“People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature, will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of knockers in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable people, not to be seen but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents which happen to us. Before the discovery of the Esgair y Mwyn mine, these little people worked hard through day and night, and there are abundance of sober honest people who have heard them. But after the discovery of the great mine they were heard no more. When I began to work at Lwyn Lwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time, that they frightened away some young workmen. This was when they were driving levels, and before we had got any ore, but when we came to the ore they then gave over, and I heard no more of them. These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, although we cannot and do not pretend to account for them. We have now (October 1754) very good ore at Lwyn Lwyd, where the knockers were heard to work. But they have now yielded up the place, and are heard no more. Let who will laugh; we have the greatest reason to rejoice and thank the knockers, or rather God, who sends these notices.”
In the coal districts one meets with a similar belief in goblin miners. These spirits are ordinarily of a friendly disposition, and perform such kindly offices for their human fellow-workers as assisting to pump up superfluous water or loosening masses of coal. Of course one can readily see that when the men went to their work and found their toil diminished, owing to a heavy fall of coal in the working, superstition would at once have material to work on. Some of these spirits would appear to have been of less amiable disposition, and the sounds heard were at times the warnings and forerunners of coming disaster. As the fairies of the household or of the moonlighted forest glades were of uncertain and variable natures, though inclining on the whole to beneficence, so the spirits of the earth were divisible into those of gentle race and others of fierce and malevolent disposition. In Milton’s “Comus” we find these earth spirits referred to in the following passage:—
“No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o’er true virginity;”
and in Pope’s prefatory letter to the “Rape of the Lock” we find a further allusion—“The four elements are inhabitated by spirits called sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of the earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in air, are the best-conditioned creatures imaginable.”
A belief in kindly spirits of the household was widely spread, for besides our own Robin Goodfellow we find the Nis of Denmark and Norway, the Kobold of Germany, the Brownie of Scotland, and many others. Brownie, we may remark, is a tawny, good-natured spirit, and derives his name from his colour as distinctive from fair-ie. Robin Goodfellow was a merry domestic sprite, full of practical jokes, a terror to the lazy, but a diligent rewarder of industry:—
“When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest,—
Un-heard or un-espied,
Through key-hole we do glide:
Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.
And if the house be foule,
Of platter, dish or bowle,
Upstairs we nimbly creepe
And find the sluts asleepe:
Then we pinch their armes and thighes,
None escapes, nor none espies.
But if the house be swept,
And from uncleannesse kept,
We praise the house and maid,
And surely she is paid:
For we do use before we go
To drop a tester in her shoe.”
The “shrewd and knavish sprite” and the good luck he brings to the deserving are referred to very happily again in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Prudent and considerate housewives who wished to gain the goodwill of these spirits of the night were careful to leave a bowl of milk on the table for their use. Milton, in his poem of “L’Allegro”—