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A Red Cap or Redcap, also known as a powrie or dunter, 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 and dye their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name).^[1] 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. They lose a tooth on hearing it, which they leave behind.

Hermitage Castle.

Hermitage Castle in 1814.

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.^[2]

The boiling to death end of Lord Soulis by his infuriated vassals is only Scottish folklore. In reality William De Soulis was imprisoned in Dunbarton castle and died there, following his confessed complicity in the conspiracy against Robert the Bruce in 1320.

Red Cap is Monster in My Pocket #25. They appear in the video game, sliding down diagonal girders in the stage 4 construction site.

Mike Mignola, the author of the Hellboy comic book series, includes a short story entitled "Iron Shoes" which depicts Hellboy investigating an old abandoned castle in Ireland inhabited by a cannibalistic goblin who wears iron shoes and hurls iron spears.

Redcaps are mentioned in the Harry Potter series by British author J. K. Rowling.

Redcaps (properly called Powries) are one of the nine types of Shadow Fey or Arak in Ravenloft. They are always of Chaotic Evil alignment.

Redcaps are enemies which match their original description of goblins in the MMORPG City of Heroes.

Redcaps are one of the basic Kiths of Kithain in Changeling The Dreaming, the RPG by White Wolf. They are strong supporters of the Unseelie court, often to the point of torturing their Seelie members. The redcaps' incredible appetite also figures strongly in the game.

Red caps (aka powries) are also some of the monsters in R.A. Salvatore's DemonWars series.

The Final Fantasy series, most notably in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Redcaps appear and they are considered members of the goblin family, often being the weakest members of this family.

In the first Mage graphic novel: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner, redcaps serve as all-purpose henchmen to the Umbra Sprite, a powerful spirit of darkeness. Though not armed with pikes, they use Elf-Bolts fired from a sling and wear iron shod boots.

Redcaps also appear in the game Dark Cloud 2 or Dark Chronical as it is known in Britain. Here the creatures are dwarfed no higher than the main character's knee and wear a red cap which falls over the top of their eyes. Although far cuter than the original folklore, the redcaps are still as vicious, maintaining an annoyance unparalleled by other enemies. Some have names and as you continue through the Forest Dungeon a change occurs and some can have different colours of caps.

• Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Boogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, "Redcap", p 339. ISBN 0-394-73467-X