Dismissiveness. Foreign beetles implicated.

"Anti-Humbug" is a miner of sense without fear of superstition, and hails from Tonypandy. I welcome his sensible letter, though he comes down on "your Rhondda correspondent" with a heavy heel. "I accept his Treherbert dove story for what it is worth." There is decision about "Anti-Humbug." "But," he goes on, "the interesting story related by Captain Lewis, of Ynysfeio Colliery, is too good to be passed. He says that whilst examining a certain part of the workings by himself he heard tapping as though some person was striking the timbers some yards away with a hammer. Having listened and heard the sound more distinctly he advanced towards the spot whence the sound came ('plucky Captain Lewis'); going still further on and close to a pile of timber, he lifted one of themthem, and discovered immediately a large Norwegian black beetle, about two inches long, boring into the wood. He was positive that superstitious and timid miners would have quitted the place at once, declaring they had heard a ghost. Nonsense, the sound heard by Captain Lewis is frequently heard underground, and every man and boy knows the cause of it, and I believe even colliery horses for that matter.

The Norwegian beetle referred to is generally known among miners as a jasper or a Russian bug. The insect can be heard yards away boring into timber. I do not believe that the average Welsh miner is any more timid and superstitious than Captain Lewis, and certainly not half as fussy about the sound of an insect. What has been passed off in your columns lately as superstition is often a miner's fear for his safety, owing to the conditions of certain parts of the workings in the various collieries."

And then follows a vigorous protest against the silly reflections which have been cast "on us miners generally." A good deal of nonsense has been written and much more talked about the superstitious beliefs and fears of the Welsh miner, he says. Much more has been talked. Even "Anti-Humbug" will admit, I think, that the Morfa incident was a sufficient justification for a little plain speaking. I have laughed at the ghostly ideas in the same way that my corresponsdent disdains them. The dove stories, the singing in the glen, the mysterious forms "seen" in the mines and on the mountain sides are the thinnest of fictions, and as fragile as a dew spangled cobweb. To describe them in cold blood is to destroy the fictions; it is quite unnecessary to place them under the microscope of inquiry.

I have held all along that the "warnings," "tappings," and "noises" heard in the Morfa Pit were not unusual or strange. They are familiar to every miner throughout the country, only the miners at other collieries than the Morfa find the cause for the noises in quite ordinary and everyday phenomnea. My Rhondda correspondent declares that one form of "tapping" is well understood by the colliery horses, and I believe his assertion. I do not think the Welsh miner generally has been given credit for this silly belief in ghosts in the mine. The public laugh at the Morfa "spirits" and ask whether that mine is specially favoured by apparitions and message bearers, by doves and visitors who follow the miners from their work home and waylay them as they pass from their cottages to the mine. The men in the Morfa Pit hug their childish superstitions; in the Rhondda the colliery horses see through them!

South Wales Echo, 19th December 1895.