Let me try to repeat in the vernacular of the district the tale told by the grandson of one of these helpless and harmless old women. ‘My grannie was weel kent to be no’ canny. She had ways of doin’ things and kennin things that naebody could mak oot. At last she deeit, and she behoved to be buryit i’ the Barr, that’s a village on the ither side o’ the hills, laigh doon by the Stinchar. When the funeral day cam’, we carryit the coffin up the steep road, and when we were gettin’ near the tap, and hadna muckle breath left, for the coffin was nae licht wecht, a fine-lookin’ gentleman, ridin’ a fine black horse, made up to us. Nane o’ us kennt him or had seen him afore. But he rade alangside o’ us, and cracked awa’ maist croosely, and cheered us sae that we gaed scrievin’ doon the brae on the ither side. Weel, you may jalouse we were a wee bit forfeuchen when we cam’ to the kirkyard, and some o’ us thocht we wadna be the waur o’ bit drappie afore we gaed on wi’ the buryin’. Sae we steppit into the public-hoose. Weel, ye mauna think we bydeit lang there, but losh me! when we cam’ oot the coffin wi’ my grannie in’t was awa’, and sae was the man an’ the black horse. And to this day I canna tell what cam’ ower them.’ [Sidenote: COLLIER SUPERSTITIONS] Miners are generally a superstitious race. Their subterranean occupation, with its darkness and its dangers, fosters the inborn human instinct to credit the supernatural. Hence old beliefs that have died out in the general community may still be found lingering among them. A miner who meets a woman, when he starts for his work in the morning, will turn back again, as the day has become unlucky for him. Any unexpected event in the mine is sure to awaken all his old-world ‘freits.’ If any of his comrades should, by the falling of part of the roof of the mine, be crushed to death, he dreads to continue his ordinary work so long as a corpse remains in the pit, and will spare himself no labour until he has tunnelled through the fallen roof. A memorable instance of this devotion has been already alluded to as having taken place in the little coal-field of Dailly, where one of the miners was shut off from all communication with mankind by the crushing down of the roof between him and his fellow-workmen. They toiled day and night to cut a passage through the material, with the view of reaching and removing his body, and they found him actually alive, after being shut up for twenty-three days without food. He died, however, three days after his rescue.[34] Such an incident could not fail to awaken to life all the dormant superstitions and fears of the collier mind. For a long time after, strange sounds and sights were imagined in the mine.