them. The other day a miner committed suicide in one of the Clydach Vale Collieries lakes, and as they were unable to find the body, about 300 miners refused to enter the pit.
Fortunately, before the next day's shift was due, the poor miner had been recovered, and, consequently, the work proceeded as usual. Was it superstition or reverence that caused these men to abandon their work? We think it was due to their deep reverence for the departed spirit of their fellow-workman, who, probably, during a fit of temporary insanity, had put an end to his earthly existnece.
It is well known that after a fellow-workman receives serious injury every man employed in the district of the workings, where the injured was received, will throw down his tools and escort the injured to his home. It is common in the towns adjacent to collieries to witness a great procession of grave men walking from the colliery with the injured miner carried on a stretcher in their midst. When a workman is killed outright, every man and boy instantly leaves the colliery where the fatal accident takes place. Each man would regard working on that day, after such a sad event, as an insult to the dead, and to the class which he belonged. Miners are a sensitive and superstitious tribe, and as tender-hearted as the most sensitive of females.
The London Kelt, 29th August 1896.
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