Knockers

The small supernatural miners of Cornish mining tradition, heard knocking in the workings, who were believed to lead worthy men to good ore, warn of falls and punish those who offended them. Cornish emigrants carried them across the world, and in the American West they became the tommyknockers.

The mining history in this record

Knockers belong to the mining folklore of Cornwall and Devon; the Welsh coblyn is their counterpart, and miners elsewhere in Britain also spoke of knockers, the name taken from the sound of settling timbers. Tradition describes them as about two feet tall, with large heads, long arms, wrinkled skin and white whiskers, dressed as miners in miniature. The nineteenth-century Cornish folklorists Robert Hunt and William Bottrell recorded knocker traditions in numerous stories, and the folklorist Ronald M. James finds earlier evidence still.

In the earliest phase James describes, knockers led deserving miners to rich ore, warned of danger and punished those who angered them. As the independent tinners, working for their own finds, gave way to wage labour for large companies, the guidance to ore mattered less and their warning of collapse became their chief role. They were also tricksters who hid tools and put out candles. Who they were was told in more than one way: in one tradition they were the spirits of Jews, sent into the Cornish mines by the Romans in James's account and in the words Hunt quotes from Charles Kingsley's novel Yeast or working them in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in another; in another, the spirits of men killed underground. Miners kept on good terms with them by leaving food, the last bite of a pasty in one account, crusts of bread beside small clay figures of a knocker in another.

Hunt's own collection, Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), calls them buccas or bockles as well as knockers, 'the sprites of the mines', and says the souls of the Jews who once worked the tin mines were not allowed to rest. Miners, he writes, told him many times that they had heard knockers working in remote parts of a lode, repeating the blows of a miner's pick exactly, and that knockers worked only on productive lodes and had often shown trusting men where to take good tribute pitches. His tale of Ransom Mine turns on this: no pair of men would take the end where the knockers worked hardest, until an old man named Trenwith and his son struck a bargain with them to leave a tenth of the richest ore dressed at the surface. The father kept to it and grew rich; the son tried to cheat the knockers, the lode failed, and he died a beggar. Hunt also records an old woman in the Lelant and St Ives district telling him that the noises in his house were knockers working a lode of tin beneath it, and that they were not spirits of the dead. By his time, he wrote, the knockers were rarely heard of, a change he put down to Methodism and schooling.

People

Robert Hunt, author of Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), and William Bottrell, author of Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1870–1880), who recorded the traditions. Ronald M. James, folklorist of Cornwall and the American West. Charles Kingsley, whose novel Yeast gives the story of the Jews sent to the mines as slaves, as quoted by Hunt. Trenwith and his son, of Bosprenis, in Hunt's tale of Ransom Mine.

Legacy today

Knockers are, as James puts it, unusual among European supernatural beings in crossing the Atlantic as a living belief rather than a memory. Cornish and Welsh miners took them to the mines of Pennsylvania, California, Nevada and Colorado, where as tommyknockers they were taken up by miners of every background and returned to their older role of leading prospectors to wealth; James sees them as a mark of Cornish identity across the diaspora. The name survives on breweries and in fiction, including Stephen King's novel The Tommyknockers.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Knockers are subterranean creatures of Cornish and Devon mining folklore, believed to live in the mines. (tradition/folklore) ^1,2
• The nineteenth-century Cornish folklorists William Bottrell and Robert Hunt documented knocker traditions in numerous stories. (documented fact) ^2,3
• Knockers were believed to lead worthy miners to valuable ore, warn of danger and punish those who angered them. (tradition/folklore) ^1,2,3
• With industrialisation and wage labour, the knockers' warning of collapse became their chief role. (tradition/folklore) ^1,2
• The knockers were the spirits of Jews banished to the Cornish mines by the Romans. (tradition/folklore, disputed) ^2,3
• The knockers were the ghosts of Jews who worked the mines in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. (tradition/folklore, disputed) ¹
• Miners left food for the knockers: crusts of bread beside small clay images of them, or the last bite of a pasty. (tradition/folklore) ^1,2
• Cornish emigrants took the knockers to the American West, where as tommyknockers they were adopted by miners of every background. (documented fact) ^1,2
• In Cornwall the knockers were also called buccas or bockles. (documented fact) ³
• Miners told Hunt they had heard knockers working in remote parts of a lode, repeating the miner's pick blows, and that knockers worked only on productive lodes and showed men good tribute pitches. (contemporary account) ³
• Hunt's tale of Ransom Mine tells of Trenwith and his son, who bargained to leave the knockers a tenth of the ore; the son cheated them and was ruined. (tradition/folklore) ³
• By the 1860s Hunt found the knockers rarely spoken of, and attributed the decline of such beliefs to Methodism and schooling. (contemporary account) ³

People

• William Bottrell · author — Recorded knocker traditions in Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1870–1880).
• Robert Hunt · author — Recorded knocker traditions in Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).
• Charles Kingsley · author — His novel Yeast gives the tradition that the knockers were Jews sent to the mines as slaves, quoted by Hunt.

Regions

Cornwall, Devon

Commodities

Tin

Real-world mining concepts used here

Tribute and Tutwork

Sources

1. (secondary) Knocker (folklore) — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Knockers, Tommyknockers and the Question of Ghosts (Ronald M. James) — Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter
3. (secondary) Popular Romances of the West of England (Robert Hunt, 1865; 1908 edition) — Chatto and Windus, via the Internet Archive

Record created: 18 September 2026 · Last researched: 18 September 2026