Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Goblin Brain: Veterinarians Can Send Your Pets to Valhalla
I... don't know why I insist on starting every one of these audio posts with such a pained, drawn-out "I".
Hello, dear Burrowers, if there are any of you out there still. My apologies for vanishing again.
I'm still alive! Fortunately my Narblesnard went as well as can be hoped, and my acorns were enough to sate the squirrels this year.
I had myself another bit of a spiral over here, which coupled with the cold weather to ensure that I wrote nothing and wanted to write even less than that. But I'm still breathing, and doing things like making phone calls and reorganizing my bedroom to maintain the illusion of having meaningful control.
You can rest easy, or alternatively become annoyed to know, that I will be returning to periodic posting again soon, and that they will be far more relevant to my blog than these Goblin Brain episodes. I'm just tacking this onto one because it is a very overdue draft that was sitting on my dashboard... among thirty or forty others.
So, stay warm out there, depending on your hemisphere and particular climate, and thank you for listening.
I've never technically owned a pet.
Of course I've lived in a house with pets whom I interacted with, past and present.
And on at least a few occasions I've been mistaken for a pet, though that's a story for another time.
Or, probably not, actually...
Anyway!
I've never technically owned a pet. They've always belonged to my parents, and they've always been the ones chiefly responsible for all of the duties that pet-having entails. Not from a lack of willingness to participate on my part, but because my parents always found it easier or at least simpler to just do the things by themselves rather than teach me and set me up to do them properly after that period. Like they had a unique, noncommunicable technique for cleaning out the litter boxes, or for changing the water in the fishbowl, or what have you.
I think they did a lot of similar sunk-cost calculations with regards to my upbringing, come to think of it...
Lacking any real responsibility for the pets we've shared our home with over the years, I probably had a markedly different relationship with them than normal, er... goblin children do. Coupled with the fact that all of our cats, or a full two-thirds of the pets we've owned, were strays we took in and fixed up, it's always been the norm for me to have an awkward, distant coexistence with pets.
Like having a roommate who's always twitchy and nervous and might scratch you, and vomits a little too frequently on the carpet.
Even so, I came to befriend our last batch of cats a good deal.
We currently have a psychotic female tuxedo cat, but a year-and-a-half ago we also had an overweight female longhair, and a gingery, neurotic male tabby. They came to us at different times and ages and had vastly different personalities that lent themselves well to inventing bizarre voices for, as pet people are wont to do. Some of the most amusing conversations to ever go on in our house were done through the cats.
(People do that, right?)
I had an affinity for the tabby in particular. He would claw his way into my bedroom to demand obnoxious amounts of pets from me. We would bunt by headbutting at the dinner table often. I was usually the one to voice his persona. For the record, he was a clueless, blustering, but well-meaning old man from NYC's Lower-East Side who had a tendency to barge into the room to incorrectly correct someone's pronunciation of a word, make a lousy pun, or beg for ham.
My mother jokingly said he was my little brother.
He was the first one to be euthanized, in autumn of the year before last, if my memory still serves me. Conjunctivitis from scratching himself in the eye, and necrosis of the jaw tissue from us being poverty-stricken fools who didn't know enough about cat dental health to take him to the vet we couldn't afford often enough.
I wept like a family member had died. I suppose one did.
Our big, tubby, stupid sweetheart of a longhair went a few months later in the winter, due to a combination of the condition apparently known as megacolon, and--you guessed it--poor dental care.
It hurt just as much, but my eyes were drier that time. It felt like I didn't have the right to mourn, not while my mother and father were despondent and angry with guilt.
We'd made a friend in the vet who looked at both of them, though. A young, tall man, fabulously flamboyant man, who'd done everything in his impressive ability to fix our mistakes for both cats. He was saddened, but also consoled my parents for making the right choice in putting each of them down when those days came.
It was likely at his urging that the vet staff all got together to sign a card specifically designed for the occasion of dead pets. I didn't know those were a thing.
I also didn't know anything about those apparently well-known poems from the '80s and '90s about pets entering into heaven by crossing a rainbow.
The poem we got for our tabby was like any of the others, well-meaning and stomach-achingly saccharine. Our cat had apparently entered an idyllic meadow fully restored to health and happiness, among many other former pets, all waiting at the foot of the rainbow that bridges the gap between earth and the afterlife. When the owner finally dies, they're reunited for good, and make the crossing together.
Of course, being the mythology nerd that I am, I had a very different context for a poem involving a "rainbow bridge".
I immediately pictured him stepping onto the Bifröst, schmoozing his way past a bemused Heimdallr, getting lost in his wanderings through Asgard, and eventually winding up at the feet of Freyja in Fólkvangr. Sure he'd be too small to help pull her chariot, but he could tag along anyway, and the skogkatts could show him the ropes before long.
It was a comforting thing to pretend, even if it was only that.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Goblin Brain: Normalized Trauma
I had a dream last night.
Which is somewhat unusual- I very rarely remember my dreams. I'm sure I have them like most other living things do when they sleep, but memory of it hardly ever reaches me when I wake up.
This was different, though.
I had a dream that I had a friend (so you already know that it's completely insane and fanciful) who was a painter. And they invited me (out of my home) to their art gallery. And so I went.
I have no recollection of the space that the gallery was located in, or even the friend themselves- just that I had a friend, and that I was there looking at their things. And the gallery was peculiar. It was strangely appropriate for me, starting with the fact that everything was more-or-less goblin-sized, and the paintings were hung almost down by the floor for my convenience.
I can't remember much about most of them, but as I was traveling along the right-hand wall, I stopped in my tracks in front of one enormous landscape piece.
It called to me, I suppose?
And what it was, was this alien place. This world that was obviously meant to be something out of science fantasy, but very relatable on some level.
It was some sort of desert. There were satellites--natural satellites, that is--visible in the sky which was tinged a sort of purple color. There may have been some planet with rings around it far in the distance, I'm not sure. The sand and the rocks on the ground were kind of a bluish-grey color with yellowish streaks and highlights across them from the setting sun- one of the setting suns, at least. I remember the rocks had a metallic, almost greasy sheen to them like graphite.
