Climb the cliffs at Tintagel, Cornish castle-island presiding over the Atlantic white horses, and step out along the breathless-high clifftops towards Trebarwith Strand; and if you are a sensitive, you might just feel the spirits of the men working the cliffs.
Since 1650, the great monolithic grey-slate edges have been worked for what a man can get.
Look down if you dare, and you will see slate where they left it: great high stacks where men dug down through the land to reach the flat, layered moneyspinner.
The names of the quarries – the last one abandoned in 1939 – run like a poem of their own. You walk past Gillow Quarry, Dunderhole Point, Long Grass and Lambshouse, Gull Point and Dria, Bagalow, Lanterdan and West Quarries.
The tinkering of men’s pickaxes has long since been superseded by the roar of the waves as they buffet that which seems immoveable and permanent.
It is a ruin now. A reclaimed industrial conquest. It feels haunted, but I cannot see the occupants.
Tomorrow we bundle everyone into the car and drive for what we in England consider a lifetime: four long hours, past Stonehenge and through the haunted Wiltshire countryside, across the great English maid, Devon, and over the Tamar to a land which has never really been part of England at all.
Slate was not the only Cornish bounty. Tin has been making Cornwall a pretty penny since the Bronze Age. When we bought our little North Cornish cottage we had to do a search peculiar to that part of the world: one to find out if there were disused mine workings beneath our foundations.
Because they were everywhere, as one couple found out to their astonishment.
John and Eileen Cooper were content, living out a happy retirement in their pretty bungalow in Ashton, near Helston.
The couple woke one night to hear a sound like a deafening rumble of thunder. They got up to investigate, early hours or no: and found, to their horror, a cavern in their front garden.
It was about 4.5 metres wide: and appeared bottomless.
Their little home, it transpires, was built just yards from the entrance to Harvey’s Shaft, a tin mine closed in 1880 and long forgotten. It was thought to be hundreds of feet deep. Poor John: it was hard to grasp the enormity of what it meant for their little piece of land. He told The Independent: “If the top of the hole goes any further it’ll hit the septic tank…”
Men burrowed wherever they could while tin fetched money. But Cornwall could not compete with the plentiful supplies of tin in other parts of the world. It became a ghost industry, leaving great tall ruins behind to remonstrate like a methodist preacher with the unforgiving Cornish landscape.
Alongside the impossibly twee pisky lore in Cornwall crouches a darker soul, a small spirit of the lost mines.
He is called a Bucca.
These were the mining hobgoblins of the storm, and sailors swore they could hear their voices on the wild Cornish winds.
At Newlyn and Mousehole the fishermen would, it is said, leave a portion of their catch on the beach to appease the grotesque little mining spirits. And miners who had eaten the majority of their pasties – the characteristic Cornish dinner in pastry – would toss the crust away as an offering to these creatures.
They were also called knockers. It was in the caverns of St Just that Tom Treverrow is said to have begun working with his son; and every day that he worked, the sound of small picks and shovels wielded by something inhuman came closer and closer.
One day the hairs on the back of his neck stood up: the creatures were on his level, feet away. He threw a handful of shale at them and uttered empty threats: for how could one intimidate a legion of small mining devils? His rants met with eerie silence and he steadied himself by opening his lunch: a fuggan prepared by his wife.
Immediately the voices began. “Tom Trevorrow! Tom Trevorrow! Leave some of thy fuggan for Bucca, or bad luck to thee tomorrow!”
This being a legend, he ate every morsel: and was almost killed when an old shaft opened beneath him, taking his tools and all he had gained for the last three weeks with it.
It doesn’t do to offend the Bucca.
So I shall roam the Cornish hills and cliffs armed with a pasty, ever in readiness.
Maybe I will climb those Cornish cliffs at Tintagel once more, and listen once again for the sound of picks and shovels which have moulded the landscape for centuries.
Image source – a Cornish Witchcraft site, be warned – is here
Kate Shrewsday 
Ah I remember Tintagel. Terrifying heights. The vertigo defeats me even before I’ve spied the little mining devils! V atmospheric, Kate 🙂
Can’t wait to get back there now, Jan!
We know Cornwall very well and have been to Helston several times – Those poor people !! When you visit Poldark mine there is a postbox where you can actually post your mail and it is the lowest postbox in the country – The kids loved that !!
