Redcap

The Redcap is among the most bloodthirsty of all the goblins of British folklore — a squat, powerful old man with burning red eyes, iron claws and great teeth, who haunts the ruined peel towers and castles of the Anglo-Scottish border, the blood-soaked ground of centuries of reiving and war. He takes his name from the cap he dyes afresh in the blood of travellers unlucky enough to shelter in his keep, for the legend holds that should the blood in his cap ever dry, he will die.

Despite the iron boots he wears he moves with terrible speed, and no strength of arm can stop him. The one defence recorded against him is scripture: confronted with words of the Bible or the brandished cross, the Redcap gives a great screech and vanishes, leaving a single tooth behind. He is bound tightly to the lawless history of the Borders, where the abandoned strongholds of feuding families made fitting lairs, and he remains one of the darkest figures in the folklore of that long-contested country.