There was a procession of beings walking through the desert. I got the impression that they were very tall, even though there was nothing to compare their scale to. Not outlandishly tall, but relative to humans--and certainly relative to me--they were pretty tall. They were fairly thin, too. They were humanoid, and sort of blue-skinned, I think. But not the same kind of blue as the land around them. They popped out from their surroundings quite visibly, somehow. They didn't have anything resembling hair, or horns, or any other sort of head protrusions. There was actually very little in the way of distinguishing characteristics between them. If they had anything like gender, I wasn't able to differentiate them.
But they all seemed to be walking in groups of three- two of approximately the same height, and one much shorter than the other two. Eventually I realized that they seemed to be family units. Parents and children. And there were dozens--hundreds?--of these units stretching all the way back into the sunset horizon. They were moving toward the foreground, until eventually the line twisted to the side where they entered some sort of large stone building which conveniently had the front of it cut off for the sake of my perspective.
I was able to look inside, where there was a sort of waiting room, and a much smaller chamber next to it. There was a much tighter congregation of people in the second room. There were several tall beings here who didn't appear to be parents, or at least they didn't have their own children with them. But they did have a group of other children with them.
It was at this point that I realized that another defining characteristic of these people was that each of them had a little socket in their forehead. The tall ones only had an empty space that was rectangular or diamond-shaped, with raised edges of thick and scarified flesh around them. Meanwhile the young ones had what looked like jewels- Brilliant little multicolored, multifaceted things poking ever so slightly out of their foreheads.
But when they reached this back room, they took out what I can only describe as a pair of pliers, and held the children down, and... removed them.
And it was obviously not a pleasant or willing procedure- the children had to be held down after all.
There was kicking, and screaming, and bleeding of a very dark, ichorous purple.
And when it was done, the children were bandaged up and moved over to the other side of the chamber, where there was a door leading out of the back of the building. At this point the parents, who had witnessed the removal and were looking far more exhausted than when they had come in, carried their children out. Or at the very least they shouldered their weight as they staggered on limply.
All of them had this expression of regret and sadness, tempered with this feeling of inevitability.
Like they dearly did not want to do this to their own children--to any children--but it was... required?
Expected?
I don't know how I was able to perceive all of this in a single painting. Either I imagined much of it, or my subconscious is was very, very good at ekphrasis.
(Is that how you say that word? I realize I never vocalized it when I learned about the concept in my class on Greek and Roman mythology.)
In any event, I believe I glanced down at the name of the painting before I left or moved on or the dream ended.
And it was titled "Normalized Trauma".
Appropriate.
I just wish I hadn't seen the mound of discarded jewels leaned up against the side of the building. I can't get it out of my head. Some of the jewels were very new and lustrous-looking, save for the encrusted blood. Others were old and faded. The pile was almost as tall as one of the adults.
It was also at the edge of the field. The field was filled with hundreds of mounds just like it.
Which is somewhat unusual- I very rarely remember my dreams. I'm sure I have them like most other living things do when they sleep, but memory of it hardly ever reaches me when I wake up.
This was different, though.
I had a dream that I had a friend (so you already know that it's completely insane and fanciful) who was a painter. And they invited me (out of my home) to their art gallery. And so I went.
I have no recollection of the space that the gallery was located in, or even the friend themselves- just that I had a friend, and that I was there looking at their things. And the gallery was peculiar. It was strangely appropriate for me, starting with the fact that everything was more-or-less goblin-sized, and the paintings were hung almost down by the floor for my convenience.
I can't remember much about most of them, but as I was traveling along the right-hand wall, I stopped in my tracks in front of one enormous landscape piece.
It called to me, I suppose?
And what it was, was this alien place. This world that was obviously meant to be something out of science fantasy, but very relatable on some level.
It was some sort of desert. There were satellites--natural satellites, that is--visible in the sky which was tinged a sort of purple color. There may have been some planet with rings around it far in the distance, I'm not sure. The sand and the rocks on the ground were kind of a bluish-grey color with yellowish streaks and highlights across them from the setting sun- one of the setting suns, at least. I remember the rocks had a metallic, almost greasy sheen to them like graphite.
There was a procession of beings walking through the desert. I got the impression that they were very tall, even though there was nothing to compare their scale to. Not outlandishly tall, but relative to humans--and certainly relative to me--they were pretty tall. They were fairly thin, too. They were humanoid, and sort of blue-skinned, I think. But not the same kind of blue as the land around them. They popped out from their surroundings quite visibly, somehow. They didn't have anything resembling hair, or horns, or any other sort of head protrusions. There was actually very little in the way of distinguishing characteristics between them. If they had anything like gender, I wasn't able to differentiate them.
But they all seemed to be walking in groups of three- two of approximately the same height, and one much shorter than the other two. Eventually I realized that they seemed to be family units. Parents and children. And there were dozens--hundreds?--of these units stretching all the way back into the sunset horizon. They were moving toward the foreground, until eventually the line twisted to the side where they entered some sort of large stone building which conveniently had the front of it cut off for the sake of my perspective.
I was able to look inside, where there was a sort of waiting room, and a much smaller chamber next to it. There was a much tighter congregation of people in the second room. There were several tall beings here who didn't appear to be parents, or at least they didn't have their own children with them. But they did have a group of other children with them.
It was at this point that I realized that another defining characteristic of these people was that each of them had a little socket in their forehead. The tall ones only had an empty space that was rectangular or diamond-shaped, with raised edges of thick and scarified flesh around them. Meanwhile the young ones had what looked like jewels- Brilliant little multicolored, multifaceted things poking ever so slightly out of their foreheads.
But when they reached this back room, they took out what I can only describe as a pair of pliers, and held the children down, and... removed them.
And it was obviously not a pleasant or willing procedure- the children had to be held down after all.
There was kicking, and screaming, and bleeding of a very dark, ichorous purple.
