Part 61
The pitmen, who are employed in bringing coals to the surface of the earth, from immensely deep mines, for the London and neighbouring markets, are a race entirely distinct from the peasantry surrounding them. They are principally within a few miles of the river Wear, in the county of Durham, and the river Tyne, which traces the southern boundary of Northumberland. They reside in long rows of one-storied houses, called by themselves “pit-rows,” built near the chief entrance to the mine. To each house is attached a small garden,
“For ornament or use,”
and wherein they pay so much attention to the cultivation of flowers, that they frequently bear away prizes at floral exhibitions.
Within the memory of the writer, (and his locks are not yet “silver’d o’er with age,”) the pitmen were a rude, bold, savage set of beings, apparently cut off from their fellow men in their interests and feelings; often guilty of outrage in their moments of ebrious mirth; not from dishonest motives, or hopes of plunder, but from recklessness, and lack of that civilization, which binds the wide and ramified society of a great city. From the age of five or six years, their children are immersed in the dark abyss of their lower worlds; and when even they enjoy the “light of the blessed sun,” it is only in the company of their immediate relations: all have the same vocation, and all stand out, a sturdy band, separate and apart from the motley mixture of general humanity.
The pitmen have the air of a primitive race. They marry almost constantly with their own people; their boys follow the occupations of their sires--their daughters, at the age of blooming and modest maidenhood, linking their fate to some honest “_neebor’s bairn_:” thus, from generation to generation, family has united with family, till their population has become a dense mass of relationship, like the clans of our northern friends, “ayont the Cheviot’s range.” The dress of one of them is that of the whole people. Imagine a man, of only middling stature, (few are tall or robust,) with several large blue marks, occasioned by cuts, impregnated with coal-dust, on a pale and swarthy countenance, a coloured handkerchief around his neck, a “posied waistcoat” opened at the breast, to display a striped shirt beneath, a short blue jacket, somewhat like, but rather shorter than the jackets of our seamen, velvet breeches, invariably unbuttoned and untied at the knee, on the “tapering calf” a blue worsted stocking, with white clocks, and finished downwards by a long, low-quartered shoe, and you have a pitman before you, equipped for his Saturday’s cruise to “canny Newcastle,” or for his Sabbath’s gayest holiday.
On a Saturday evening you will see a long line of road, leading to the nearest large market town, grouped every where with pitmen and their wives or “lasses,” laden with large baskets of the “stomach’s comforts,” sufficient for a fortnight’s consumption. They only are paid for their labour at such intervals; and their weeks are divided into what they term “pay week,” and “bauf week,” (the etymology of “bauf,”[189] I leave thee, my kind reader, to find out.)--All merry and happy--trudging home with their spoils--not unfrequently the thrifty husband is seen “half seas over,” wrestling his onward way with an obstinate little pig, to whose hind leg is attached a string, as security for allegiance, while ever and anon this third in the number of “obstinate graces,” seeks a sly opportunity of evading its unsteady guide and effecting a retreat over the road, and “Geordie” (a common name among them) attempts a masterly retrograde reel to regain his fugitive. A long cart, lent by the owners of the colliery for the purpose, is sometimes filled with the women and their marketings, jogging homeward at a smart pace; and from these every wayfarer receives a shower of taunting, coarse jokes, and the air is filled with loud, rude merriment. Pitmen do not consider it any deviation from propriety for their wives to accompany them to the alehouses of the market town, and join their husbands in their glass and pint. I have been amused by peeping through the open window of a pothouse, to see parties of them, men and women, sitting round a large fir table, talking, laughing, smoking, and drinking con amore; and yet these poor women are never addicted to excessive drinking. The men, however, are not particularly abstemious when their hearts are exhilarated with the bustle of a town.
