Redcap
From Free net encyclopedia
- For the separate 1960s ABC Weekend TV and 1980s BBC television series, see Redcap (TV series)
A Redcap, also known as a powrie, is a type of malevolent murderous goblin, elf or fairy found in British folklore. They inhabit ruined castles found along the border between England and Scotland. Redcaps are said to murder travelers who stray into their homes,sometimes by pushing boulders off cliffs and on to them, staining their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name). Indeed, redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Redcaps are very fast in spite of the heavy iron pikes they wield and the iron-shod boots they wear. Outrunning the buck-toothed little daemons is quite impossible; the only way to escape one is to quote a passage from the Bible.
The most infamous redcap of all was Robin Redcap. As the familiar of Lord William de Soulis, Robin wreaked much harm and ruin in the lands of his master's dwelling, Hermitage Castle. Men were murdered, women cruelly abused, and dark arts were practiced. So much infamy and blasphemy was said to have been committed at Hermitage Castle that the great stone keep was thought to be sinking under a great weight of sin, as though the very ground wanted to hide it from the sight of God.
Yet Soulis, for all the evil he wrought, met a very horrible end: he was taken to the Nine Stane Rigg, a circle of stones hard by the castle, and there he was wrapped in lead and boiled to death in a great cauldron.
Redcaps are mentioned in the Harry Potter series by British author Joanne Rowling.
Redcap is also a British Army nickname for a military policeman, as well as American English for a railway porter; it is also the name of a type of goldfinch.