And when it was done, the children were bandaged up and moved over to the other side of the chamber, where there was a door leading out of the back of the building. At this point the parents, who had witnessed the removal and were looking far more exhausted than when they had come in, carried their children out. Or at the very least they shouldered their weight as they staggered on limply.
All of them had this expression of regret and sadness, tempered with this feeling of inevitability.
Like they dearly did not want to do this to their own children--to any children--but it was... required?
Expected?
I don't know how I was able to perceive all of this in a single painting. Either I imagined much of it, or my subconscious is was very, very good at ekphrasis.
(Is that how you say that word? I realize I never vocalized it when I learned about the concept in my class on Greek and Roman mythology.)
In any event, I believe I glanced down at the name of the painting before I left or moved on or the dream ended.
And it was titled "Normalized Trauma".
Appropriate.
I just wish I hadn't seen the mound of discarded jewels leaned up against the side of the building. I can't get it out of my head. Some of the jewels were very new and lustrous-looking, save for the encrusted blood. Others were old and faded. The pile was almost as tall as one of the adults.
It was also at the edge of the field. The field was filled with hundreds of mounds just like it.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Goblin Brain: An Internet Diary for Me to Whine Into
It's strange, being the only goblin in town.
The most obvious oddity is that I'm sized all wrong for everything around me- though sometimes that can turn around in my favor. Sure, I need a couple of old world atlases to boost me up onto my "standing" desk, but half a standard granola bar is practically a meal for me. Squirrels and small dogs are a daily threat to my existence, but the storage closet under most stairways is like a loft apartment to me. Finding clothing in my size that doesn't have an OshKosh B'gosh tag somewhere on it is a nightmare, but as far as beds are concerned, every one's a king-size. Moderately tall grass is enough for me to get lost in, but sometimes it's good to be able to hide.
The strangeness goes deeper than that, though.
I've never been part of a community of other goblins or our cousins, to the point that I'm not entirely sure what subtype I am. I wasn't orphaned or adopted, though. As near as I can tell, I was born to my (thoroughly human) parents with zero pre- or post-natal changeling shenanigans. People even say I bear a bit of a resemblance to my father- it's the nose, mostly. By all rights I shouldn't be what I am, but I am.
I've made attempts to integrate myself into goblin life, albeit weak ones. I still invite Goody Mooncup's mail delivery marsh goblins over for coffee every once in a while, even if they've been... unambiguous in saying how much they dislike my decaff. I realize that they are technically magical constructs of mud and sweet grass, but trying to define who is and isn't sufficiently "goblinoid" is a steep and slippery slope toward an ugliness that I will not abide here.
Where am I going with all of this...
Perspective, right. Perspective.
I'm only approaching all of this as strange--rather than my ordinary life--because the wonders of the internet have, over the years, allowed me to piece together a broad understanding of the human condition, or at least a couple of forms of it. As an added bonus and/or penalty, I've been able to do it all from the isolation of my burrow, or my old room back in my parents' place. It's genuinely fun and inspiring to read about you people, as horribly patronizing as that must sound. But sometimes, despite my best intentions, I really do not understand what brings big folk to do certain things. Like sprinkling gold on food, or attaching testicles to your pickup truck. But there are many more things that I find compelling, even if I've always been apprehensive to study them in person or in practice.
Something I've always heard references to, suggestions for, and parodies of, is the journal.
Now I'm sure I've left a record of past stages of my life lying around for me to peruse, if I knew where to look. Everything we do is imprinted with who and what we are at the time, and the changes in those seemingly unrelated records can be subtle hints to the changes in us. For example, my favorite color has over the years steadily shifted toward a tannish beige hue, ever since I realized in my teenage years how terribly narcissistic it seem for me to like the color green.
But the deliberate, conscious act of writing a record of yourself, for yourself has always been a weird but fascinating concept to me.
... So I guess I'll give one a shot?
That's the only way I know how to tie together the sloppy beginning and end of this post.
I will write a more personal, introspective series about anything in daily life that strikes me, and maybe it will be enjoyable to read.
I don't have a schedule to begin with, so in a weird way you don't have to worry about journal posts taking up a slot for more of my other projects. This will just be another occasional bit of word-blerf I throw out here, sometimes voiced and possessing the suggestion of production value, but usually not. That is a distinction that I want to keep associated with my episodes of Goblin Watch.
Speaking of which, I really should get to work on the next episode... Those Welsh coblyns aren't going to cwtch themselves.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Goblin Watch, Episode 3: Mythology 2
Hello, and welcome back to Goblin Watch! The mini-series dedicated to the origins and iterations of everyone's favorite X and Y!
... Whoops, I didn't come up with variables for this intro.
Uh, let's see here... tricksters and knaves, no, I used that... critters and adventurer-fodder, no, that was from the time before last... This list really isn't going to last me as long as I had hoped unless I get creative. Maybe if I consult a thesaurus... Ah-hah!
Everyone's favorite sneaks and house-helpers! Yes, let's go with that.
Last episode, all the way back in the tumultuous year of 2018, we took a look at the earliest of the proto-goblins found in Classical Mythology- kobaloi, kabeiroi, kerkopes, ketcetera.
Today, we'll be moving forward by an indeterminate amount of time, and a few hundred kilomiles north to the interior of Central and Northern Europe, where the ancestors of the Germanic peoples settled during the later stages of the Indo-European migrations thousands of years ago. These peoples had a diverse set of religious beliefs and practices which fall under our umbrella of "Germanic mythology" today. Deities such as Odin/Wōtan, Thor/Donar, and Frigg/Frija figured prominently in those belief systems, and were venerated well into the Common Era before a shift toward newer religions caused a break in continuity. But other, smaller beings such as Heinzelmann, Hödekin, and King Goldemar persisted or even came into existence as syncretized pagan outcroppings in a predominantly Christian context. What these three men have in common in modern German(ic) folklore is that they are all kobolds.
As mentioned in previous episodes, "kobold" seems to be etymologically descended from "kobalos", meaning a mischievous spirit or rogue. This etymology comes down to us from Jacob Grimm, a German mythologist as well as the elder of the famous Brothers Grimm. But that is not the only explanation for the origin of the word. Other competing etymologies look for a native Germanic origin.These include kuba-walda ("one who rules the house"), kofewalt (a cognate to Old Saxon cofgoda or "room-god"), and the contraction of the words koben and hold ("pigsty" and "stall spirit" respectively).
