A miner, going underground with shoes on, will drive all the mineral out of the mine.—Cornubiana, Rev. S. Rundle.
In 1886, at St. Just in Penwith two men of Wheal Drea had their hats burnt one Monday morning, after the birth of their first children.
Three hundred fathoms below the ground at Cook’s Kitchen mine, near Camborne, swarms of flies may be heard buzzing, called by the men, for some unknown reason, “Mother Margarets.” From being bred in the dark, they have a great dislike to light.
Swallows in olden times were thought to spend the winter in deep, old disused Cornish tin-works; also in the sheltered nooks of its cliffs and cairns. It is the custom here to jump on seeing the first in spring.
A water-wagtail, in Cornwall a “tinner,” perching on a window-sill, is the sign of a visit from a stranger.
Carew says—“The Cornish tynners hold a strong imagination, that in the withdrawing of Noah’s floud to the sea the same took his course from east to west, violently breaking vp, and forcibly carrying with it the earth, trees, and rocks, which lay anything loosely neere the vpper face of the ground. To confirme the likelihood of which supposed truth, they doe many times digge vp whole and huge timber-trees, which they conceiue at that deluge to haue been ouerturned and whelmed.”
Miners frequently in conversation make use of technical proverbs, such as “Capel rides a good horse.” Capel is schorl, and indicates the presence of tin. “It’s a wise man that knows tin” alludes to the various forms it takes. To an old tune they sing the words—
“Here’s to the devil, with his wooden spade and shovel,
Digging tin by the bushel, with his tail cocked up.”
And on the signboard of a public-house in West Cornwall a few years ago (and probably still) might be read—