When the pitman is about to descend to the caverns of his labour, he is dressed in a checked flannel jacket, waistcoat, and trowsers, with a bottle or canteen slung across his shoulders, and a satchell or haversack at his side, to hold provender for his support during his subterrene sojourn. At all hours, night and day, groups of men and boys are seen dressed in this fashion wending their way to their colliery, some carrying sir Humphrey Davy’s (called by them “Davy’s”) safety-lamp, ready trimmed, and brightened for use. They descend the pit by means of a basket or “corfe,” or merely by swinging themselves on to a chain, suspended at the extreme end of the cordage, and are let down, with inconceivable rapidity, by a steam-engine. Clean and orderly, they coolly precipitate themselves into a black, smoking, and bottomless-looking crater, where you would think it almost impossible human lungs could play, or blood dance through the heart. At nearly the same moment you see others coming up, as jetty as the object of their search, drenched and tired. I have stood in a dark night, near the mouth of a pit, lighted by a suspended grate, filled with flaring coals, casting an unsteady but fierce reflection on the surrounding swarthy countenances; the pit emitting a smoke as dense as the chimney of a steam-engine; the men, with their sooty and grimed faces, glancing about their sparkling eyes, while the talking motion of their red lips disclosed rows of ivory; the steam-engines clanking and crashing, and the hissing from the huge boilers, making a din, only broken by the loud, mournful, and musical cry of the man stationed at the top of the pit “shaft,” calling down to his companions in labour at the bottom. This, altogether, is a scene as wild and fearful as a painter or a poet could wish to see.
All have heard of the dreadful accidents in coal-mines from explosions of fire-damp, inundations, &c., yet few have witnessed the heart-rending scenes of domestic calamity which are the consequence. Aged fathers, sons, and sons’ sons, a wide branching family, all are sometimes swept away by a fell blast, more sudden, and, if possible, more terrible, than the deadly Sirocca of the desert.
Never shall I forget one particular scene of family destruction. I was passing along a “pit-row” immediately after a “firing,” as the explosion of fire-damp is called, when I looked into one of the houses, and my attention became so rivetted, that I scarcely knew I had entered the room. On one bed lay the bodies of two men, burnt to a livid ash colour; the eldest was apparently sixty, the other about forty--father and son:--on another bed, in the same room, were “streaked” three fine boys, the oldest not more than fifteen--sons of the younger dead--all destroyed at the same instant by the same destructive blast, let loose from the mysterious hand of Providence: and I saw--Oh God! I shall never forget--I saw the vacant, maddened countenance, and quick, wild glancing eye of the fatherless, widowed, childless being, who in the morning was smiling in her domestic felicity; whose heart a few hours before was exultingly beating as she looked on her “_gudeman and bonny bairns_.” Before the evening sun had set she was alone in the world; without a prop for her declining age, and every endearing tie woven around her heart was torn and dissevered. I passed into the neat little garden--it was the spring time--part of the soil was fresh turned up, and some culinary plants were newly set:--these had been the morning work of the younger father--his spade was standing upright in the earth at the last spot he had laboured at; he had left it there, ready for the evening’s employment:--the garden was yet blooming with all the delightful freshness of vernal vegetation its cultivator was withered and dead--his spade was at hand for another to dig its owner’s grave.
Amidst all their dangers, the pitmen are a cheerful, industrious race of men. They were a few years ago much addicted to gambling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, &c. Their spare hours are diverted now to a widely different channel; they are for the most part members of the Wesleyan sects; and, not unfrequently in passing their humble but neat dwellings, instead of brawls and fights you hear a peaceful congregation of worshippers, uttering their simple prayers; or the loud hymn of praise breaking the silence of the eventide.
The ancient custom of sword-dancing at Christmas is kept up in Northumberland, exclusively by these people. They may be constantly seen at that festive season with their fiddler, bands of swordsmen, Tommy and Bessy, most grotesquely dressed, performing their annual routine of warlike evolutions. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the _Every-Day Book_, but I have no doubt this custom has there been fully illustrated.
Ψ
[188] HUDDESFORD.
[189] Quære? Whether some wag has not originally given the pitman the benefit of this term from _bafler_ or baffolier, to mock or affront; “aiblins,” it may be a corruption of our English term “balk,” to disappoint.