Interestingly, while these home, hearth, or room-related etymologies all distance the kobold from the kobaloi or kerkopes of ancient Greek and Anatolian religion, they also cause cause the kobold to resemble in function the di penates or domestic Lares of ancient Roman religion- spirits in effigy who also presided over and protected specific locations to which they were limited. There are, broadly speaking, three types of kobolds, and the above characterization fits best with the first.
House kobolds dwell in a family's home and act as house spirits--helping with chores, offering good luck, making it wealthy in gold or grain, etc-- though they are not bound to the existence of that house, nor do they originate from it. The home and the kobold seem to have completely independent ontologies. Many stories deal with how kobolds first come to live in a house of their choosing, often by announcing their presence through some ominous event and then reacting according to how the owners of the household respond. If a small, miserable creature appears at the door during a stormy night and the residents decide to take pity upon it and welcome it in, the kobold takes up residence in order to repay the favor. Or, if wood chips and cow manure are suddenly found tracked around the house and inside of the milk containers, a family who is tolerant of it will gain a kobold for being good sports. Other times a kobold has to be deliberately attracted to the home through a very specific set of events, such as bagging and speaking magic words to a bird standing on an anthill in the woods between the hours of noon and one o'clock on Saint John's Day.
I feel like that much work and planning could have more easily gone toward hiring a normal servant.
After a house acquired a kobold, it dwelt somewhere in the building, often in or around the central hearth. The occupants were expected to care for their new house spirit by leaving offerings out at night. These often took the form of food or drink, particularly beer for the subtype of house kobold called a bieresal, known to dwell in inn cellars. It appears that mortals did not generally interact with their kobolds directly. If all was as it should be, a kobold was not visible in the flesh (or whatever other form it took). Rather, they'd be represented by small effigies and statues, made in their ugly or exaggerated image and placed around the home by its owners. Kobold idols were being carved from boxwood at least as late as the 13th century, as recounted by the German poet Konrad von Würzburg, though Konrad describes the practice as mostly being "for fun" by that point in time, rather than as part of a serious ritual practice.
Heinzelmann, Hödekin, and King Goldemar were each house kobolds, and each brought varying degrees of good fortune to their patrons. Goldemar was a great kobold in particular, being a king among kobolds with his own queen, nobles, and court in service of the human king Neveling von Hardenberg. His retribution was as terrible as his gifts were great, however. As with many kobold tales, a servant eventually tried to catch a glimpse of his invisible form by deception, and in response Goldemar killed him, chopped him up, roasted his meat, and left Castle Hardenstein after placing a curse of bad luck upon it. In fact, most of the high-profile, named kobolds in myths seem to rack up quite a body count from being angered so easily, invariably slaughtering and cannibalizing other people. Heinzelmann seems to be an exception to this, giving fair warning of his bad luck and generally acting more gentle.
Just don't ever ask him what's in the trunk of his car.
The next type is the mine kobold. These industrious workers were expert miners and metalworkers native to the shafts and tunnels of mines throughout early Renaissance-era Germany. Or rather, they lived in the stone of the shafts and tunnels. Some legends surrounding mine kobolds claim that they can actually move through solid earth the same way a human can move through open air. They seem to be more immediately malevolent toward humans than house kobolds are, with the bulk of tales about them showing them in a negative light. The sounds of kobolds working could be heard throughout otherwise quiet tunnels, and if one followed after the sounds of their drilling, shoveling, or knocking, one was liable to end up collapsing their tunnel, flooding it, or filling it with noxious fumes. Mine kobolds were also blamed for the disappearance of tools or food, or the breaking of machinery in and around the mine. But the most famous type of mine kobold trick takes a far more physical form.
They would deceive miners into prospecting what looks like rich veins of copper or silver and then mining all of the ore out, only for the miners to realize later on that the ore was worthless, devoid of precious metals, prone to causing skin irritation on contact, and sometimes possessed of a toxic gas which was released during the smelting process. These veins of junk were named after the kobolds who put them there and wisely avoided until the 18th century, when a Swedish chemist named Georg Brandt isolated a substance from it that was hitherto unknown to mineralogy. Later on in 1780, this metal was discovered to be an all new chemical element. Cobalt still bears the name of its ill-disposed creators.
Less frequently, mine kobolds were known to be benevolent, and to operate under the same system of respectful conduct and reciprocal favors as house kobolds. They were fond of such appeasements as silver and gold. In such instances, their tunnel-knocking could be interpreted as being a warning not to dig toward danger, or alternatively to dig toward hidden veins of metal. Or they could give them more poisonous cobalt. It was pretty tricky business.
This is the part where I make an aside to address the tiny, scaly elephant in the room. I believe that the classic mine kobold--a nasty interpretation of it in particular--was a partial inspiration for kobolds when they became monsters in the original release of Dungeons & Dragons. Territorial, fond of mining and traps, and antagonistic toward the subterranean creatures they lived close to (including the dwarves and gnomes whom traditional kobolds are often conflated with), these little para-goblins would go on to become an endearing and colorful part of fantasy pop-culture. I will leave the bulk of that discussion for its own episode someday, but there is one point I'd like to touch on. Oftentimes older tabletop gamers will remark at how strange it was for 3rd Edition to remake of kobolds as reptilian dragon-sycophants, but in researching for this project, I've come to wonder what inspired the "original" form of kobolds-as-adventurer-fodder to begin with. After centuries of approximately human or dwarf-like appearance, 1974 marked the date when kobolds became dog-faced goblins with scales and forehead-horns.
 |
| And let's not even get started on the Vulcan ears. |
Carrying on the spirit of odd ones out, we come to the third and final major type of kobold.
