The Redcaps

Imagine being caught out after dark in the Borders and finding an old tower where you can shelter for the night.

The building is ruined, but it is better than sleeping outside. You get through the doorway, put your things down and begin to settle when something moves further inside.

What comes towards you is short and thickset, with long grey hair, prominent teeth and fingers ending in claws. Its eyes are bright red. It carries a pikestaff and, for reasons that seem particularly inconvenient for a creature inhabiting ruined buildings, wears iron boots.

Then there is the hat.

William Henderson recorded the Redcap in his nineteenth-century collection of northern English and Border folklore, describing a creature that lived in castles, towers and peel houses associated with tyranny or violence. Travellers’ unfortunate enough to take shelter there could have stones thrown at them or simply be murdered, after which the creature caught their blood in its cap to keep the cloth red.

The blood was not decorative. In later descriptions of the tradition, the cap had to remain wet with it.

So, we can establish early that we are dealing with little bastards.

THE REDCAP LIKED A PLACE WITH HISTORY

Henderson did not place the creature in any convenient empty ruin. Redcaps belonged to sites where something unpleasant had already happened: Border castles, towers and strongholds associated with cruelty, oppression or bloodshed.

That is a very good fit for the landscape that produced them.

For centuries the Anglo-Scottish Borders were shaped by war, raiding, feuds and shifting political control. Fortified towers were practical buildings rather than picturesque ruins, and many acquired histories involving imprisonment, violence and families who spent generations attacking one another with considerable enthusiasm.

A Redcap does not create the bad reputation of a place. It moves in afterwards.

There is something unsettling about that than a creature randomly haunting a field. The old stories give the impression that enough human violence leaves somewhere suitable for something else to inhabit.

Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale may be the best example. Historic Environment Scotland describes its history in terms of murder, torture and treason, and the fortress spent centuries controlling one of the most fiercely contested parts of the Middle March.

It did not require a goblin to become intimidating. Naturally, it got one anyway.

HERMITAGE HAD REDCAP SLY

Henderson connected the Redcap tradition directly with Hermitage Castle and the legendary Lord Soulis, identifying the creature as the “Redcap sly” associated with the tyrant.

This is where history and folklore begin climbing all over each other.

A real William de Soulis held Hermitage in the early fourteenth century and became involved in a conspiracy against Robert the Bruce in 1320. He lost his lands and was imprisoned at Dumbarton Castle, where he died. The spectacular death later given to him by Border legend is another matter entirely.

Folklore turned Soulis into a sorcerer, oppressor and all-round dreadful man whose power was supported by supernatural forces. Walter Scott later recorded traditions in which he invoked fiends, mistreated his tenants and became so intolerable that complaints eventually reached the king.

Redcap Sly fitted beautifully into that version of him.

If you are going to transform a disgraced medieval lord into an evil magician living in one of the bleakest castles in the Borders, giving him a blood-soaked goblin as a companion feels almost restrained.

LORD SOULIS GOT A MUCH BETTER DEATH IN FOLKLORE

The historical William de Soulis died as a prisoner.

Nobody telling the story later seems to have thought that was sufficient.

The legend claimed that Soulis could not be harmed by ordinary steel or restrained by conventional ropes. After years of cruelty, his tenants finally seized him, wrapped him in lead and carried him to the Nine-stane Rig near Hermitage.

There they boiled him.

Scott recorded one version in which the king, tired of receiving complaints about Soulis, exclaimed in frustration that they could boil him if they liked, only for the locals to take this considerably more literally than intended. By the time royal messengers arrived to correct the misunderstanding, the matter had progressed beyond administrative intervention.

I enjoy the fact that even within a story involving sorcery, demons and a man being boiled in lead, part of the disaster is caused by somebody interpreting instructions too literally.

The Nine-stane Rig remains a real place near Hermitage, although the gruesome execution belongs to legend rather than the historical record. The genuine history was already violent. Border folklore looked at it and thought it could do better.

THE CREATURE ITSELF WAS HORRIBLE

Henderson's description is unusually specific.

The Redcap was a short, thickset old man with long teeth, fiery eyes, grey hair hanging over his shoulders and thin fingers armed with eagle-like talons. He carried a pikestaff, wore the famous red cap and stomped around in iron boots.