* * * * *
Some years ago a Tynemouth vessel, called the “Northern Star,” was lost, and the following ballad made on the occasion: the memory of a lady supplies the words--
_For the Table Book._
THE NORTHERN STAR.
The Northern Star Sail’d over the bar, Bound to the Baltic sea-- In the morning grey She stretch’d away,-- ’Twas a weary day to me.
For many an hour In sleet and shower By the lighthouse rock I stray, And watch till dark For the winged bark Of him that is far away.
The castle’s bound I wander round Amidst the grassy graves,[190] But all I hear Is the north wind drear, And all I see are the waves.
Oh roam not there Thou mourner fair, Nor pour the useless tear, Thy plaint of woe Is all below-- The dead--_they_ cannot hear.
The Northern Star Is set afar, Set in the Baltic sea, And the waves have spread The sandy bed, That holds thy love from thee.
[190] Tynemouth-castle, the grounds of which are used as a cemetery.
* * * * *
~British Mines.~
_For the Table Book._
Mines of gold and silver, sufficient to reward the conqueror, were found in Mexico and Peru; but the island of Britain never produced enough of the precious metals to compensate the invader for the trouble of slaughtering our ancestors.
Camden mentions gold and silver mines in Cumberland, a mine of silver in Flintshire, and of gold in Scotland. Speaking of the copper mines of Cumberland, he says that veins of gold and silver were found intermixed with the common ore; and in the reign of Elizabeth gave birth to a suit at law between the earl of Northumberland and another claimant.
Borlase, in his History of Cornwall, relates, “that so late as the year 1753 several pieces of gold were found in what the miners call stream tin; and silver is now got in considerable quantity from several of our lead mines.”
A curious paper, concerning the gold mines of Scotland, is given by Mr. Pennant, in the Appendix, No. 10. to his second part of a “Tour in Scotland, in 1772;” but still there never was sufficient gold and silver enough to constitute the price of victory. The other metals, such as tin, copper, iron, and lead, are found in abundance at this day; antimony and manganese in small quantities.[191]
Of the _copper_ mines now working in Cornwall, “Dolcoath,” situated near Camborn, is the deepest, having a 220 fathom level under the adit, which is 40 fathoms from the surface; so that the total depth is 260 fathoms, or 1560 feet: it employs upwards of 1000 persons. The “Consolidated Mines,” in Gwennap, are the most productive perhaps in the world, yielding from 10_l._ to 12000_l._ a month of copper ore, with a handsome profit to the shareholders. “Great St. George” is the only productive mine near St. Agnes, and the only one producing metal to the “English Mining Association.”
Of the _tin_ mines, “Wheal Nor,” in Breague, is an immense concern, producing an amazing quantity, and a large profit to the company. “Carnon Stream,” near Perran, is now yielding a good profit on its capital. It has a shaft sunk in the middle of the stream. The washings down from so many mines, the adits of which run in this stream, bring many sorts of metal, with some curious bits of gold.
Of late years the mine called Wheal Rose, and some others belonging to sir Christopher Hawkins, have been the most prolific of _lead_, mixed with a fair proportion of silver. Wheal Penhale, Wheal Hope, and others, promise favourably.
As yet Wheal Sparnon has not done much in _cobalt_; the quality found in that mine is very excellent, but quantity is the “one thing needful.”
The immense quantity of _coals_ consumed in the numerous fire-engines come from Wales; the vessels convey the copper ore, as it is brought by the copper companies, to their smelting works: it is a back freight for the shipping.
Altogether, the number of individuals who derive their living by means of the mineral district of Cornwall must be incalculable; and it is a great satisfaction to know, that this county suffered _less_ during the recent bad times than perhaps any other county.
SAM SAM’S SON.
_April 30, 1827._
[191] A Missouri paper states, that copper is in such abundance and purity, from the falls of St. Anthony to Lake Superior, that the Indians make hatchets and ornaments of it, without any other instrument than the hammer. The mines still remain in the possession of the Indians.
* * * * *
~Angling~
AT THAMES DITTON.
