THE PITMAN.
For the Table Book.
“O the bonny pit laddie, the cannie pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me, O!—
He sits in a hole, as black as a coal,
And brings all the white money to me, O!”
Old Pit Song.
Gentle Reader,—Whilst thou sittest toasting thy feet at the glowing fuel in thy grate, watching in dreaming unconsciousness the various shapes and fantastic forms appearing and disappearing in the bright, red heat of thy fire—here a beautiful mountain, towering with its glowing top above the broken and diversified valley beneath—there a church, with its pretty spire peeping above an imagined village; or, peradventure, a bright nob, assuming the ken of human likeness, thy playful fancy picturing it the semblance of some distant friend—I say, whilst thou art sitting in this fashion, dost thou ever think of that race of mortals, whose whole life is spent beyond a hundred fathoms below the surface of mother earth, plucking from its unwilling bosom the materials of thy greatest comfort?
The pitman enables thee to set at nought the “pelting of the pitiless storm,” and render a season of severity and pinching bitterness, one of warmth, and kindly feeling, and domestic smiles. If thou hast never heard of these useful and daring men who
“Contemn the terrors of the mine,
Explore the caverns, dark and drear,
Mantled around with deadly dew;
Where congregated vapours blue,
Fir’d by the taper glimmering near,
Bid dire explosion the deep realms invade,
And earth-born lightnings gleam athwart th’ infernal shade;”[188]
—who dwell in a valley of darkness for thy sake, and whose lives are hazarded every moment in procuring the light and heat of the flickering flame—listen with patience, if not with interest, to a short account of them, from the pen of one who is not unmindful of
“The simple annals of the poor.”
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.