#coal mines
These two fairy tales are somewhat unusual as they are set not in the natural environment as so often folklore and fairy tales are, but in coal mines. The first is set in Shilbottle Colliery in Northumberland, England, near Alnwick and is the story of a mine spirit: the Bluecap. The second is from Callington Pit (also Northumberland) and tells the story of a boggart - Cutty Soams.
In the first, the Bluecap worked alongside the miners as a putter - someone who pushed (or dragged) the coal tubs. He worked hard, and kept the miners safe, manifesting himself in a blue flame. The miners paid him: if they overpaid him he would leave the surplus behind, but if they underpaid him he would become indignant, leave his wage, and potentially put the miners in danger.
Cutty Soams, on the other hand, delighted in putting the miners in danger (he was thought, perhaps, to be the ghost of a miner killed years earlier). As the Colliery Guardian wrote in 1863,
One [Cutty Soams] was a spiteful elf; who indicated his presence only by the mischief he perpetrated. He rejoiced in the name of “Cutty Soams,” and appears to have employed himself only in the stupid device of severing the rope-traces or soams, by which an assistant-putter – honoured by the title of “the fool ”– is yoked to the tub. The strands of hemp which were left all sound in the board at “kenner-time,” were found next morning severed in twain. “Cutty Soams” has been at work, could the fool and his driver say, dolefully knotting the cord.“
[Sources:Thomas Hair,The Faery Folklorist]
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Big Bad John (Montour No.4 Mine, Pittsburgh Coal Company, 1942)
Every mornin’ at the mine you could see him arrive
He stood six-foot-six and weighed two-forty-five
Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
And everybody knew ya didn’t give no lip to Big John.
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