The Haunting of Wheal Rose
Black Damp and Fire Damp,
Seeping through the stones,
Widowmaker rock-drills,
Loosing flesh from bones.
Pasty pastry crusts and handles,
Tossed, left where they lay,
A tribute to the Piskies,
To keep bad luck at bay.
Four-man gang, digging ore,
Candles stuck to tarred felt hats,
Shooting sparks from pick on rock,
Scatter the scavenging rats.
Erupting blasting powder,
Flash-burns and a deafening roar,
Men and tools and pit-props,
Crashing to the floor
Buried in a rock-fall,
Clawing his way out,
Belton! Thomaas! Roddo!
For his workmates he did shout.
Fighting through choking dust,
The pump-rod, dimply lit,
He staggered to the ruined shaft,
To escape the crumbling pit.
The adit blocked and riser smashed,
Water gushed into the mine,
Fighting against the rushing torrent,
Towards daylight he began to climb.
Strange men with flameless lanterns,
Set upon their hats of yellow,
Horror struck, gazed down upon him,
Lit outwith carbide or tallow.
Wordless shrieks escape their mouths,
Screaming as they ascend,
Scrambling over the pit-head rim,
Actions he could not comprehend.
Children dressed in strange garb,
On piles of tailings made play,
But on seeing the dishevelled miner,
In terrorem did run away.
Looking about for reasons why,
Nobody would come near,
Then looked upon the Whin’ House,
And stood himself in fear.
No beam or engine could he see,
No whim gear was in sight,
Walls and doors and windows gone,
Put him in a terrible fright.
Now the pump and pipe and rod,
Faded before his eyes,
The once familiar landscape
He could no more recognise.
By the ruined buildings,
Where rock-stamps once did pound,
He stood stock-still, bewildered,
Downcast eyes upon the ground,
Reflected in an oily puddle,
’neath a set of rusting gears,
The man looking back at him,
Had been dead for a hundred years.
© July 2025
Wheal = Cornish word for a mine
Image of a Cornish Tin Mine. Inside would be a massive steam engine driving a massive pump-rod (or winding gear) via a massive rocking iron beam
Piskies = Cornish Pixies
Pasty = A complete cooked meal in pastry, sometimes with fruit at one end. The crusts, or sometimes pastry handles, would be used to hold the pasty then thrown away as a tribute to Mine Gods. (The practical reason for this was to prevent heavy metal poisoning transferred from the miners’ hands).
Widow-makers = Massive pneumatic drills that would shake the miners’ so badly that it would drastically reduce their lifespan.
Whin’ = Winch
Whim = Winding drum and associated drive gear.
Adit = Horizontal shaft to drain water from the mine.
Carbide = Acetylene Carbide that would produce a combustible gas when mixed with water, used to power miner’s lamps.
Black Damp = A mixture of unbreathable gases devoid of oxygen. An asphyxiant.
Fire Damp = Methane Gas
Riser = Pipe used to pump water out of a mine
Tarred Hats = A method of reinforcing hats. Early hard-hats.
Tailings = None ore-bearing spoil.
Pump-Rod = Massive wooden rod attached to one end of the massive iron beam, made in sections bolted one above the other, with valves and pumps attached to draw water up from a sump in stages from the bottom of the mineshaft.
