e aerial beings called spirits, or whether they
are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air
and fire and the like.

"Before the discovery of the _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine, these little people,
as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are
abundance of honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons
who have no notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of
the great ore they were heard no more.

"When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a
considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the
work. This was when we were driving levels, and before we had got any
ore; but when we came to the ore, they then gave over, and I heard no
more talk of them.

"Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them _blasting_, boring
holes, landing _deads_, etc., than if they were some of their own people;
and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of the night,
without any man near him, and never think of any fear or of any harm they
will do him. The miners have a notion that the _Knockers_ are of their
own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three
or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop
to take notice of them, the _Knockers_ will also stop; but, let the
miners go on at their work, suppose it is _boring_, the _Knockers_ will
at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, _blasting_, or
beating down the _loose_, and they are always heard a little distance
from them before they come to the ore.

"These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, though we
cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good
ore at _Llwyn Llwyd_, where the _Knockers_ were heard to work, but have
now yielded up the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we
have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the _Knockers_, or rather
God, who sends us these notices."

The second letter is as follows:--

"I have no time to answer your objection against _Knockers_; I have a
large treatise collected on that head, and what Mr. Derham says is
nothing to the purpose. If sounds of voices, whispers, blasts, working,
or pumping, can be carried on a mile underground, they should always be
heard in the same place, and under the same advantages, and not once in a
month, a year, or two years. Just before the discovery of ore last week,