Bluecap

Half a mile underground, in the close dark of a Northumberland pit, a loaded coal tub stands waiting on the rolley-way. No one is near it. Then a small blue flame, pale as a candle guttering in a draught, drifts down and settles on the rim. The tub shudders, takes the rail, and rolls off into the black as smoothly as if a strong man had set his shoulder to it. The flame rides along on top, steady, businesslike, and gone.

That flame was all anyone ever saw of the Bluecap. The colliers of the old Northumberland and Durham coalfields knew it as a fellow worker rather than a fright, an industrious spirit that took on the heaviest haulage in the seam and asked only to be paid like any other man on the books. It had no face, no limbs, no shape that a pitman could describe afterward to his wife. There was the blue light, the moving tub, and the certainty in the men’s minds that something down there was doing an honest day’s work beside them.

The work itself was brutal, which is part of why the story carries weight. In a Victorian pit the putter was the man who pushed and dragged the full tubs from the coalface to the main way, bent double in seams sometimes barely high enough to crawl in. It was the kind of labour that wore bodies out young. So when the miners said the Bluecap could shift a full tub “as though impelled by the sturdiest sinews,” they were measuring it against the hardest thing they knew. The spirit did the worst job in the mine and never seemed to tire. It pushed the loaded tubs to the rolley-way and brought the empties back, shift after shift, for as long as it was wanted.

What set the Bluecap apart from the helpful little spirits of other countries was its scrupulous attitude to money. It would not be bought off with a saucer of cream like a brownie. It expected wages, and not charity wages either, but the standard rate of an average putter, neither generous nor mean. The pay was left for it in some lonely corner of the workings, and there the reckoning became exact. If the men left too little, the Bluecap took offence and the help dried up. If they left too much, it left the surplus untouched, or flung the extra coins back at the careless paymaster. It took what it was owed and not a farthing over. There is something almost stern in that. The spirit understood the difference between a wage and a tip, and it would only accept the one.

The most often named haunt was Shilbottle Colliery, near Alnwick, where the local Bluecap was sometimes called the Blue Bonnet. The earliest firm record of the belief comes from an account printed in the Colliery Guardian in 1863, by which time the older men were already speaking of it as something their fathers had taken more seriously than they did. Other writers had gathered the same lore a little earlier. Thomas Keightley set the industrious elf of the northern coal mines down in his Fairy Mythology, and William Henderson collected the border traditions of these underground workers among the folk customs of the northern counties.

Nobody seems to have agreed on exactly what the Bluecap was, only on what it did. Some of the pitmen leaned toward calling it a kind of fairy, others toward calling it a ghost, and the flame allowed for either reading. The same pale blue glow that marked the spirit was the colour of the marsh lights men feared on the moors above, and a blue flame underground had a second, grimmer meaning the colliers knew well, since firedamp burned with just such a quiet blue when it caught. A spirit that wore that colour was never going to be entirely comfortable company.

Its powers all grow out of the pit and the men’s needs in it. Beyond sheer haulage, a Bluecap on good terms with a crew could lead them toward the richest coal, and like the knockers of the tin mines it could give warning of a roof about to come down, a gift worth more than any seam to men who worked under thousands of tons of stone. Its limits were just as plainly drawn. It had no power over a mine where it was not respected, and it would not stay where it was cheated. As the old superstitions faded through the middle of the nineteenth century, with the lamps brighter and the men less inclined to believe, the Bluecap faded too, until the blue flame on the coal tub was only a tale the oldest hewers half remembered.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Bluecap?

A Bluecap is a mine spirit from the folklore of the Northumberland and Durham coalfields in northern England. It was believed to work alongside miners as a fellow labourer, appearing only as a small blue flame and asking to be paid an ordinary working wage for its help.

What does the Bluecap look like?

The Bluecap has no described body or face. Miners knew it only by a flickering light-blue flame that would settle on a loaded coal tub just before the tub began to move on its own, as though pushed by an unseen, very strong worker.

How was the Bluecap paid?

The Bluecap expected the standard wage of an average putter, the miner who hauled coal tubs, left for it in a quiet corner of the mine. It was strict about the amount: it refused to take less than it was owed and would reject or throw back any money left over the correct sum.

Is the Bluecap good or evil?

The Bluecap was regarded as helpful rather than harmful, provided it was treated with respect and paid fairly. A well-treated Bluecap could guide miners to rich coal seams and warn them of cave-ins, but it would withdraw its help from anyone who cheated or disrespected it.

Where does the Bluecap come from?

The Bluecap belongs to the coal-mining folklore of the Anglo-Scottish border counties, most famously Shilbottle Colliery near Alnwick in Northumberland, where it was also called the Blue Bonnet. The belief was recorded in the nineteenth century and faded out around the middle of that century.

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