The Klabautermann is the kobold of a ship, protector of sailors and giver of good fortune to fishermen of the Baltic and North Seas. Sometimes, it will even rescue people washed overboard. It takes a fairly modern appearance, seeming to be a little man with a yellow sailor's hat or coat, and smoking a pipe filled with tobacco. Rather than having figurines or effigies of the ship's kobold, its image is often carved into the mast of the ship directly. Unlike house kobolds who come and go as they please, a Klabautermann seems more strongly associated with a particular ship. For instance, they come to protect a ship by having lived in a tree used for wood in the construction of the vessel, so the ship becomes an extension of its home. A Klabautermann is also known to carry around a caulking hammer for ship repairs, lending some credence to one etymology for Klabautermann which derives from the Low German verb kalfatern, or "to caulk". But in keeping with the theme of dualism among kobolds, Klabautermann can also be responsible for accidents and pranks aboard a ship far out at sea. And rather than being punished for trying to see the kobold's physical form, he willingly reveals himself to the crew of a ship so that they know that they are doomed by a storm or some other impending terrible event. The sea-kobold even goes down with the ship in such instances.
Similar in name and shape but different in nature is the Dutch Kabouter. A Kabouter is a small creature who commonly lives in a hill, or in modern popular culture, a large mushroom house. They are more shy of humans than dedicated house spirit kobolds, but will occasionally teach a nice young Dutchman how to make wooden shoes or deep building foundations. Kabouter men typically wear long, full beards and pointed red hats. If you're noticing how similar this appearance sounds to a certain other fictional creature, you are correct: Kabouters were famously written about and richly illustrated by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet in their 1976 book series, Leven en werken van de Kabouter. In English this translates to "Life and works of the Kabouter", but when the book was translated for sale in English-speaking countries, "Kabouter" was replaced with the word "Gnome". Eight years later the Spanish animated television series David, el Gnomo was released, and the following year David the Gnome hit American audiences.
And he kept on swinging.
So here we have another example of syncretism between a member of the goblin family and something quite different. This conflation with other sprites and beings is as common for kobolds, up to and including King Goldemar whom I referenced above. In the cycle of legends surrounding Theoderic the Great (taking the mythical form of Dietrich von Bern), Goldemar is described not as a kobold but as a dwarf. This might be a case of the terms for such creatures being vague, overlapping, or even synonymous during the times they were first used, and then that convention carrying on into modern times. I believe that this is supported by the fact that his brother Elbegast was described as an Elf-king while hanging out and robbing people with Charlemagne in a Middle Dutch poem. Their other brother, the dwarf Alberich, appears in the Nibelungenlied and serves as a treasure guardian for the protagonist Siegfried. They were a pretty popular bunch.
Despite the long and storied histories of German and Dutch communities in the land that would eventually become part of the United States, I was surprised to find almost nothing in the way of kobold myths or traditions in modern North America. Perhaps because they were so often tied to certain houses, or particular families, or to the earth itself, the kobolds were largely left behind in the Old Country by emigrants. Of course, just because there's no popular tradition centered on them doesn't mean that they aren't here. A handful of kobolds have made their way to this "New World" over the ages, always keeping just out of human notice or the eyes of history in these strange new lands. When the Dutch privateer Jan Janszoon van Haarlem was captured by Barbary Pirates in 1618, you can be sure that his fleet's water-kobolds came in tow. When he became Murat Reis the Younger, Grand Admiral and Governor of the Republic of Salé, they hunkered down in those balmy ports and made an uneasy alliance with the Djinn of Morocco. And when his son Anthony Janszoon van Salee moved to the New Netherlands and became the first and largest grantee of land on Coney Island, they were right behind him, pleased to find a semblance of home at last. Certainly, Janszoon's descendants have enjoyed considerable good fortune for the past few centuries, being the Vanderbilt Dynasty and all.
Coincidence?
Next episode, we'll be moving further west, to the shores of France as well as the British Isles and Ireland, where we will finally touch upon the linguistically modern goblin and its Insular Celtic neighbors.
I want to give a special thanks to all of my donors and supporters, as well as to one Goody Mooncup. Without her letter to the editor and advice column, I wouldn't have completed my research for this episode nearly as "quickly".
I am the Furtive Goblin, this was Goblin Watch, and I thank you for listening!
Dowden, Ken. European Paganism. Taylor & Francis, 2002.
Grimm, Jacob.Teutonic Mythology, Part 2. Kessinger Publishing, 2003 [1883].
Rose, Carol. Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1996.
Despite the long and storied histories of German and Dutch communities in the land that would eventually become part of the United States, I was surprised to find almost nothing in the way of kobold myths or traditions in modern North America. Perhaps because they were so often tied to certain houses, or particular families, or to the earth itself, the kobolds were largely left behind in the Old Country by emigrants. Of course, just because there's no popular tradition centered on them doesn't mean that they aren't here. A handful of kobolds have made their way to this "New World" over the ages, always keeping just out of human notice or the eyes of history in these strange new lands. When the Dutch privateer Jan Janszoon van Haarlem was captured by Barbary Pirates in 1618, you can be sure that his fleet's water-kobolds came in tow. When he became Murat Reis the Younger, Grand Admiral and Governor of the Republic of Salé, they hunkered down in those balmy ports and made an uneasy alliance with the Djinn of Morocco. And when his son Anthony Janszoon van Salee moved to the New Netherlands and became the first and largest grantee of land on Coney Island, they were right behind him, pleased to find a semblance of home at last. Certainly, Janszoon's descendants have enjoyed considerable good fortune for the past few centuries, being the Vanderbilt Dynasty and all.
Coincidence?
Next episode, we'll be moving further west, to the shores of France as well as the British Isles and Ireland, where we will finally touch upon the linguistically modern goblin and its Insular Celtic neighbors.
I want to give a special thanks to all of my donors and supporters, as well as to one Goody Mooncup. Without her letter to the editor and advice column, I wouldn't have completed my research for this episode nearly as "quickly".
I am the Furtive Goblin, this was Goblin Watch, and I thank you for listening!
Dowden, Ken. European Paganism. Taylor & Francis, 2002.
Grimm, Jacob.Teutonic Mythology, Part 2. Kessinger Publishing, 2003 [1883].
