Tommy Bell of Houghton-le-Spring, Durham.
This is an eccentric, good-humoured character—a lover of a chirruping cup—and a favourite with the pitmen of Durham. He dresses like them, and mixes and jokes with them; and his portrait seems an appropriate illustration of the following paper, by a gentleman of the north, well acquainted with their remarkable manners.
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?