![]() Near the stile beyond Lanelwyd House they saw a company of fifteen or sixteen coblynau engaged in dancing madly. Egbert Williams, 'a pious young gentleman of Denbigh- shire, then at school,' was one day playing in a field called Cae Caled, in the parish of Bodfari, with three girls, one of whom was his sister. That the Coblynau sometimes wandered far from home, the same chronicler testifies but on these occasions they were taking a holiday. He was a person of undoubted veracity,' and what is more, 'a great man in the world-above telling an untruth.' He thought this 'a wonderful extra natural thing,' and was considerably impressed by it, for well he knew that there really was no coal mine at that place. Some were cutting the coal, some carrying it to fill the sacks, some raising the loads upon the horses' backs, and so on but all in the completest silence. It relates that one William Evans, of Hafodafel, while crossing the Beacon Mountain very early in the morning, passed a fairy coal mine, where fairies were busily at work. I find it in a quaint volume (of which I shall have more to say), printed at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1813. There is at least one account extant of their secret territory having been revealed to mortal eyes. When encountered, either in the mines or on the mountains, they have strayed from their special abodes, which are as spectral as themselves. Their homes are hidden from mortal vision. The Coblynau are always given the form of dwarfs, in the popular fancy wherever seen or heard, they are believed to have escaped from the mines or the secret regions of the mountains. Absolute freedom from superstition can come only with a degree of scientific culture not yet reached by mortal man. Their superstitions, therefore, like those of the rest of us, must be judged as 'a thing apart,' not to be reconciled with intelligence and education, but co-existing with them. Yet I should be sorry if any reader were to conclude from all this that Welsh miners are not in the main intelligent, church-going, newspaper-reading men. This year, however, the men, one and all, refused to work.' dealing with considerable numbers of the mining class, and are quoted in this instance as being more significant than individual cases would be. A few years ago the agents persuaded the men to break through the superstition, and there were accidents each year-a not unlikely occurrence, seeing the extent of works carried on, and the dangerous nature of the occupation of the men. This refusal did not arise out of any reverential feeling, but from an old and wide-spread superstition, which has lingered in that district for years, that if work is continued on Ascension Day an accident will certainly follow. In June, 1878, the South Wales Daily News recorded a superstition of the quarrymen at Penrhyn, where some thousands of men refused to work on Ascension Day. Some of them, we are gravely assured, consider it a bad omen to meet a woman first thing in the morning and not having succeeded in deterring her from her work by other means, they waited upon the manager and declared that they should remain at home unless the woman was dismissed.' This was in 1874. The Oswestry Advertiser, a short time ago, recorded the fact that, at Cefn, 'a woman is employed as messenger at one of the collieries, and as she commences her duty early each morning she meets great numbers of colliers going to their work. There is testimony enough, besides, to support my own conclusions, which accredit a liberal share of credulity to the mining class. Miners are possibly no more superstitious than other men of equal intelligence I have heard some of their number repel indignantly the idea that they are superstitious at all but this would simply be to raise them above the level of our common humanity.
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