Let me try to repeat in the vernacular of the district the tale told by the grandson of one of these helpless and harmless old women. ‘My grannie was weel kent to be no’ canny. She had ways of doin’ things and kennin things that naebody could mak oot. At last she deeit, and she behoved to be buryit i’ the Barr, that’s a village on the ither side o’ the hills, laigh doon by the Stinchar. When the funeral day cam’, we carryit the coffin up the steep road, and when we were gettin’ near the tap, and hadna muckle breath left, for the coffin was nae licht wecht, a fine-lookin’ gentleman, ridin’ a fine black horse, made up to us. Nane o’ us kennt him or had seen him afore. But he rade alangside o’ us, and cracked awa’ maist croosely, and cheered us sae that we gaed scrievin’ doon the brae on the ither side. Weel, you may jalouse we were a wee bit forfeuchen when we cam’ to the kirkyard, and some o’ us thocht we wadna be the waur o’ bit drappie afore we gaed on wi’ the buryin’. Sae we steppit into the public-hoose. Weel, ye mauna think we bydeit lang there, but losh me! when we cam’ oot the coffin wi’ my grannie in’t was awa’, and sae was the man an’ the black horse. And to this day I canna tell what cam’ ower them.’
COLLIER SUPERSTITIONS
Miners are generally a superstitious race. Their subterranean occupation, with its darkness and its dangers, fosters the inborn human instinct to credit the supernatural. Hence old beliefs that have died out in the general community may still be found lingering among them. A miner who meets a woman, when he starts for his work in the morning, will turn back again, as the day has become unlucky for him. Any unexpected event in the mine is sure to awaken all his old-world ‘freits.’ If any of his comrades should, by the falling of part of the roof of the mine, be crushed to death, he dreads to continue his ordinary work so long as a corpse remains in the pit, and will spare himself no labour until he has tunnelled through the fallen roof. A memorable instance of this devotion has been already alluded to as having taken place in the little coal-field of Dailly, where one of the miners was shut off from all communication with mankind by the crushing down of the roof between him and his fellow-workmen. They toiled day and night to cut a passage through the material, with the view of reaching and removing his body, and they found him actually alive, after being shut up for twenty-three days without food. He died, however, three days after his rescue.[34] Such an incident could not fail to awaken to life all the dormant superstitions and fears of the collier mind. For a long time after, strange sounds and sights were imagined in the mine.
A more ludicrous recollection of that time was narrated to me by a survivor of the tragedy. One of his comrades had returned unexpectedly from work in the forenoon, and, to the surprise of his wife, appeared in front of their cottage. She was in the habit, unknown to him, of solacing herself in the early part of the day with a bottle of porter. On the occasion in question the bottle stood toasting pleasantly before the fire when the form of the ‘gudeman’ came in sight. In a moment she drove in the cork and thrust the bottle underneath the blankets of the box-bed, when he entered, and, seating himself by the fire, began to light his pipe. In a little while the warmed porter managed to expel the cork, and to escape in a series of very ominous gurgles from underneath the clothes. The poor fellow ran outside at once, crying ‘Anither warning, Meg! Rin, rin, the house is fa’ing.’ But Meg ‘kenn’d what was what fu’ brawly,’ and made for the bed, in time to save only the last dregs of her intended potation.
COLLIERS AS SLAVES
It is strange to reflect that many people now alive have known natives of Scotland who were born slaves. The colliers and salters had, from time immemorial, been attached for life to the works in which they were engaged. They could not legally remove from them, and if they escaped, could be lawfully pursued, arrested, and brought back to their proprietors. Their children, too, if once employed in any part of their work, became from that very fact bondsmen for life. In my own boyhood I have seen old men and women who were born in such servitude, and worked in the mines of Midlothian. The women were employed in the pits to carry up heavy baskets of coals on their backs from underground to the surface—a laborious and degrading occupation from which they dared not try to escape.
It is related by Robert Chambers that Bald, the mining engineer, about the year 1820, came upon an old miner near Glasgow who had been actually bartered by his master for a pony. When the famous decision was made by the Court of King’s Bench in June, 1772, that slavery could not exist in Great Britain, the Court hardly realised that at that very moment there were hundreds of slaves in Scotland who were bought and sold as part of the works on which they and their forbears were employed.
By an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in 1775 (15 George III. cap. 28) the villainage of colliers and salters was meant to be finally abolished. The act, which took effect from 1st July of that year, decreed that all colliers under 21 years of age were to be free in seven years from that date. Those between 21 and 35 were to be released after a further service of ten years from the date of the act, and those between 35 and 45 after a service of seven years, provided that these two classes, if required, should find and sufficiently instruct ‘in the art and mystery of coal-hewing or making of salt,’ an apprentice of at least 18 years, and on the perfection of such instruction, should then be free from further bondage. All persons above 45 years of age were to be discharged in three years.
COLLIER WOMEN UNDERGROUND
Nothing could apparently have been more precise than these stipulations. Unfortunately, however, they were saddled with a provision that before any collier or salter could claim the benefit of the act and gain his freedom, he was compelled to obtain ‘a decree of the Sheriff Court of the county in which he resides, finding and declaring that he is entitled unto his freedom under the authority of this act.’ It may readily be understood that only a small proportion of the workmen had the means of defraying the cost of such an action at law. As narrated in the subsequent act of 1799, there was ‘a general practice among the coal-owners and lessees of coal, of advancing considerable sums to their colliers, or for their behoof, much beyond what the colliers are able to repay; which sums are advanced for the purpose of tempting them to enter into or continue their engagements, notwithstanding the sums so advanced are kept up as debts against the colliers.’ Hence, in spite of the legislation, the provision for emancipation remained a dead letter in regard to the great majority of the colliers, who continued to be slaves until their death. It was not until the act of 13th June, 1799 (39 Geo. III. cap. 56) was passed that the shackles were finally broken, and the colliers of Scotland were ‘declared to be free from their servitude.’