parts of Wales, in the lime rock, their abodes have been. brought to light. It is not improbable that the people who occupied the caves of ancient days were, in reality, the original Fairy Knockers. These people were invested, in after ages, by the wonder-loving mind of man, with supernatural powers.

Eschylus, the Greek tragic poet, who died in the 69th year of his age, B.C. 456, in Prometheus Vinctus, refers to cave dwellers in a way that indicates that even then they belonged to a dateless antiquity.

In Prometheus's speech to the chorus—KOйтe TλwvOvPeîs . . év μvxoîs ȧvnλíois-lines 458-461, is a reference to this ancient tradition. His words, put into English, are these:-"And neither knew the warm brick-built houses exposed to the sun, nor working in wood, but they dwelt underground, like as little ants, in the sunless recesses of caves."

The above quotation proves that the Greeks had a tradition that men in a low, or the lowest state of civilization, had their abodes in caves, and possibly the reference to ants would convey the idea that the cave dwellers were small people. Be this as it may, it is very remarkable that the word applied to a dwarf in the dialects of the northern countries of Europe signifies also a Fairy, and the dwarfs, or Fairies, are there said to inhabit the rocks. The following quotation from Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary under the word Droich, a dwarf, a pigmy, shows this to have been the case :

"In the northern dialects, dwerg does not merely signify a dwarf, but also a Fairy! The ancient Northern nations, it is said, prostrated themselves before rocks, believing that they were inhabited by these pigmies, and that they thence gave forth oracles. Hence they called the echo dwergamal, as believing it to be their voice or speech,

N

Som restes, long before refered in the existence of a

missmile species between men par oleh Dungun Dwarfs, and to Holy make retomances, far exceeding

Sudbud 1772 pp. 55-56, when

rascle, describes the Knockers

„Paus airs that by between the pillars ex

I could not help dap bolig the air de magmay inhabitant, the creation

and max serious) asoned by a black fellow at my elbow Pha, he now y had seer ze with any, but that his grandna hor na eud de de teplements and tools belonging tapi dama de me of subterraneous spirits. The Comex Receved in we specks; one fierce and malevolent, the other a gente race, appearing ke little old men, dressed

like the miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing. Some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the windlass, but never do any harm to the miners, except provoked; as the sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book, de Animantibus Subterraneis."

Jamieson, under the word Farefolkis, writes :-" Besides the Fairies, which are more commonly the subject of popular tradition, it appears that our forefathers believed in the existence of a class of spirits under this name that wrought in the mines;" and again, quoting from a work dated 1658, the author of which says:

"In northerne kingdomes there are great armies of devils that have their services which they perform with the inhabitants of these countries, but they are most frequent in rocks and mines, where they break, cleave, and make them hollow; which also thrust in pitchers and buckets, and carefully fit wheels and screws, whereby they are drawn upwards; and they show themselves to the labourers, when they list, like phantoms and ghosts."

The preceding quotations from Pennant and Jamieson correspond with the Welsh miners' ideas of the Coblynau, or Knockers. There is a difficulty in tracing to their origin these opinions, but, on the whole, I am strongly inclined to say that they have come down to modern times from that remote period when cave-men existed as a distinct people.

But now let us hear what our Welsh miners have to say about the Coblynau. I have spoken to several miners on this subject, and, although they confessed that they had not themselves heard these good little people at work, still they believed in their existence, and could name mines in which they had been heard. I was told that they are generally

heard at work in new mines, and that they lead the men to the ore by knocking in its direction, and when the lode is reached the knocking ceases.

But the following extracts from two letters written by Lewis Morris, a well-known and learned Welshman, fully express the current opinion of miners in Wales respecting Kuockers. The first letter was written Oct. 14, 1754, and the latter is dated Dec. 4, 1754. They appear in Bingley's North Wales, vol. ii., pp. 269–272. Lewis Morris writes :People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature (which, in other words, are the powers of the author 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 the types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents, which happen to us. The barometer falls before rain, or storms. If we do not know the construction of it, we should call it a kind of dream that foretells rain; but we know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means? There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However this is, I must speak well of the Knockers, for they have actually stood my good friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air and fire and the like.

"Before the discovery of the Esgair y Mwyn mine, these little people, as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are abundance of honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons who have no

notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of the great ore they were heard no more.

When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the work. This was when we 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 talk of them.

"Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them blasting, boring holes, landing deads, &c., than if they were some of their own people; and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of the night, without any man near him, and never think of any fear or of any harm they will do him. The miners have a notion that the Knockers are of their own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop to take notice of them, the Knockers will also stop; but, let the miners go on at their work, suppose it is boring, the Knockers will at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, blasting, or beating down the loose, and they are always heard a little distance from them before they come to the ore.

"These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, though we cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good ore at Llwyn Llwyd, where the Knockers were heard to work, but have now yielded up the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the Knockers, or rather God, who sends us these notices."

The second letter is as follows:
:-

"I have no time to answer your objection against Knockers; I have a large treatise collected on that head, and