Mining Myths

Oakes Colliery Disaster. Source: BBC

On this day in 1882, an explosion rocked the Trimdon Grange Colliery in County Durham, killing 68 miners. For most of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, the risk of fatal injury to miners due to accidents or disasters, was very real. For that reason a range of superstitions, traditions and myths grew up around mines. Examples include: the sweet smell of flowers underground meant a death-flower had taken root, and a prop collapse was imminent; if birds are found in the mine, particularly robins or pigeons, they were known as death-birds, signs of ill-omen; no one must whistle when in a mine, or say the word ‘cat’. Miners whose paths were crossed by rabbits, pigs, birds or people with squints, meant it was best for the miner to take the day off; and, naturally premonitions of disaster meant that the person who had the foretelling dream must not set foot in the mine, or calamity would indeed follow.