historical origins - on the nature of Goblins - on the nature of Dwarfs - speculation on the symbolism - George MacDonald's goblins - Tolkein's goblins

The imaginary world of George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin includes an underground society of goblins. The question of the origins and sources for such creatures was raised in the class, and this page briefly surveys the idea of the goblin, and the related figure of the dwarf. Both sets of characters retain their significance (if not always their historical characteristics) in contemporary imaginations through their widespread appearance, usually as an enemy, in computer games.

Goblins and dwarfs belong to the mythology and folk-lore of Northern Europe. Dwarfs are found in the traditions of the Germanic and Scandinavian countries, and Scandinavian dwarf stories seems to have travelled early on to Scotland. Goblins are prominent in the British Isles, though they have Scandinavian counterparts; trolls are in the Northern tradition essentially what we would now call dwarfs. They all belong to that group of characters that the Irish might generically term the 'little people', which seems to be a northern trait, associated with the wilder areas of Northern Europe, and long nights and short days. Whereas giants, fairies, and elves have their counterparts in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern tales, dwarfs and goblins by and large do not, and no such characters are found in, for example, North American Native myth. They are, though, found in Central America, but usually as fertility symbols, a rather different role from the Northern European figures.

Although dwarfs do pop up from time to time in classic fairy tale stories, goblins and dwarfs properly belong to two different genres. The first is legend - stories based on a particular place or a particular event that were believed to be true - i.e. part of the real world around one, figures that belong to the supernatural whom one might indeed encounter, in much the same way as one might encounter a witch. Thus many dwarf and goblin stories are presented with the general sense that a true story is being recounted, in contrast to, say, a Sleeping Beauty story, which every listener would understand as a fantastical tale. For an example of such a legend, click here (opens in new window).

The second genre is that of myth - those stories with which a culture transmits from generation to generation its conception of the world and the cosmos, and indeed its religious ideas. Goblins are more creatures of legend than myth, but dwarfs, and associated trolls and black elves, have an important place in Northern European mythology (as an example, four dwarfs - north, south, east, and west - hold up the world). These figures were transmitted into the medieval European world through such works as the Niebelungenlied. (for the point where Alberich the Dwarf is introduced into the story, click here - it will open in a new window).

The first mention of goblins in English is in 1327. Dwarf is a much older word, going back to the 700s, though it is not used in our folk-tale sense until the 1770s (source: OED). Similarly, the word troll was not adopted from the Scandinavian until the 17th century.

Goblins -  called, in Keithley's appellations, the Nis in Scandinavia, Kobolds in Germany, and Brownies in Scotland - are interesting creatures both historically and psychologically. They are small, often with an old man's face, and are associated with a particular small area, farm, or house, often for generations. He (he is almost always a he) lives in the house itself, or in an old tree, or in the farm buildings. His relationship with humans is a symbiotic one: if humans recognize his presence and his right to live there, often by leaving little offerings to him, he assists, unseen, in the tasks of the farm. If annoyed, however, he will cause such things as the milk to sour or the calf to die; in an extreme situation he will leave, which which brings bad luck to the farm. He often seems to have liked jokes and little tricks. He is thus associated in particular with farming people, and undoubtedly many rural people used to believe that he actually existed. This tradition is still continued, in the gnome figures found in suburban gardens. Little do those middle-class and often staunch Church-going suburbanites know that in invoking good luck in their garden through the gnome they are unwittingly and subconsciously continuing a pre-Christian tradition associated with magic and the supernatural!

To the medieval Christian Church such creatures undoubtedly existed, since the Church would include them in that panoply of demons that unseen inhabited the air around us to support the Devil. Indeed, 'Gobelinus' was a demon which haunted the area of Evreux in the 12th-century (OED), and may have been the origin of the English word, the idea transferred from a particular spirit to a generic race. In contrast, in rural areas with a less sophisticated cosmology, Christianity and pagan ideas merged (as so often), and many churches had their own little man who unseen looked after the church.

However, the orthodox Church view became established in the concept of the 'hobgoblin', a word that dates back to the 16th-century. This is the trickster side of the goblin, associated with witches, and in this manifestation has come down to us in the Hallowe'en figure. It might be noted that idea of the poltergeist combines the most destructive (and often trickster) aspect of the hobgoblin with the attachment to place of the goblin.

