The Knocker (knacker, bucca) is the mine-spirit of Cornish folklore — the small, ugly fairy-being who dwells deep in the tin and copper mines of Cornwall, whose knocking sounds in the rock warned (or guided) the miners, and who could bring fortune or doom to those who labored in the dark beneath the earth. A spirit of the perilous depths, both feared and befriended by the Cornish tin-miners, the Knocker is the fairy of the mine.
The Little People of the Mine
The Knockers (so called from the knocking sounds heard in the mines) are small, gnome-like beings, often described as ugly, with large heads and wizened faces, the size of a small child, dwelling in the deep workings of the Cornish mines. They were heard, in the dark and dangerous tunnels, by their knocking — tapping and rapping sounds in the rock. The miners’ relationship with the Knockers was a careful one: the knocking was widely understood as a warning, for the Knockers knocked loudest where the richest lodes of tin and copper lay (leading miners to good ore), but also where the rock was about to collapse (warning of cave-ins). To heed the Knockers was to be safe and prosperous; to anger or mock them was to court disaster.
Friends or Foes Beneath the Earth
The Cornish miners treated the Knockers with respect and even affection. They were believed to be helpful to those who honored them — leading them to ore, warning them of danger — and the miners would leave a portion of their food (a bit of their pasty) for the Knockers as an offering, and were careful never to whistle, swear, or make the sign of the cross in the mine (which offended the spirits). But the Knockers could be malicious to the disrespectful, leading them astray, hiding their tools, or worse. Whether they were the ghosts of dead miners, ancient fairy-folk, or the spirits of the earth itself, the Knockers were a real and present part of the dangerous world of the Cornish mine, the unseen companions of the men who toiled in the dark.
The Spirits Who Crossed the Sea
The belief in the Knockers traveled with the Cornish miners across the world — especially to the mines of America (where they became the “Tommyknockers”), carried by the great Cornish mining diaspora. Wherever Cornish miners went, the Knockers went with them, and the tradition of the helpful, warning, food-offered mine-spirit spread to the mining communities of the New World. The Knockers belong to the worldwide family of mine- and earth-spirits (kin to the German Kobold, from which “cobalt” takes its name), the supernatural denizens of the perilous underground that miners everywhere have sensed at their side.
Legacy
The Knocker endures as the mine-spirit of Cornish folklore — the small, ugly fairy of the tin-mines whose knocking warned of cave-ins and guided miners to ore, both feared and befriended by the men of the Cornish deeps. In it the mining communities of Cornwall gave form to the dangers and the mysteries of the underground, and to the unseen companions of their perilous trade. Carried across the sea to become the Tommyknockers of America, the Knocker remains a vivid figure of mining folklore, the fairy of the dark beneath the earth.