Dismissiveness. Foreign beetles implicated.

"Anti-Humbug" is a miner of sense without fear of superstition, and hails from Tonypandy. I welcome his sensible letter, though he comes down on "your Rhondda correspondent" with a heavy heel. "I accept his Treherbert dove story for what it is worth." There is decision about "Anti-Humbug." "But," he goes on, "the interesting story related by Captain Lewis, of Ynysfeio Colliery, is too good to be passed. He says that whilst examining a certain part of the workings by himself he heard tapping as though some person was striking the timbers some yards away with a hammer. Having listened and heard the sound more distinctly he advanced towards the spot whence the sound came ('plucky Captain Lewis'); going still further on and close to a pile of timber, he lifted one of themthem, and discovered immediately a large Norwegian black beetle, about two inches long, boring into the wood. He was positive that superstitious and timid miners would have quitted the place at once, declaring they had heard a ghost. Nonsense, the sound heard by Captain Lewis is frequently heard underground, and every man and boy knows the cause of it, and I believe even colliery horses for that matter.

The Norwegian beetle referred to is generally known among miners as a jasper or a Russian bug. The insect can be heard yards away boring into timber. I do not believe that the average Welsh miner is any more timid and superstitious than Captain Lewis, and certainly not half as fussy about the sound of an insect. What has been passed off in your columns lately as superstition is often a miner's fear for his safety, owing to the conditions of certain parts of the workings in the various collieries."

And then follows a vigorous protest against the silly reflections which have been cast "on us miners generally." A good deal of nonsense has been written and much more talked about the superstitious beliefs and fears of the Welsh miner, he says. Much more has been talked. Even "Anti-Humbug" will admit, I think, that the Morfa incident was a sufficient justification for a little plain speaking. I have laughed at the ghostly ideas in the same way that my corresponsdent disdains them. The dove stories, the singing in the glen, the mysterious forms "seen" in the mines and on the mountain sides are the thinnest of fictions, and as fragile as a dew spangled cobweb. To describe them in cold blood is to destroy the fictions; it is quite unnecessary to place them under the microscope of inquiry.

I have held all along that the "warnings," "tappings," and "noises" heard in the Morfa Pit were not unusual or strange. They are familiar to every miner throughout the country, only the miners at other collieries than the Morfa find the cause for the noises in quite ordinary and everyday phenomnea. My Rhondda correspondent declares that one form of "tapping" is well understood by the colliery horses, and I believe his assertion. I do not think the Welsh miner generally has been given credit for this silly belief in ghosts in the mine. The public laugh at the Morfa "spirits" and ask whether that mine is specially favoured by apparitions and message bearers, by doves and visitors who follow the miners from their work home and waylay them as they pass from their cottages to the mine. The men in the Morfa Pit hug their childish superstitions; in the Rhondda the colliery horses see through them!

South Wales Echo, 19th December 1895.

The Miners of Wynnstay.

The miners at the Wynnstay Colliery, says the Daily News, refused to go to work on Saturday, because Zadkiel had prophesied that a calamity would occur in Wales on that day. Now, we do not quite see what effect their abstention from work could have upon the calamity, if it were due, but perhaps some of them fancied that if such a thing were coming round that way, they might have a look at it. And it did come. The prophesy was fulfilled. The men lost a day's work, which their wives would consider a quite sufficient calamity. Moreover, when they wished to return to work yesterday, the Company informed them that there was no great demand for coal, and that they might as well go home again. Whether this combination of circumstances promises well for the discouragement of superstition in that quarter, it would be hard to say.

There was no sudden visitation of the cattle plague, no colliery accident, no unearthly darkness, or other phenomenon, that showed unusual agencies to be at work; but a calamity did certainly occur. Zadkiel is not always so fortunate; perhaps because there are not very many districts of England in which his followers abound in numbers and in faith, and are ready to lose a day's work in order to confirm his predictions.

The Cardiff Times, 17th May 1873.

I'm guessing this magazine is what 'Zadkiel' refers to. There's no need to be sarky when people's lives could be at stake. Really.

Utter cynicism about mining superstitions

Cure for Superstition.

Miners are known to be a superstitious race: their superstition, however, is sometimes made a pretext for idleness. There is a recipe for curing this species of the disorder. In some extensive mines in Wales the men frequently saw the Devil; and when once he had been seen, the men would work no more that day. This evil became serious, for Old Beelzebub repeated his visits so often, as if he had a design to injure the proprietor. That Gentleman, at last, called his men together, and told them, that it was very certain that the Devil never appeared to any body who had not deserved to be so terrified; and that, as he is determined to keep no rogues about him, he resolved to discharge the first man that saw the Devil again. The remedy was as efficient as if he had turned a stream of holy water into the mines.

Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 10th April 1819.

"Warnings" and colliery explosions

For two or three months past we have been told that we might expect to hear of some colliery explosions in the neighbourhood, because "warnings" had been manifested in the pits at Cwmnantddu, near Pontypool. The awful calamities in the Rhondda Valley and Ebbw Vale have too sadly verified these predictions. The "warnings," which are said to be still continued in the Sinking Pits at Cwmnantddu, are attributed by the men to supernatural causes, and have caused such fright that some of the miners declare that they will never enter the workings again on account of "the ghost."

At Tredegar, too, a panic prevails in consequence of an old gipsy woman having said that an explosion was likely to take place there! Now, it is quite time that belief in ghosts and fortune telling had died out. They are inconsistent with common sense and the exercise of reason. But we are not inclined to treat this talk about subterrraneous warnings with contempt. Far from it. We rather think it merits serious consideration and painstaking inquiry.

Let us examine it. One man is said to have seen something covered with a white sheet, and to have hit a hole right through it with his fist! The tom-foolery of this is too obvious, one would think, to need comment, and yet such ridiculous stuff is actually believed! We shall continue to endeavour to put an extinguisher on ghosts. What may have been heard is another matter, and has nothing to do with "spirits." The sounds are said to resemble those caaused by the rattling of chains, the running of trams, and "boring."  A man named Coleman appears to have been greatly led away by his imagination, and has caused a great deal of silly fear by asserting his fanciful experiences. We hope, for his own credit, that the tales have been manufactured for him, and are not his own utterances.

Mr. Joseph Green, mineral agent under the Ebbw Vale Company, has made a stand (all honour to him for doing so), against the prevalent superstitious "rot," and has placed sensible men as watchers or rather listeners in the Sinking Pits for some nights past. These men have failed to hear anything extraodinary. But it is not at all unlikely that some have heard sounds that require attention, though they need not excite foolish alarm. Nature has its throes now andt hen. When there is an eruption of Vesuvius (which appears to be agitated just now) the effects are felt far away. When Lisbon was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake in 1755, the waters of the Hot Wells at Clifton, of Loch Lomond in Scotland, and at other places were disturbed.

When large quantities of coal are removed, the strata will naturally settle down, and very likely bad gases will be forced out from one place and driven into another. The whole of the earth's crust has been convulsed, and tossed, and tumbled, in a manner that makes one shudder to think of, but all has been in obedience to natural laws. Change is still going on, and the little local displacements and settlings down of strata are only what may be expected. In these, it seems to us, are to be traced the true cause of the noises that are heard in mines; we believe that in one sense they are "warnings;" warnings of the possible proximity of noxious gases or accumulation of water, forced near by the down-settling or ruptures of the strata, and calling for extra cacre and precautions in working the mines where such noises are heard. But there is certainly nothing supernatural in them.

The Western Mail, 11th March 1871.