Bluecap

For other uses, see Bluecap (disambiguation).
Bluecap
Grouping Mythological creature
Fairy
First reported In folklore
Country United Kingdom
Region England
Habitat Mines

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] They were hard workers and expected to be paid a working man's wages, equal to those of an average putter (a mine worker who pushes the wagons). Their 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 see the 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

  • Allen, J. (2005), Fantasy Encyclopedia, Kingfisher Publications 
  • Briggs, Katharine (1976), An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Pantheon Books, ISBN 0394409183 
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