Rose, Carol. Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1996.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Goblin Watch, Episode 2: Mythology 1.
((I really should devote myself to a maxim other than "promise little, deliver less" one of these days. But no matter! Goblin Watch is officially not dead, and with luck I was able to get this embedded audio player to work rather than hyperlinking to SoundCloud for every episode.
Enjoy, if you are able!))
Goblin Watch, Episode 02.
Hello, and welcome back to Goblin Watch! The mini-series dedicated to the origins and iterations of everyone's favorite tricksters and diminutive knaves!
Here today we have the first installment in our sub-series looking at goblins and their kin in mythology. We also have the beginnings of titular colon cancer, knowing how often I like to sub-divide and create tangents to my own work.
When we left off last, we had laid down a basic framework how this series is supposed to work. Now, we're going to see if I can't maintain that system by looking at the some of the earliest bits of information related to etymologically-linked goblins in mythology. Mind you, I won't be glossing over or ignoring all of the different goblin-like beings of other, non-European mythologies- this is just an easy way to dip one's toe into the whole thing. If there's a creature similar to (or not so similar to) a goblin in another belief system, rest assured I will try to find it. Or, if you'd like, prompt me to home in on a particular topic in a comment down below!
To recap, the word "goblin" and its equivalents are found in many Indo-European languages. English and Welsh got its goblin and coblyn from French gobelin, which existed alongside German kobold, and both of those descend from Latin cabalus. Ultimately, or at least as far as language experts can tell, that comes from Greek kobalos, plural kobaloi.
Kobaloi came in two forms in the myths of ancient Greece, as recorded by several slightly less ancient scholars. The first is as a class of spirits in service to the god Dionysus, the traits of whom they exhibited in addition to being tricksters and mischief-makers among mortals. The second is a use of kobalos in a pejorative sense, referring to a person as a kobalos because they are a knave, thief, or general rogue. This sense of the word is still informed by the meaning of the first however, because a roguish kobalos was believed to be acting like--or even invoking--the kobalos spirits. There is also a considerable amount of overlap between kobaloi spirits and two other classes of beings, called the kabeiroi and the Kerkopes. The kabeiroi were mystery cult deities of possibly non-Greek origin popular in the Anatolian peninsula, often depicted as dwarves with massive phalluses.The Kerkopes were a pair of vaguely simian forest spirit brothers and consummate tricksters. Both sets will be included in this discussion for the sake of applicability.
Perhaps the most popular mythic episode involving kobaloi comes from the exploits of Heracles, or perhaps more precisely the exploitation of Heracles, in which the Kerkopes totally yoinked his stuff while he was sleeping.
Take that, demigods!
Of course Heracles, being Heracles, soon woke up and discovered what the brothers were doing, so that he could defeat them and seize them in a heroic fashion. But the brothers had as much charm and wit as they did physical ability and sneakiness, and they made good use of their punishment when Heracles slung them both upside down from a pole laid across his shoulders.
As he walked and they swung back and forth, they started cackling at something. When Heracles finally set them down to ask what was so funny, they explained that they were laughing at his backside, which was apparently quite bare and very darkly tanned. He decided to be a good sport about it and, laughing at the jokes at the expense of his own bronzed butt, Heracles released the Kerkopes.
Speaking of butts, or at least an area not too far from it, the name Kerkopes is of significance. It means "tailed ones", and suggests that the brothers actually possessed tails like an animal. A different myth attempts to explain this name by presenting the Keropes as the result of a terrible curse. Zeus, being Zeus, for whatever frivolous reason decided to transform the brothers from their more human appearance into the first monkeys. This gives an explanation for the perceived capriciousness and trickiness of humanity's little primate cousins. It also reminds us that of the hundreds of geographic variations on goblins present throughout tabletop RPGs, Pathfinder's monkey goblins are among the least far-fetched!
The kabeiroi are less attested to in legends, and have more enigmatic origins. It appears as though the name is derived from a different source as kobaloi. One theory, popular since the 16th century, has been that kabeiroi (also transliterated as cabeiri, cabiri, or kabiri) is derived from the ancient Semitic root word kabir (kbr), meaning "great". Other than a few suggestions over the centuries that the word might be of Hittite, Sumerian, or Indo-Aryan origin, this theory seems to have held up until the drop in debate interest which I found while researching this topic today.
Evidently the most current and complete source on the kabeiroi and their connection with other Hellenic deities is a poorly scanned 2004 reprint of an 1877 tome written by one Robert Brown. But Brown seems to have thoroughly acknowledged and addressed earlier scholars in his two-volume work, such as preserving an earlier assertion that the kabeiroi were treated as being the same in ancient times as the kobaloi, and that they were the companions of Dionysus. This makes sense given the kobalic bent toward mischief and the phallic nature of the kabeiroi, because Dionysus, as a god of wine and revelry (among other domains) was very much involved in party antics. Brown also presents the word or name "choroimanes-aiolomorphus", which to the best of my understanding means something like the power of shape-shifting, supporting the association between kobaloi and skillful trickery. Small, sneaky shapeshifters are a feature of countless different mythologies and folklores across Eurasia to this day, including creatures which might be more readily identified as elves or dwarves.
The kabeiroi, despite being stereotyped as droll little pricks, were venerated as gods or potent spirits in their own right, thanks to a cult which had once spread outward from the islands of Samothrace and Lemnos. In a more formal setting they were associated with craftsmanship and with Hephaestus, or even made to mirror the Olympic pantheon in general. Considering that Samothrace was once Phoenician, this might be a case of early syncretism. The kabeiroi's numbers varied from depiction to depiction, and their names were hardly ever recorded in favor of being referred to as the "great gods", but there seemed to be at least two, often seven or eight, and as many as an entire race of them with varying ratios of males and females within. Sometimes they came in pairs, but other times every kabeiroi was male.
We begin to see here early hints of the surprisingly effective artifice and almost nonexistent women which would become prominent features of goblins-as-orcs in the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien.
