Mine spirits

[wolfinthewood]

Fascinating post by papersky on Thursday: The industrial ruins of elfland, about growing up in the post-industrial landscape of the South Wales valleys.

In the woods, there were lots more ruins, much more ruined than the ironworks. We played that they were witch's cottages and giant's castles and fairy palaces and Hitler's last redoubt and the ruins of Angband. I still don't know what they were. They might have been eighteenth century workmen's cottages, but probably they were more ironworks, older ones. If they'd actually had magical inhabitants, they would have been kobolds. – papersky

What she said reminded me of the following passage, but this has been a week of catastrophe and chaos and I have only just had time to look it up:

We have in this County [Cardiganshire], several Silver and Leaden Mines, and nothing more ordinary* than some Subterranean Spirits, called Knockers (where a good Vein is) both heard, and after seen, little Statured, about half a yard long; this very instant, there are Miners, upon a Discovery of a Vein upon my own Lands, upon this score, and two offered Oath, they heard them in the Day-time.

*ordinary: usual, common

John Lewis JP, of Glascrug near Aberystwyth, writing in 1656 to Richard Baxter (1615–1691)

from The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits. Fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of Apparitions and Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c. Proving the Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Miseries of the Devils and the Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the Conviction of Sadduces & Infidels. By Richard Baxter (1691)


tags: folklore | apparition

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