The Stones Know.
Strewn over seashore hard evidence of Alquifou mining
for coppery tin.
Trussed amid moss in tufty green sward lie hidden lost
keepsakes.
Forrays to deep-earthed hot-holes needed just candles
on heads and valour.
Long wooden ladders often wankled in unstable footholds
were dangerously thin.
Down the rashling
- - -__- - - - - -
would venture by
- - - - - - - - - -
clogged foot or
- - -__- -- - -
plimsole if not
- - - - - - - -
too poorly clad
- - - __- - -
with dire need.
Otherwise barefoot
which bettered men\'s
grip on each rocky step
of mouldy wood to floor level.
Meal was a pasty with tumpy top
candled to warm or fresh-baked
tattie and bacon-fat onion wrapp
in floury packet 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 a catch.
A favovian wind meant moist homing
in shivery smicket to a tousled bothy
in fireside bathtub for swift de-slime
and a hot gruel drink before bedtime.
Tumbling around in dawn mist, next day\'s shift yawned
as they fratched
Derelict now only the stones know how it was but those
feathery tufts of sea-grass growing alongside some old
mine-shaft still catch in silence a 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.