_For the Table Book._
Thames Ditton is a pretty little village, delightfully situated on the banks of the Thames, between Kingston and Hampton Court palace. During the summer and autumn, it is the much-frequented resort of the followers of Isaac Walton’s tranquil occupation.
The Swan inn, only a few paces from the water’s edge, remarkable for the neatness and comfort of its appearance, and for the still more substantial attractions of its internal accommodation, is kept by Mr. John Locke, a most civil, good-natured, and obliging creature; and, what is not of slight importance to a bon-vivant, he has a wife absolutely incomparable in the preparation of “stewed eels,” and not to be despised in the art of cooking a good beef-steak, or a mutton-chop.
But what is most remarkable in this place is its appellation of “_lying_ Ditton”--from what reason I have ever been unable to discover, unless it has been applied by those cockney anglers, who, chagrined at their want of sport, have bestowed upon it that very opprobrious designation; and perhaps not entirely without foundation for when they have been unsuccessful in beguiling the finny tribe, the fishermen, who attend them in their punts, are always prepared to assign a cause for their failure; as that the water is too low--or not sufficiently clear--or too muddy--or there is a want of rain--or there has been too much of that element--or--any thing else--except a want of skill in the angler himself, who patiently sits in his punt, watching the course of his float down the stream, or its gentle diving under the water, by which he flatters himself he has a bite, listening to the stories of his attendant, seated in calm indifference at his side, informing him of the mortality produced among the gelid tribe by the noxious gas which flows into the river from the metropolis, the alarming effects from the motion of the steam-boats on their fishy nerves, and, above all, from their feeding at that season of year on the green weeds at the bottom.
However, there are many most skilful lovers of the angle who pay weekly, monthly, or annual visits to this retired spot; amongst whom are gentlemen of fortune, professional men, and respectable tradesmen. After the toils of the day, the little rooms are filled with aquatic sportsmen, who have left the cares of life, and the great city behind them, and associate in easy conversation, and unrestrained mirth.
One evening last summer there alighted from the coach a gentleman, apparently of the middle age of life, who first seeing his small portmanteau, fishing-basket, and rods safely deposited with the landlord, whom he heartily greeted, walked into the room, and shaking hands with one or two of his acquaintances, drew a chair to the window, which he threw up higher than it was before; and, after surveying with a cheerful countenance the opposite green park, the clear river with its sedgy islands, and the little flotilla of punts, whose tenants were busily engaged on their gliding floats, he seemed as delighted as a bird that has regained his liberty: then, taking from his pocket a paper, he showed its contents to me, who happened to be seated opposite, and asked if I was a connoisseur in “single hair;” for, if I was, I should find it the best that could be procured for love or money. I replied that I seldom fished with any but gut-lines; yet it appeared, as far as I could judge, to be very fine. “Fine!” said he, “it would do for the filament of a spider’s-web; and yet I expect to-morrow to kill with it a fish of a pound weight. I recollect,” continued he, “when I was but a tyro in the art of angling, once fishing with an old gentleman, whose passion for single-hair was so great, that, when the season of the year did not permit him to pursue his favourite diversion, he spent the greatest part of his time in travelling about from one end of the kingdom to the other, seeking the best specimens of this invaluable article. On his visits to the horse-dealers, instead of scrutinizing the horses in the customary way, by examining their legs, inquiring into their points and qualities, or trying their paces, to the unspeakable surprise of the venders, he invariably walked up to the nether extremities of the animals, and seized hold of their tails, by which means he was enabled to select a capital assortment of hairs for his ensuing occupation.”
After the new-comer had finished his amusing anecdote, the noise of a numerous flock of starlings, which had assembled among the trees in the park preparatory to their evening adjournment to roost, attracted his notice by the babel-like confusion of their shrill notes, and led him again to entertain us with a story touching _their_ peculiarities.