As the kabeiroi cult spread, it became a part of broader Classical Mediterranean religious practice, and was gradually subsumed within Greek and later Roman traditions. The famous tragedian Aeschylus wrote a play named The Kabeiroi, which apparently involved the Argonauts becoming privy to their sacred mysteries, though it only survives in fragmentary or referential form today. The historian Herodotus was also initiated into the cult at some point. But like almost all of the mystery cults from the period, worship of the kabeiroi eventually declined in the face of newer or stronger movements in the region.
But this was not before the kobaloi were able to find a place in the mythology of other parts of the European continent. And so, perhaps in a flanderized form, the mischievous spirits survived their Aegean origins and were allowed to continue their process of transforming to suit the mythological niches which they would encounter, going forward. They would no longer be worshiped as gods, but we couldn't hog the limelight for too long, could we?
Next episode, we will look into some of those European proto-goblins more deeply.
I am the Furtive Goblin, this was Goblin Watch, and I thank you for listening! Yes, listening and not watching, as I mistakenly said last episode.
If I made any mistakes in this episode, or I didn't explain something to your satisfaction, please leave a question below and I will gladly address it.
Brown, Robert. The Greek Dionysiak Myth, Part 2. Kessinger Publishing, 2004 [1877].
Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Harvard University Press, 1992.
Enjoy, if you are able!))
Goblin Watch, Episode 02.
Hello, and welcome back to Goblin Watch! The mini-series dedicated to the origins and iterations of everyone's favorite tricksters and diminutive knaves!
Here today we have the first installment in our sub-series looking at goblins and their kin in mythology. We also have the beginnings of titular colon cancer, knowing how often I like to sub-divide and create tangents to my own work.
When we left off last, we had laid down a basic framework how this series is supposed to work. Now, we're going to see if I can't maintain that system by looking at the some of the earliest bits of information related to etymologically-linked goblins in mythology. Mind you, I won't be glossing over or ignoring all of the different goblin-like beings of other, non-European mythologies- this is just an easy way to dip one's toe into the whole thing. If there's a creature similar to (or not so similar to) a goblin in another belief system, rest assured I will try to find it. Or, if you'd like, prompt me to home in on a particular topic in a comment down below!
To recap, the word "goblin" and its equivalents are found in many Indo-European languages. English and Welsh got its goblin and coblyn from French gobelin, which existed alongside German kobold, and both of those descend from Latin cabalus. Ultimately, or at least as far as language experts can tell, that comes from Greek kobalos, plural kobaloi.
Kobaloi came in two forms in the myths of ancient Greece, as recorded by several slightly less ancient scholars. The first is as a class of spirits in service to the god Dionysus, the traits of whom they exhibited in addition to being tricksters and mischief-makers among mortals. The second is a use of kobalos in a pejorative sense, referring to a person as a kobalos because they are a knave, thief, or general rogue. This sense of the word is still informed by the meaning of the first however, because a roguish kobalos was believed to be acting like--or even invoking--the kobalos spirits. There is also a considerable amount of overlap between kobaloi spirits and two other classes of beings, called the kabeiroi and the Kerkopes. The kabeiroi were mystery cult deities of possibly non-Greek origin popular in the Anatolian peninsula, often depicted as dwarves with massive phalluses.The Kerkopes were a pair of vaguely simian forest spirit brothers and consummate tricksters. Both sets will be included in this discussion for the sake of applicability.
Perhaps the most popular mythic episode involving kobaloi comes from the exploits of Heracles, or perhaps more precisely the exploitation of Heracles, in which the Kerkopes totally yoinked his stuff while he was sleeping.
Take that, demigods!
Of course Heracles, being Heracles, soon woke up and discovered what the brothers were doing, so that he could defeat them and seize them in a heroic fashion. But the brothers had as much charm and wit as they did physical ability and sneakiness, and they made good use of their punishment when Heracles slung them both upside down from a pole laid across his shoulders.
Speaking of butts, or at least an area not too far from it, the name Kerkopes is of significance. It means "tailed ones", and suggests that the brothers actually possessed tails like an animal. A different myth attempts to explain this name by presenting the Keropes as the result of a terrible curse. Zeus, being Zeus, for whatever frivolous reason decided to transform the brothers from their more human appearance into the first monkeys. This gives an explanation for the perceived capriciousness and trickiness of humanity's little primate cousins. It also reminds us that of the hundreds of geographic variations on goblins present throughout tabletop RPGs, Pathfinder's monkey goblins are among the least far-fetched!
 |
| ... Alright, maybe still a little far-fetched. |
Evidently the most current and complete source on the kabeiroi and their connection with other Hellenic deities is a poorly scanned 2004 reprint of an 1877 tome written by one Robert Brown. But Brown seems to have thoroughly acknowledged and addressed earlier scholars in his two-volume work, such as preserving an earlier assertion that the kabeiroi were treated as being the same in ancient times as the kobaloi, and that they were the companions of Dionysus. This makes sense given the kobalic bent toward mischief and the phallic nature of the kabeiroi, because Dionysus, as a god of wine and revelry (among other domains) was very much involved in party antics. Brown also presents the word or name "choroimanes-aiolomorphus", which to the best of my understanding means something like the power of shape-shifting, supporting the association between kobaloi and skillful trickery. Small, sneaky shapeshifters are a feature of countless different mythologies and folklores across Eurasia to this day, including creatures which might be more readily identified as elves or dwarves.
The kabeiroi, despite being stereotyped as droll little pricks, were venerated as gods or potent spirits in their own right, thanks to a cult which had once spread outward from the islands of Samothrace and Lemnos. In a more formal setting they were associated with craftsmanship and with Hephaestus, or even made to mirror the Olympic pantheon in general. Considering that Samothrace was once Phoenician, this might be a case of early syncretism. The kabeiroi's numbers varied from depiction to depiction, and their names were hardly ever recorded in favor of being referred to as the "great gods", but there seemed to be at least two, often seven or eight, and as many as an entire race of them with varying ratios of males and females within. Sometimes they came in pairs, but other times every kabeiroi was male.
