The American tommyknocker is an oddity, a supernatural being that not only survived immigration from Europe, but which also thrived in its new home in North America. The tommyknocker legend reached a larger audience in the New World, where it expanded beyond the folklore of the original Cornish miners who imported the tradition into popular culture. In addition, the tommyknocker is an excellent example of occupational or labor folklore. Finally, the supernatural being’s transformation from the earlier knocker of Cornwall into the North American tommyknocker provides an opportunity to consider how folklore adapts to a new environment.
The idea that supernatural beings inhabit mines is widespread. The Germans called them Kobolde or Wichtlein; the Welsh, Coblynau; for Malaysians they were Chong Fus; and Andean miners knew them as Muquis. In English, mine spirits are goblins or dwarfs, but the Cornish, a distinct British people who cling to their Celtic heritage, called them knockers, knackers, Bucca, Bogle, Spriggan, or the “Pick and Gad Men.” Although there is some evidence that miners throughout Britain occasionally referred to supernatural miners as knockers, recalling the sounds of settling timbers, the term was mostly associated with Cornwall.
Cornish knockers reflected the Northern European idea that elf-like supernatural beings tended to troop together in groups reflective of humanity. This meant that whether they were called fairies, pixies, elves, or the hidden ones, these supernatural beings were thought to live in families and communities. Because underground, preindustrial Cornish mining was the domain of men, miners believed knockers worked in all-male teams.
The oldest references to the Cornish knocker date to the mid-nineteenth century. Stories of knockers leading worthy miners to valuable ore deposits and punishing greedy miners who took too much ore faded with the Industrial Revolution, which transformed independent Cornish miners into wage-earning laborers. With industrialization, miners continued to tell stories about knockers warning of underground collapse, a motif that made sense whether working independently or for a salary.
As Cornish miners immigrated to North America in the early to mid-nineteenth century, their traditions began to appear upon the shores of the New World. Many initially worked in the lead-bearing regions of Wisconsin and Illinois, but when copper, silver, and gem mines developed in California, Nevada, and elsewhere in the Far West, Cornish immigrants arrived by the thousands. Because they were regarded as mining experts without international peer, the Cornish were frequently hired first, often commanding supervisory positions. Other miners adopted much of the traditional Cornish vocabulary; Nevada’s famous Comstock Lode, for example, employs the term “lode,” popular in Cornwall for an ore body. Cornish pumps, steam engines that dewatered mines, retained a name that acknowledged the skills of these professionals.
In addition to technology, vocabulary, and general expertise, Cornish miners brought with them their belief in knockers. In North America, the mine spirits became known as tommyknockers. Occasionally, the New World tommyknockers renewed their older habit of leading worthy miners to wealth. As corporate mining took hold in the mining West, however, this motif faded. As with the knockers in Cornwall, the tommyknockers continued to warn miners of underground collapse.
The folklore of Cornwall included the idea that knockers were ghostly survivors of long-dead miners. The Cornish often suggested they were the spirits of Jews sent to Cornwall’s excavations as punishment for their supposed role in the Crucifixion. Similarly, it is not uncommon for Northern Europeans to regard the neighboring supernatural beings to be the ghostly remnants of the ancient dead. As the knocker tradition manifested in North America, there was a greater emphasis in linking the supernatural entities to the ghosts of dead miners. Still, the American tommyknockers retained some elfin attributes including their demand for food and their mischievous behavior, throwing pebbles and stealing tools. In addition, miners sometimes referred to tommyknockers as being elfin, and they occasionally left clay statues of the entities in mines as effigies. Traditions of this sort are removed from typical European American ghost beliefs.
Examples of belief in the American tommyknocker continued well into the twentieth century. One author indicated that in the 1950s, California Gold Country miners working stolen high-grade ore in their basements explained late-night hammering to their children as the activities of tommyknockers. Other Western references suggest that miners continued to tell of the supernatural beings in the mines into the 1950s, apparently long after knockers ceased to be part of oral tradition in Cornwall.
Finally, Stephen King’s novel, The Tommyknockers (1987), does little more than to borrow the name of the original legend of supernatural miners. Although the story is inspired by the tradition, King’s narrative is only a peripheral manifestation of tommyknocker folklore.
Ronald M. James
See also European Sources; Fairylore; Gremlins
Further Reading
Briggs, Katharine. 1976. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. London: Viking.
Hunt, Robert. 1865. Popular Romances of the West of England or the Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall. London: Chatto and Windus.
James, Ronald M. 1992. “Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts: Immigrant Folklore in the Western Mines.” Western Folklore Quarterly 51 (2, April).
King, Stephen. 1987. The Tommyknockers. New York: Putnam.
Rowse, A. L. 1969. The Cornish in America. London: Macmillan.