“I remember,” said he, “when I was at a friend’s house in Yorkshire last autumn, there were such immense numbers of these birds, who sought their sustenance by day on the neighbouring marshes, and at night came to roost in his trees, that at length there was not room for their entire accommodation; the consequence of which was, that it became a matter of necessity that a separation of their numbers should take place--a part to other quarters, the remainder to retain possession of their old haunts. If I might judge from the conflicting arguments which their confused chatterings seemed to indicate, the contemplated arrangement was not at all relished by those who were doomed to separate from their companions--a separation, however, did take place--but the exiles would not leave the field undisputed. Birds, like aid-de-camps of an army, flew from one side to the other--unceasing voices gave note of dreadful preparation--and, at last, both sides took flight at the same instant. The whirring sound of their wings was perfectly deafening; when they had attained a great height in the air, the two forces clashed together with the greatest impetuosity; immediately the sky was obscured with an appearance like the falling of snow, descending gradually to the earth, accompanied with a vast quantity of bodies of the starlings, which had been speared through by hostile beaks-they literally fell like hail. It was then growing rather dusk; I could merely see the contending flocks far above me for some time--it became darker--and I returned to narrate this extraordinary aërial combat to my friend, who in the morning had the curiosity to accompany me to the field of battle, where we picked up, according to an accurate calculation, 1087 of these birds, some quite dead, and others generally severely wounded, with an amazing quantity of their feathers.”
I saw this amusing gentleman on the following morning sitting quietly in his punt, exercising his single-hair skill, nearly opposite to the little fishing-house.
E. J. H.
_April, 1827._
* * * * *
TICKLING TROUT.
_For the Table Book._
It is a liberty taken by poachers with the little brook running through Castle Coombe, to catch trout by _tickling_. I instance the practice there because I have there witnessed it, although it prevails in other places. The person employed wades into the stream, puts his bare arms into the hole where trout resort, slides his fingers under the fish, feels its position, commences tickling, and the trout falls gradually into his hand, and is thrown upon the grass. This is a successful snare, destructive to the abundance of trout, and the angler’s patient pleasure. The lovers of the “hook and eye” system oppose these ticklish practices, and the ticklers, when caught, are “punished according to law,” while the patrons of the “rod and line” escape. Shakspeare may have hinted at retribution, when he said
“A thousand men the _fishes_ gnawed upon.”
Pope tell us that men are
“Pleased with a feather, _tickled_ with a straw.”
P.
* * * * *
THE CLERKS OF CORNWALL.
1. In the last age there was a familiarity between the parson and the clerk and the people, which our feelings of decorum would revolt at, _e. g._--“I have seen the ungodly flourish like a _green bay_ tree.”--“How can that be, maister?” said the clerk of St. Clement’s. Of this I was myself an ear-witness.
2. At Kenwyn, two dogs, one of which was the parson’s, were fighting at the west-end of the church; the parson, who was then reading the second lesson, rushed out of the pew, and went down and parted them, returned to his pew, and, doubtful where he had left off, asked the clerk, “Roger, where was I?” “Why down parting the dogs, maister,” said Roger.
3. At Mevagizzey, when non-resident clergymen officiated, it was usual with the squire of the parish to invite them to dinner. Several years ago, a non-resident clergyman was requested to do duty in the church of Mevagizzey on a Sunday, when the Creed of St. Athanasius is directed to be read. Before he had begun the service, the parish-clerk asked him, whether he intended to read the Athanasian Creed that morning. “Why?” said the clergyman. “Because if you do, no dinner for you at the squire’s, at Penwarne.”
4. A very short time since, parish-clerks used to read the first lesson. I once heard the St. Agnes clerk cry out, “At the mouth of the burning _viery vurnis_,--Shadrac, Meshac, and Abednego, _com voath and com hether_.” [Daniel, chap, iii.]
The clerk of Lamorran, in giving out the Psalm, “Like a timorous bird to distant mountains fly,” always said, “Like a _temmersum burde_, &c. &c.” with a shake of the head, and a quavering of the voice, which could not but provoke risibility.[192]
[192] Rev. Mr. Polwhele’s Recollections.
* * * * *
~Custom~
OBSERVED BY THE
LORD LIEUTENANTS OF IRELAND.