Most try visiting while we’re there, Trudie!
will you eat the pastie if you don;t meet them?
Hmmmm. I think I should be too terrified. What if one jumped out and claimed it after I had munched the last morsel?
What a romantic tale of Tintagel tin and nebulous knockers. Please do NOT fall into a mine shaft as you wander about.
We have a pub here called Tommy Knockers . . . with a mischievous spirit.
Not sure I’d be a regular there Nancy! I’ll keep my eyes wide open as I wander about…
Kate, I’m so glad to have found your blog. It’s a lesson of some sort nearly every day! This morning I Googled Tintagel and was wowed by the photos I found; what a starkly beautiful place!
Then I searched out “pisky,” and “Bucca.” My day is off to a slow start, what with all my blog-reading and the additional research/reading that the blogs inspire; but, I’m learning new things (and finding new friends) every day! My computer is surely as close as I’ll get to Cornwall, however, so I thank you for this post (and I’ll be just as happy NOT to meet a Bucca)!
Hope you and yours will enjoy your holiday.
Yes,Karen, Buccas are best avoided 🙂 I know what you mean about blogs and research. I learn so much!
Cornwall has always fascinated me, Kate. It is so beautiful. I hope the mines are rehabilitated so as not to spoil the scenery. Fancy, a sinkhole in your garden… scary!
It is, as I gaze out on the garden on the edge of Bodmin Moor, Denise 😀
Tintagel is a wonder! I have a stone I picked up from there, with silvery glints in it….
The geology round here is fabulous, Pseu. Welcome back! Hope you enjoyed your week….
I KNEW this would be about Cornwall, a place I’ve never been but have read about since I was a girl. Of course, I want to see everything you describe with my own eyes, but seeing them through yours will have to do for now.
I wonder if all the slate we have in Charleston came from there. I will have to do some research when I am on something bigger than my phone.
Your trip sounds like it will be delightful. I hope you, Phil, Maddie and Felix have an awesome holiday. Does Macaulay go with you?
Not this time, we’re missing him sorely, Andra. I shall take loads of photos while I’m down here so you can see it, if only second-hand….
Armed with a pasty, eh? Do you think a nice Cornish cream tea would help, too?! 😀 Have a great time!
Cream tea. Now there’s an idea, Heather. Although I’m not sure the miners of old took those underground with them….
I loved Tintagel, but found the heights less impressive than I would have expected, compared with Skye, Ireland and South Africa’s Cape cliffs.
John should have put in a lift and taken people on paid tours down his shaft, as long as his septic tank didn’t follow them…
I wonder if that would have made him enough money to fill in the hole, Col
😀
Kate, enjoyable as ever. Cornwall, from whence came a line of my ancestors. Must get there some day. You’ve probably already had a few of these – even so I’ve nominated you for a Versatile Blogging Award http://wonderingpilgrim.com/2011/10/23/versatile-blogging-award/
Thanks so much WP! How kind! I shall pop over- on the edge of Bodmin Moor it takes me hours to access my regular favourite blogs, so I’m a bit scarcer than usual till Wednesday. From your picture I should have guessed you had Cornish ancestry. You’d fit right in here 🙂
First I watched Doc Martin, then I slip into your cavern spirits. Love it!
I’m down here looking out at the purple moor as we speak, Penny. Felix and I are just off out to see if we can’t spot a bucca or two.
If I were ever to meet one of those little mining devil buggers…well you know where I’d shove MY pasty!
I do indeed, Tooty, and if it ever happens I want to hear about it in painful detail.
Have a great holiday.
Thanks EB 🙂
Back to the ghost stories, Kate. They were always your favourite.
Have a great time.
Love, Dad
Lovely old folk tales, Dad 😀
You bring the landscape to life in the imagination, Kate – have a lovely (and hopefully Bucca-less) holiday
I’m now down here having a lovely tine. Tintagel tomorrow, I think…
you have invoked wonderful memories of our visit to Cornwall – where I recorded the water in the brook for my dad at Tintagel 🙂
I go to Cornwall and Tintagel a lot, but you have still taught me something new, as always.
Whether I’m thinking of Bucca or not, I’m always armed with a pasty. It’s too good to resist! 🙂
Hi Emily May – thanks for leaving a comment. I’m the same. A pasty is such a fabulous treat. Not sure I could give the crust to a Bucca, though…