Allegany County In General

Mining superstitions. The underground coal miners whose backbreaking, often fatal toil characterized Allegany County in the 19th and early 20th centuries included many immigrants and children of immigrants, who brought multiple European traditions to our corner of Appalachia. As with other workers in dangerous professions--sailors, railroaders, cowpokes--their superstitions and folk beliefs often revolved around that essential but elusive requirement for a good day on the job: luck.

• Women in the mines were considered unlucky; one wonders whether any girls or women, needing the money, descended anyhow, in drag and under assumed names.
• Brown rats were ubiquitous, and scarcely worth commenting on if they didn't eat your lunch--but white rats were an omen of death, and whenever all the rats of whatever color started running, the miners knew they'd be wise to follow.
• "A sudden warm breeze meant a ghost was passing by."
• Whistling in the mines was considered unlucky. Miners from England may have invoked the legend of the Seven Whistlers, seven miners whose un-Christian behavior on a Sunday included not just whistling (!), but also gambling and drinking, and who were condemned, Flying Dutchman-like, to roam the Earth forever, whistling to warn their fellow miners of danger.
• German miners spoke of the Kobolds, the inhuman miners and metalworkers who could be heard in the depths of the mountains, far out of human reach. (The metal cobalt gets its name from the German kobold, meaning goblin.)
• Cornish and Welsh miners spoke of the Tommyknockers, the two-foot-tall miners who were blamed for just about everything that went non-fatally wrong underground, to the point that some miners placated them by leaving food and other offerings in out-of-the-way niches. To some, the Knockers were a separate race; to others, they were the spirits of long-dead miners. To some, their knocking and hammering was altruistic, a warning of danger; to others, all that knocking and hammering was the evil Knockers trying to bring the roof down around our heads! In either case, the sound of Knockers was a signal to flee.

See Horn, Polla Drummond, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume Three. Frostburg, Maryland: Foundation for Frostburg, 2021. "Legends and Myths," Pages 60-62.

A miner saved by a disembodied voice. Many miner stories revolved around supernatural warnings of doom. Long ago, a Western Maryland woman told folklorist Dorothy Howard's students about one such warning that her husband's miner grandfather, Hugh Atkinson, had received back home in England, two generations before and an ocean away. Imagine how frequently and vividly this story must have been told in Western Maryland!

One day he was working alone in one of the little headings that lead to the main tunnel. He thought he heard someone calling to him. The voice just said, “Hugh.” 

He waited for a little while but he didn’t hear anything so he went back to work. A little while later he heard it again -- “Hugh.” 

This time he answered and went to the mouth of the heading to see if he could see anyone. But no one answered … 

He had just started to work again, when he heard that same voice say, “Hugh, Hugh, come here.” It was much more insistent this time. 

So he went to the main tunnel where most of the men were and asked around if any one of them had called him. They all said they hadn’t … , so he just decided that they were playing some kind of a joke on him and he went back to where he’d been working. 

When he got back there, he saw that while he’d been gone the digging had caved in. If he hadn’t left and followed that voice, he’d of been buried sure.

Note the classic three-part, third-time's-the-charm oral structure. Also note that for many miners, much of their dark, dangerous, underground work was done alone. No wonder they saw and heard things. See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970. Fourth printing, 1983. Page 47.