The Guardian of the Pit

He’d worked at the pit since he was ten,

Was quite at home in the dark,

Worked by the light of a miner’s lamp

Avoided the slightest spark,

He chipped away at the face of coal,

He chewed tobacco, and spat,

His face was black as he wandered home

With pride in his miner’s hat.

 

But the mine had closed as it petered out

And the miners went on the dole,

While Jack Coltrane had fretted at home

For his work was his very soul,

The entrance tunnels were sealed up tight

And the Colliery wheel was stopped,

It sat like an aging dinosaur

Set high on its wooden props.

 

The miners drifted away for work

The walls of the houses cracked,

The doors and windows were boarded up

The only one left was Jack,

He wandered lonely about the streets

Of the place he had always known,

The empty terraces, vacant shops

In the town that he’d called his home.

 

I’d gone to squat in an empty house

I was down on my luck back then,

And Jack had knocked on my nailed up door,

I told him my name was Ben,

He’d pop around for a morning tea

And he’d tell me tales of the mine,

His eyes would gleam with excitement when

He talked of the dust and grime.

 

‘I’ll take you there, and show you the pit.’

He knew I’d never been down,

‘What else is to do in a place like this,’

He said, and I must have frowned.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, old son,

Just wrap up well for the cold,

It used to be hot in the workings then,

But we’ll be looking for gold.’

 

He said he knew where the traces were,

He’d seen it a thousand times,

‘The owners only wanted the coal

So we left the rest behind,

There’s not a lot, but enough for us,

We’ll chip out a tidy sum.’

That’s all I needed to know, I went

And put some old denims on.

 

The mine was scary for one like me

Who’d never been down a pit,

So dark and damp, and the air was still,

I hated the smell of it,

We need to go down 300 feet

He said, not batting an eye,

I trudged along in his wake, and thinking:

‘Why did I come - Oh why?’

 

We saw the first few traces of gold

At the thirty fathom mark,

But Jack said, ‘Still there’s a way to go,’

And he trudged along in the dark,

We walked around the falls from the roof

Where the props had given way,

It was far too late to be turning back

Though I felt a mute dismay.

 

Suddenly there was a gleam ahead

Lit up by our feeble lamps,

And Jack had hurried ahead to check

What gleamed in the rising damp,

Behind a fall I could see a sight

That will haunt me ‘til I’m old,

A skeleton lay in the passageway,

A skeleton covered in gold.

 

‘He must have been here a hundred years,’

Said Jack, ‘and there is the proof,

The fall has only revealed him now

The gold has leached from the roof,

It’s covered this poor old-timer’s bones

He’s worth more now that he’s dead,’

But then the end of the tunnel glowed

And a voice boomed in my head.

 

‘Who desecrates my dominions,

Who approaches me in their pride?

You come to my underground kingdom

Where another before you died!’

The voice came up through a hole in the ground

That glowed like a fire was lit,

‘Retreat, or I’ll tear you asunder,

I’m the Guardian of the Pit!’

 

I don’t know how we got out that day

We stumbled and ran to hide,

We thought the demon was at our heels

As we caught at our breath, and cried,

We fell out into the open air

And breathed again at the last,

I said, ‘I’ll never go down again!’

Jack said, ‘It must have been gas!’

 

‘It must have been just a pocket of gas

That we breathed, that knocked us out,

It was just a hallucination

That’s for sure,’ said Jack, ‘No doubt!’

But he never went down the mine again,

He said he was 'over it',

But truth to tell, he was scared as hell

Of the Guardian of the Pit!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[spiritwind]

Loved that tale of a haunted mine! You are such a treat to read! It sounds as if you've been down in a mine before--I have only been in Carlsbad Cavern and it will haunt me the rest of my life... the knowledge that there are thousands of tons of rock overhead is creepy enough without throwing in a skeleton covered with gold and a ghostly guardian of the pit.

[Valentine]

Fantastic tale..those mines are dangerous..My sister-in-laws dad died from black lung..maybe we all should go back and see is he is covered with gold..You are something else David..Love sand God bless you and yours..Kathie

[michael.c.m]

Fabulous storyteller, once again. Profound and prolific weaving. All of life seems to be your pallette.

[Marie]

Oh, I did hope they were going to find gold...I could feel the dark sadness of the mine closing down...the excitement of going into the pit and following traces of gold...a find story...

[Enid Blake]

Brilliant! :)