The legend of the Redcap, A Ballad of the Border Country by Frank Coffman.

Frank Coffman is a poet and retired professor of English, Creative Writing, and Journalism. He has published speculative poetry and fiction in a variety of journals, magazines, anthologies, and collections. He is especially interested in the genres of high imagination: Adventure, Detection & Mystery, Fantasy, Horror & the Supernatural, and Science Fiction. Both his creative work and his research reflect these interests.

Coffman’s poem A Ballad of the Border Country is a poetic rendition of the Redcap legend, first published on greydogtales.com, a site dedicated to ‘weird fiction and weird art’.

The ballad exquisitely conjures the ominous setting of the Scottish border country, as well as the fierce malevolence of the Redcap itself.
My enormous thanks go to Mr Coffman for kindly allowing me to reproduce it here in full for Beasts of the Olde World.

If you like this ballad, please take a look at Frank’s websites and his works:

👉 https://www.frankcoffman-writer.net/
👉 https://www.mindseyepublications.com/

The collection containing A Ballad of the Border Country is called Black Flames & Gleaming Shadows (2020) and is available here:

👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Flames...

You can also check out the greydogtales website here:

👉 http://greydogtales.com/blog/

FRANK COFFMAN POETRY COLLECTIONS
• Coffman Street: Poems for Robert E. Howard (2006)
• This Ae Nighte, Every Nighte and Alle (chapbook 2018)
• The Coven's Hornbook & Other Poems (2019)
• Khayyám's Rubáiyát (2019)
• Black Flames & Gleaming Shadows (2020)
• The Exorcised Lyric with Steven Withrow (March 2021)
• Eclipse of the Moon (May2021)
• What the Night Brings (August 2023)

ANTHOLOGIES FROM MIND'S EYE PUBLICATIONS
• The Gargoylicon (2022)
• The Vampiricon (2023)
• The Lycanthropicon (forthcoming 2024)

SHORT FICTION COLLECTIONS:
• Three Against the Dark [Occult Detective Stories] (March 2022)
• Maxime Miris: 15 Tales of Horror, the Weird, and the Supernatural (forthcoming 2024)

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP:
• Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems (2007)
• "Texas Talespinner: Robert E. Howard's Ways With Words" [in TWO-GUN BOB (2006)]
• "Barbarism Ascendant: The Poetic and Epistolary Origins of Conan and Cimmeria" [in CONAN MEETS THE ACADEMY (2019)]

#scottishmythology #mythicalcreatures #mythology #scary