Bluecap

Last updated
Bluecap
Grouping Mythological creature
Fairy
First attestedIn folklore
CountryUnited Kingdom
RegionEngland
DetailsMines

A bluecap is a mythical fairy or ghost in English folklore that inhabits mines and appears as a small blue flame. If miners treat them with respect, the bluecaps lead them to rich deposits of minerals. [1] Like knockers or kobolds, bluecaps can also forewarn miners of cave-ins. They are mostly associated with the Anglo-Scottish borders. [2]

Bluecaps were regarded as hard workers and it was said that they were expected to be paid a working man's wages, equal to those of an average putter (a mine worker who pushes the wagons). This payment was left in a solitary corner of the mine, and they would not accept any more or less than they were owed. The miners would sometimes talk of having seen a flickering bluecap settle on a full tub of coal, transporting it as though "impelled by the sturdiest sinews". [3]

Another being of the same type (though less helpful in nature) was called "Cutty Soames" [4] or Old Cutty Soames, [5] who was known to cut the rope-traces or soams by which the assistant putter was yoked to the tub. [4]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Allen (2005), p. 24
  2. ↑ Katherine Mary Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature
  3. ↑ Briggs (1976), pp. 27–28
  4. 1 2 Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849–1851: Northumberland and Durham, Staffordshire, the Midlands, Jules Ginswick, Routledge, 1983, ISBN   0-7146-2960-X, 9780714629605, pp. 65-66
  5. ↑ Character Sketches Of Romance, Fiction And The Drama, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Marion Harland, The Minerva Group, Inc., 2004, ISBN   1-4102-1335-8, ISBN   978-1-4102-1335-8, page. 119

Bibliography

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