Among the Welsh Miners.
About Superstitious Beliefs.
(By a Cardiff Welshman.)
During my stay at Treglo a strange and somewhat startling story was going the round of the town. Some two miles from the place is a small mining hamlet, which we shall name Cwmdu, and it was here the strange story originated. From the common talk of the people I gathered that there had been living in the hamlet for a short period an old woman who appeared to be living a solitary life. At least no one seemed inclined to acknowledge any knowledge of her past life, nor her mode of living, further than to state that she earned her living by hawking sundry small goods for domestic use.
The story circulated about the woman was to the effect that she had foretold a couple of fatal accidents which had occurred in the local colliery, and that she had followed up her "bit of prophecy" by predicting two colliery explosions at given dates, one at the Cwmdu mine and the other in one of the collieries of Treglo.
The "Prophecy" was the staple topic of discussion right throughout the district, and the effect on the minds of the people amounted almost to a panic. Every man and woman who came to Tom's shop knew the story, discussed nothing else. What seemed to add to the weirdness of the affair was the rumour circulated that the "strange woman" had suddenly disappeared from the district, no one knew where or when. So real and intense was the popular belief in the woman's prediction that I found it extremely difficult to laugh the matter off my mind, so it was not without peculiar interest that I waited the approach of the day which was to put a portion of the prediction to the test. The colliery were working, but I was informed that there was a good number of absentees. Many had made it convenient to be too indisposed for work, others had managed to arrive at the lamp-room too late to be allowed down. Wives had hid away their husbands' clothes, and daughters had implored upon their brothers to "Joke bad, for fear there is something in it."
This attitude was aptly illustrated by an intelligent old miner, whose acquaintance I had made.
"It's as well, perhaps, to be on the safe side. One never knows," he said; "strange things do happen sometimes. It's better to lose a turn than lose one's life after all, baint it, sir?"
I expressed my entire accord with his sentiments.
"Not that I believe in the old woman's story," he continued. "To tell you the truth, I believe the poor woman has been so frightened herslef by the effect on the popular mind of her attempt at prophyesying that she has cleared. Some say, though, that is only a temporary absence, necessitated by the circumstances, to arrange the details of the affair with the devil or some such power of evil. But to speak common sense, who knows how much this story has grown in the telling? I'll tell you a little experience of my own when I was much younger than I am.
"I was working in a small level in this district before the pit here was sunk, and before we had such a lot of houses. The way to work was very lonely indeed. We had to pass an old stone quarry which was known far and near as being the favourite resort of a spirit popularly known as The White Lady. I was working night at the time I am speaking of. My mother was dead, and the home was looked after for my father by a young girl, married and living close by me now, who had her fair share of belief in the existence of the White Lady. My father, I ought to say, worked the day shifts, and, as I have said, I was working night with another collier as a 'boy'.
Well, Mary forgot to call me in time, and as a result it was quite dark when I was about to start to work. Poor Mary was almost hysterical. She knew my father would be annoyed if I did not go to work, and she felt, on the other hand, that she was driving me into some unknown land, where all trace of my existence would be for ever lost. It was blowing a little, and I could not carry a naked light, such as we worked with in the level, so Mary placed a candle in a tin lantern, and thus equipped I started on my journey. To admit the honest truth, I was very nervous when approaching the famous spot, although I tried to think as hard as I could of the impossibility of such strange things as spirtis retorning.
When opposite the quarry a novel idea took possession of me. I swung the lantern to and fro and challenged the White Lady to make her appearance to an unbeliever. This, perhaps, in the agony of suspense, and with a view of giving some effect to my boyish courage. I don't know what was the cause, but the result was that I found myself in darkness, running over a rough and hilly road with a feeling of some terrible phantom following at my heels. I reached the level, and getting to the spot I worked in, fell breathless into the arms of my 'boss'. There was little done for awhile, the workers were so busy expressing their sympathy with me in being sent to work in the dark by that 'hard-hearted Mary.' However this passed off, when I assured them, in my calmermoments, that it was only a bit of fright at being left in the dark, as the result of my indiscretion in swinging the lantern.
But the best part remains, and this is what I want to tell you, sir. I got home all right in the morning and Mary welcomed me, as if I had returned from the dead. With a view of impressing her with the desirability of calling me in due time in future, I told her if she knew ho I had been frightened at the old quarry, she would never forgive herself, and so forth. I went to bed, and, as was my habit, got up about midday for dinner, when I was surprised to find quite a houseful of womenfolk chatting - a regular Babel of tongues - with Mary. No sooner did I make an appearance than they swarmed around me like so many bees, pestering me for fully an hour with all sorts of strange questions. You know how the lawyers in the police courts cross-examine an unfavourable witness. Well that's how they went for me.
At last I commenced to doubt my own story. It had assumed such a weird character. Well the result of this was that a rumour went throught the village like wildfire that I had been nearly crushed to death by a 'spirit funeral' on my way to work, the story invariably ending with the sympathetic comment, 'What a wonder the young lad wasn't carried to the parish churchyard, and never heard of any more.' About a month or so after a real funeral - not the first - passed the quarry on its way to the churchyard, and by some method peculiar to the people it was demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was the identical one I had seen in its spirit form!
That's how the stories grow, you see," continued my collier friend; "and it is quite possible that this yarn of the prophecy of the old woman is simply the outgrowth of a silly remark which she may have made to some superstious person. A dream as likely as anything, sir, for we are great believers in dreams as warning."
The scare created by the predictions brought forth a good crop of ghost stories of various forms and degrees of credulity, some of which were extremely interesting as showing the lengths to which the people can go at times. Despite the characteristic religious turn of the Welsh mind, there is manifested periodically a peculiar susceptibility to the most extravagant forms of superstitious belief. The science in the religion of Spiritualism as taught in scores of homes, and in public at Cardiff, is practically unknown in the Hills. Although an open belief in Spiritualism as a scientific truth, or form of religion, would result in social ostracism, there is a very widespread belief in the supernatural. During my stay I fraternised with people to whom the gymnastic feats of circus performers are nothing more nor less than the "work of the devil;" but who would assert as probable the tallest ghost story imaginable.
South Wales Echo, 13th February 1896.
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