Dwarfs may share some of the physical characteristics with goblins - small stature, a wrinkled face rather like that of an old man - but are otherwise very different. The greatest difference is that they live underground, in their own places (rather than sharing human dwellings). They may live in a hill on their own (like the troll in Bodedys story), or more often in family groups, or in large underground societies. Sometimes humans end up in these often magnificent places, which have parallels in fairy and other underground lands. Dwarfs are particularly associated with tough hard work - as blacksmiths, makers of weapons, and as miners (all associated with the underground: iron and copper from the ground, the fire of the underground volcano, the mines of underground - there are parallels in Greek myth). They are hewers and builders (they are supposed to have built the great megalithic religious sites in Brittany). They love riches and gold, and they enjoy a good feast. They are a mirror-people to the upper-world humans, and generally assist humans, enjoying bartering and are generous in sharing. They have a reputation for abducting women and children, and in stealing things. They have a trickster side to them, in that their quasi-magical powers can usually be countered by some trick or riddle, and in that they can be quarrelsome and mischievous.

The concept of a little man who unseen lives on the farm, assisting or not, was obviously a useful one to unsophisticated farming people. He provided an explanation for all the little unexpected and unexplained things - both good and bad - that happen on a farm, and the practice of leaving little gifts for him for good luck is a psychological prop. Conversely, to the orthodox Church those very assets were highly suspect, as the good things come from God, and the bad things are attributable to the Devil and his minions, where goblins could be placed. On a deeper level, the goblin has elements of the child, or the childlike, with an adult's face, especially in his trickster elements (Puck in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, who is a goblin figure, is the classic representation of this aspect). Part of the symbolism seems to be that we all as adults have that element of the child within us (the child lives in the same home); to metaphorically give offerings to that child (what George MacDonald would have called the 'childlike') is a good thing to do (it brings 'good luck'), and indeed the child within us can assist us in our adult tasks. To neglect that childlike aspect is detrimental (brings 'bad luck'). Similarly, the child-like within us enjoys that trickster, which can be both beneficial and, if unchecked, destructive. (It might be noted that modern psychology has associated severe disturbance in children with so-called 'poltergeist' activity)

Dwarfs would appear to have very different symbolic significance. On the most obvious level, the idea of the short, swarthy, hard working artisan, working with his hands, is in itself a stereotype. It has a number of times been associated with the thief - 'Taffy is a Welshman [whose stereotype is the miner], Taffy is a thief', or the projection of the whole stereotype onto gypsies, including the thieving and the abduction of children. This again has a deeper symbolic resonance: we also carry that element of the human condition within us, the earthy one that works on simple, labouring tasks, that according to our position in life will be less or more developed - and as a society we relegate such activities to the 'lower' sphere of accomplishments and tasks.  Equally, as human beings we can't do without it. Down in our unconscious (=the underground) we need the hard-working mining side of ourselves to occasionally assist the upper world. Then there is a more resonant, archetypal quality to the concept of the dwarf. Living underground - the traditional region of the dead - they represent a pre-human history, or at least a pre-historical memory.

George MacDonald's 'goblins' in The Princess and the Goblin would seem to me to be not to be goblins at all, but dwarfs. They have all the characteristics of dwarfs - their size, their mining activities, their underground kingdom, their King and Queen (echoed in ballads about dwarf kingdoms), their element of maliciousness, and above all the way they mirror the upper world. His explanation of their origins - that they were once humans who ended up in the underground world, and gradually evolved into their present state - is an unconscious allegory of the concept of dwarfs archetypically representing a pre-historical human state.

That he should call them 'goblins' is perhaps understandable. Actual goblins he would know as 'brownies', and in Victorian England the goblin was gradually taking on the connotations that we now find in computer games. But there is little of the Puck, or the helping hand on the farm, in MacDonald's creations. They are in terms of the folk tradition, without a doubt, dwarfs, or, if you prefer the old Scandinavian word, trolls.

Tolkein undoubtedly took his idea of 'goblins' from MacDonald. The description of the character, activities, character, and royalty of goblins in The Hobbit, when the company encounter them underground, comes straight out of The Princess and the Goblin. This is useful to Tolkein, as he already has dwarfs in his book, forming the company that Bilbo Baggins joins. His dwarfs are exactly the benign side of the dwarf image outlined above; the goblins the destructive side. Given their commonalities, they are in The Hobbit two sides of the same peoples. It is interesting to note that, by The Lord of the Rings, where the imaginary world is far more deeply thought out, goblins are not nearly so prominent.

historical origins - on the nature of Goblins - on the nature of Dwarfs - speculation on the symbolism - George MacDonald's goblins - Tolkein's goblins

© 2001 - 2005 Mark Morris and members of the classes. If you have questions or comments about this web site, contact Mark Morris