Stones Know.
Strewn over seashores the evidence of Alquifou mining
for coppery tin.
Trussed amid moss in tufty green sward lies hidden past
keepsakes.
Forrays to deep earthed hot-holes needed just candles
on heads and valour.
Long wooden ladders oft wankled in unstable footholds
got dangerously thin.
Down the rashling
- - -__- - - - - -
would venture by
- - - - - - - - - -
clogged foot or
- - -__- -- - -
plimsole if not
- - - - - - - -
too underclad
- - - __- - -
in dire need.
Otherwise barefoot
which bettered men\'s
grip on each rocky step
of mouldy wet to floor level.
Meal was a tumpy-top pasty
candled to hot or part-baked
tattie and bacon-fat wrapped
in floury rag was all some ate.
Besmutted by black end-croust was
dropped at feet of pit-ponies for crib.
No time to be lonely down there, yoiking a-plenty young
lasses wide-eyed the lads.
They laughed at a smidgen and cracked white smiles back
and forth across packs.
Trysts and tresses were forsayed as shorn or capped the
Bal Maidens sought catches.
A favovian wind meant moist homing
in shivery smicket to a tousled bothy
in fireside bathtub for swift de-slime
and hot gruel drink afore bedtime.
Tumbling around in dawn mist, next day\'s shift yawned
as they fratched
Derelict now only the stones know how it was and those
feathery grass-tufts waving alongside deep shafts of old
relics I wager still catch the faint scent of miners\' ghosts.
N.B.
Alquifou = Cornish lead ore.
Yoiking = shouting in jest.
Forsayed = forbidden.
Favovian = west wind.
Smicket = a smock.
Fratch = a quarrel.