Dear Trevor
 
I was thinking in terms of what the miners thought the gangue might mean,  
in terms of deposition of the ore; that is.
 
In Swaledale they generally used the name 'rider' and never used gangue.  
They might say a 'kindley rider', meaning showing promise for producing ore  
further on.
 
Sadly; unlike you; I only had chance to talk to one old miner, but I  was 
too young to know what to ask; and he was to old to be able tell; without a  
prompt.
 
Regards
Ian
 
In a message dated 13/09/2010 00:47:11 GMT Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

Dear  Ian,

No. The gangue materials were left behind after the ore had been  taken to 
the surface!

Let's face it, the old miners were not  idiots. They took to the surface 
only 
what would bring them a profit.  Fluorspar, quartz, calcite, and barites 
were 
just waste - no profit in  them in those days - so they just left them 
underground. You have to start  to think in the terms of miner/farmers, who 
for most of the time, as far  as the mining went was 'boom or bust'. They 
simply had no interest in  bringing waste material to the surface. Gangue 
for 
the old miners was a  'pain in the neck' In some areas they had specific 
laws 
regarding gangue -  take the Wirksworth Wapentake for example.

Kind  regards,

Trevor

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian  Spensley" <[log in to unmask]>
To:  <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010  10:38 PM
Subject: Re: Gangue


> Interesting idea  Mike,
>
> I had the Old Gang down as meaning the old 'road' or  'way'. Similar to
> gang-way or in farming the fotherem gang in a cow  house etc.
>
> Could it be that they saw the gang (gangue)  minerals as leading the way 
to
> the deposition of the  ore?
>
> Ian
>
>
> In a message dated 12/09/2010  18:49:53 GMT Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask]  writes:
>
> The  recent discussion of gangue was rather  dominated by comparatively
> modern  miners, but I fancy that the  word has evolved over the centuries.
> The word  appears as Gang,  apparently meaning vein, in Old Gang (= Old
> Rake in  Swaledale)  and several examples in Derbyshire. It later appears
> to relate   to the vein minerals (which is almost the same thing) and
> follows  the  German 'Gangmineral'. Later miners, with their access to
>  (and requirements  of) mechanisation and greater milling  capacity,
> apparently include some  country rock with the term.  Presumably rock from
> crosscuts is kept  separate, or does it all  go in the one bunker before
> being skip  wound?
>
>  Like other mining terms, such words are presumably survivals  from  our
> Anglo-Saxon ancestors' Germanic tongue. Some of them live on   (just
> about) in northern English dialects. The Germans at Keswick  used  Hinget
> and Ligget (spelling from memory) for hanging wall  and foot  (laying)
> wall and that latter still survives in the  West Riding as in  'Johnnie
> lig-a-bed', which is used to describe  the people currently in  Chancellor
> Osborne cum Cable's   sights.
>
> Mike
>