The boots are particularly good because nothing about them seems designed for stealth. This creature inhabits isolated ruins, kills travellers and throws enormous stones, yet dresses as though everyone should hear him approaching through three rooms and a stairwell.

Perhaps sneaking was never part of the plan.

If something with claws, a pole weapon and glowing eyes is walking towards you in iron footwear, subtlety has already left the bloody building.

THE HAT REQUIRED MAINTENANCE

The detail everyone remembers is the cap.

Henderson wrote that the creature murdered travellers and caught their blood in it, giving the cloth its crimson colour. Later folklore developed the idea that the Redcap depended upon keeping the hat wet with fresh blood and would die if it dried out.

Sake.

There are supernatural creatures with complicated motives. Some guard treasure, punish broken promises or become dangerous when particular rules are violated.

The Redcap needs a damp hat. That is his problem, and unfortunately, he has decided to make it everybody else's.

It also explains why there is very little ambiguity around him. The selkie might break your heart. The Bean Nighe might warn you about something terrible. Even the kelpie usually requires you to make the initial mistake of climbing onto it.

The Redcap sees a traveller and thinks about millinery. Different department entirely.

THERE WAS ONE SURPRISINGLY SIMPLE DEFENCE

For something so unpleasant, the traditional method of getting rid of a Redcap was fairly straightforward.

Henderson wrote that reciting words from Scripture or holding up a cross would drive the creature away. On being confronted with either, it might let out a terrible yell or vanish in a burst of flame, leaving a large tooth behind.

The tooth receives no useful explanation. It is simply there.

I like folklore's confidence in moments like this. A blood-soaked goblin has exploded into fire, everyone is presumably trying to work out what just happened, and the storyteller adds that there was also a tooth on the floor.

Fine.

We will take the tooth.

THEY WERE NOT BROWNIES WITH AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM

Redcaps sometimes get bundled into the enormous category of goblins, fairies and little supernatural beings that modern retellings tend to treat as broadly interchangeable.

The older material is much more specific.

Henderson introduces the Redcap precisely by contrasting it with the helpful Brownie. Brownies belong around farms and households and may work for the people who live there. Their relationships with humans can become complicated, but there is at least the possibility of cooperation.

A Redcap is living in a ruined tower throwing masonry at you. Calling both of them fairies tells us almost nothing about the experience of meeting one.

Brownie: potentially excellent employee, slightly difficult colleague.

Redcap: leave immediately.

THE BORDERS MADE THE REDCAP WORK

Take the creature out of its landscape and something is lost. A Redcap in a pleasant suburban garden would be ridiculous. Put the same thing inside a roofless peel tower on a dark Border hillside and the story becomes considerably easier to understand.

These were places built for defence in a region where violence could arrive quickly and where generations lived among the remains of raids, battles and political punishment. By the nineteenth century, when Henderson was writing the traditions down, many of those strongholds had become ruins, but their histories had not vanished with their roofs.

Hermitage is particularly good at demonstrating this because the folklore barely needs to invent an atmosphere. The documented castle already includes imprisonment, conflict and the notorious death of Sir Alexander Ramsay, who was held there by William Douglas and starved.

Then the stories add Lord Soulis.

Then Redcap Sly.

At some point you must admire the commitment.

THERE IS VERY LITTLE REASON TO APPROACH ONE

The creatures on this shelf have each offered at least a little temptation. Selkies are beautiful and strange. The kelpie deliberately makes itself inviting. The Bean Nighe may tell you the future if you are willing to engage in an encounter that becomes increasingly difficult to explain.

The Redcap offers nothing.

He has no useful information, no tragic love story and no compelling reason for you to remain in the same building as him. He lives among the remains of human violence, wears a hat soaked in human blood and may throw a large stone at your head because you had the audacity to seek shelter from the weather.

That is refreshingly uncomplicated.

So, if I ever find myself near a ruined Border tower after dark and hear iron boots coming from somewhere inside, I will not investigate the history of the building, attempt communication or wait to see whether a large tooth becomes relevant.

I will leave.

The wee bastard can dampen his hat without me.