| Bluecap | |
| Grouping: | Mythological creature Fairy |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Region: | England |
| Details: | Mines |
| First Attested: | In folklore |
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. Like knockers or kobolds, bluecaps can also forewarn miners of cave-ins. They are mostly associated with the Anglo-Scottish borders.[1]
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".
Another being of the same type (though less helpful in nature) was called "Cutty Soames"[2] or Old Cutty Soames,[3] who was known to cut the rope-traces or soams by which the assistant putter was yoked to the tub.[2]
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