Bacca is the name of a spirit that in Cornwall it was once thought necessary to propitiate. Fishermen left a fish on the sands for bucca, and in the harvest a piece of bread at lunch-time was thrown over the left shoulder, and a few drops of beer spilled on the ground for him to ensure good-luck. Bucca, or bucca-boo, was, until very lately (and I expect in some places still is) the terror of children, who were often when crying told "that if they did not stop he would come and carry them off." It was also the name of a ghost; but nowadays to call a person a "great bucca" simply implies that you think him a fool. There were two buccas—
"'Bucca Gwidden,' the white, or good spirit,
'Bucca Dhu,' the black, malevolent one."
Miners, too, had some superstition in regard to snails, known in Cornwall as "bulhorns," for if they met one on their way to work they always dropped a bit of their dinner or some grease from their lanthom before him for good-luck.
Although Cornish miners, or "tinners" as they are generally called, are a very intelligent, and since the days of Wesley a religious body of men, many of these old-world beliefs still linger. To this day it is considered unlucky to make the form of a cross on the sides of a mine, and when underground you may on no account whistle for fear of vexing the knockers and bringing ill-luck, but you may sing or even swear[1] without producing any bad effect. Down one mine-shaft a black goat is often seen to descend, but is never met below; in another mine a white rabbit forbodes an accident. A hand clasping the ladder and coming down with, or after a miner, foretells misfortune or death. This superstition prevails, too, in the slate quarries of the eastern part of the county.
The miners in the slate-quarries of Delabole have a tradition that the right hand of a miner, who committed suicide, is sometimes seen following them down the ladders, grasping the rings as they let them go, holding a miner's light between the thumb and finger. It forebodes ill to the seer.—Esmé Stuart. See "Tamsins Choice," Longman, June, 1883.
Miraculous dreams are related; warnings to some miners, which
- ↑ Some say you must neither whistle nor swear, but you may sing and laugh.
