[ Wingate / "The Deil in the Pit" ]
Wingate (1828 - 1892) was a Scottish collier, coal mine manager, and poet, one of the last examples of the "natural poet," rustic and unschooled, which was in vogue for much of the first part of the 19th Century. (Robert Burns was an early example of such a poet; Wingate's second wife, interestingly, was one of Burns' grand-daughters.) Wingate is largely unknown now, with his greatest fame probably coming from the fact his son Walter Wingate became a well-known children's poet.
This poem — the title means "The Devil in the Pit," with "pit" here referring to a coal mine — is in Scots, and is a comic account of coal miners discovering something "uncanny" in their mine: two large glowing eyes accompanied by the sound of clanking chains. When two ne'er-do-well miners descend into the pit in search of the "devil" and return with a black cat and a chain stolen from the foreman's wife, they are accused of theft and a bad prank, tossed into a ditch full of filthy water, and run out of town.
The text is taken from Poems and Songs (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1862).
The one mention of a Newfoundland dog is incidental, and occurs as a crowd of onlookers stands at the mouth of the mine, waiting in tense silence as two miners descend to discover the nature of the "haunting."
Pale faces 'mang the crowd were seen, ['mang = among]
Up to the lift were turned some een; [lift = winch mechanism; een = eyes]
Though twenty weans in arms were seen, [wean = infant]
By nae ane was a whimper gi'en; [nae ane = not one]
And Matthew Strang's Newfoundland whelp,
Though sairly trod on, scorned to yelp. (332 -336) [sairly = sorely, repeatedly]