Cornish Saints & Sinners

by J. Henry Harris

Three occupations are followed—farming, mining, and fishing, but the Cornish are a handy race, and it is not an uncommon thing for a man to cultivate a farm, work in a mine, and fish in the sea. A "wheelbarrow farm" is a small holding which a man may get along with, with the assistance of a wheelbarrow, and is common enough in the mining districts. When a mine is near the sea, the wheelbarrow farmer has a boat, and puts in time fishing when not underground. There are no factories, as understood elsewhere, and if you see smoke afar off, it's just some farmer burning weeds, or a railway engine puffing along. There's never smoke enough in any one place to soil a butterfly's wing, and some medical men have already made note of the fact.

In the mining district people talk tin and copper, and dream about little else, though it's tin for choice. Redruth is the reputed headquarters of the tin worship. When we reached the town, everybody seemed to be in the street, talking at once. We thought some great calamity had happened, but found out that it was only the usual when men came in from Camborne, and round about. There is an inner temple, called an Exchange, but most of the exchanging seems to be done in the street. Men talk together, and then out come little note-books. It looks like street-betting, but the policeman takes no notice, so, of course, it's something else. Millions sterling have changed hands in this way, and in this street, but we were told that times were dull now. People were lively enough, and whether they win or lose, they go on talking and dreaming of tin.

It has been a wonderful land, this, and the stories told of fortunes made in tin and copper give fairy tales a back seat; but then, for every fortune made, a fortune is lost; and the way to get ten shillings worth of tin is to melt twenty shillings worth of gold, we were told. Of course, there's the other side, but we hadn't time to go into it—it was too much like fiscal politics.

The people about here are prosperous to look at, but we were told that they were ruined regularly once a week or fortnight, as the case may be. Strangers may make mistakes when they see ruined people for the first time, but they get to know that when a tin man looks most prosperous, he's most ruined. A copper man may be afflicted in the same way, but tin was uppermost when we were in the place.

The great men in these parts are captains—mine captains. A Newmarket horse-trainer and jockey combined is not more looked up to on the heath than a mine captain here. He is the man who knows, and can put a friend on to a good thing; people always think a mine captain has a good thing up his sleeve, and you must be civil to him, to make him shake it out. They are modest men, however, and live in small houses to check any tendency to pride, and on Sundays Cap'n Jack and Cap'n Jose, and the best samples, go preaching. The kingdom of heaven is very much like a mine to a miner, and if she "cuts rich" he wants to be there.

A mine is "she," and has many wooers when rich, or reputed to have great expectations. Mines in these parts are also feminine in the coquettish way in which they show just sufficient of their attractions at one time to lure men on and on, and then—nothing! The caprices of a season's beauty are not greater than those of a mine, nor is the condition of a Derby favourite more closely watched and canvassed. A mine may look well, or be in a bad way, and all the men crowd around Wheal This and Wheal That as though her breath were perfumed, and then turn their backs upon her when old age and wrinkles come, and her "eyes are picked out," and she's neglected, and left to grow dropsical, and pass from memory. Sometimes a pet Wheal over-runs the constable, and ruins all her lovers, and then no secret is made of her wicked little ways; but no professional beauty is more run after and talked about when she's in her prime.

Guy was relieved to find that the Gulf Stream was not held responsible for tin. We had heard so much of the Gulf Stream, how it made the 'taties grow, and the flowers bloom, and the air warm, and the wind cool, and the skies blue, and the rain wet; but no one here said it had anything to do with the making of tin. You may stream for tin, but that is only one way of getting it; and the Gulf Stream doesn't come in, and there are tin crystals in streams, but this is a detail known mostly to natives.

Miners call themselves "Cousin Jacks," and a Cornish miner in any part of the universe answers to "Cousin Jack." The Bookworm tried to find the origin of the name from a man "tending the engine" at a mine, who replied, "S'poase Adam gave it out when he named t'other animals." This was a good beginning. The men change their clothes in the engineroom; they call it "shifting," and a shift is worth the trouble, for a miner coming up from the bowels of the earth with a bit of tallow candle in his cap looks a clay-gnome of bad character, and gentle manners only increase prejudice, for why should such a forbidding-looking animal be gentle?