We begin to see here early hints of the surprisingly effective artifice and almost nonexistent women which would become prominent features of goblins-as-orcs in the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien.
As the kabeiroi cult spread, it became a part of broader Classical Mediterranean religious practice, and was gradually subsumed within Greek and later Roman traditions. The famous tragedian Aeschylus wrote a play named The Kabeiroi, which apparently involved the Argonauts becoming privy to their sacred mysteries, though it only survives in fragmentary or referential form today. The historian Herodotus was also initiated into the cult at some point. But like almost all of the mystery cults from the period, worship of the kabeiroi eventually declined in the face of newer or stronger movements in the region.
But this was not before the kobaloi were able to find a place in the mythology of other parts of the European continent. And so, perhaps in a flanderized form, the mischievous spirits survived their Aegean origins and were allowed to continue their process of transforming to suit the mythological niches which they would encounter, going forward. They would no longer be worshiped as gods, but we couldn't hog the limelight for too long, could we?
Next episode, we will look into some of those European proto-goblins more deeply.
I am the Furtive Goblin, this was Goblin Watch, and I thank you for listening! Yes, listening and not watching, as I mistakenly said last episode.
If I made any mistakes in this episode, or I didn't explain something to your satisfaction, please leave a question below and I will gladly address it.
Brown, Robert. The Greek Dionysiak Myth, Part 2. Kessinger Publishing, 2004 [1877].
Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Harvard University Press, 1992.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Goblin Watch, Episode 01.
((Welp. I tried to start a YouTube series. I tried to create a simple but practical and charming visual aesthetic to go along with my (hopefully) edutaining solo rambling. I tried to develop long-term designs to get in on that sweet AdSense gravy-train in a way that wouldn't pepper my blog with awkward, unrelated advertisements for low home refinancing rates or highly specific dating websites.
Operative word being "tried".
In the end, I just don't have the skill, patience, or computer processing power to be able to build a video series from scratch.
So instead, I've decided to throw the audio up onto Soundcloud!
Come listen to the first episode of Goblin Watch here.
In this new format, I'll be approaching the history of the "goblin" in a rambling solo-cast style, but also providing each episode's script as a textual post of its very own, in case anxious, high-pitched voices aren't quite your cup of tea. So feel free to click above or scroll down, or both if you're feeling generous, and enjoy.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for how I can improve this (besides getting a better mic, of course. I am a bit limited on funds for now), and let me know if you would prefer future episodes to be shortish like this (5-15 minutes total), or if they should be beefier (20-30 minutes or more).
Additionally, if you would like me to dedicate a Ko-Fi post to audio, let me know in advance! I am still eagerly awaiting CuPost material.))
Goblin Watch, Episode 01.
Hello, and welcome to Goblin Watch! The mini-series dedicated to the origins and iterations of everyone's favorite folkloric critters and adventurer fodder.
Have you ever wondered where goblins come from? Well, when a mother goblin and a father goblin love each other...
Wait, wrong episode.
Ahem!
But seriously, have you ever wondered where the idea of a goblin comes from? Who invented it, and in how many different parts of the world? What makes a goblin different from or similar to other mythical creatures like elves, or dwarves? In what state was the idea of the goblin when that Tolkien git came along and got his hands on the word, and what has it been like ever since he left his indelible mark on it and in part wedded it to the revolutionary new idea of orcs?
These and many other questions will be raised, and hopefully we'll be able to find some good answers to them.
I am, appropriately enough, the Furtive Goblin, and I will help lead the way.
Over the next few weeks, or months, or however long this lasts, we will be delving into the history of the concept of the goblin, and how people have used that idea over the centuries.
This exploration will take us through vast stretches of mythology, literature, cinema, video gaming, and even pop culture, though not in any particular order.
It will also be a journey of self-discovery for me, as I come to grips with my identity.
Without any further ado, let's begin with the first step taken in any ambitious series: A soul-crushing lesson in etymology and dead languages!
Just a head's up, I am not a linguist, and my ability to pronounce words in other languages, even Romance languages, is pretty abysmal, so my apologies for getting many things wrong.
The Modern English word g-o-b-l-i-n “goblin” is the current most common version of the word, with several other spellings having been around and attested to for a while before most writers decided on the simplest one. So, the vast majority of goblins we'll come across from here on out will be just goblins. Goblyn with a 'y' is something we are going to come back to in a couple of chapters once we hit tabletop role-playing games, however.
English goblin first appeared in the 14th century CE, deriving from the earlier Anglo-Norman word gobelin, which itself derives from an Old French word of the same spelling.
(Little known fact, a contingent of 200 goblin cavalrygobs was instrumental in the victory at the Battle of Hastings. They rode on William the Conqueror's hunting dogs.)
This French word in turn deviated in around the 12th century CE from the Medieval Latin word cabalus or possible gobalus. We aren't quite sure which, because of the different ways Latin handled /g/, /c/, and /k/ sounds in written script.
Finally, our old Latin friends seemed to have ripped the idea from the Greeks, who used the word kobalos, plural kobaloi. In addition to being a rude name you'd call someone you might deem a rogue, knave, or thieving jerk, the kobalos is a class of spirits or other minor divinities in Greek Mythology- again, material we'll be sure to touch upon in a later episode.
And that's pretty much all there is. I was somewhat disappointed to find that there isn't a strong suggestion anywhere of what the Greek word might come from, or if there was a single Proto-Indo-European word from which all of this descends.
But that's only the more popular etymology for goblin in modern discourse.
Another theory which I'm personally more skeptical of is that goblin is ultimately a diminutive sort of pet-version of the proper name Gobel/Gobeau, possibly of Germanic or French origin.
A third theory is that goblin derives from the name for the continental Germanic kobold, but given that kobold shares Greek kobalos as the same etymological root, this theory sort of turns around into the first etymology.
(Side note, this also gives an etymological precedent for kobolds being so similar in behavior and physical appearance to goblins in the first few iterations of Dungeons & Dragons, despite my personal preference for those of a more recent, scalier persuasion.)
Goblin itself is the origin for the Welsh creature called a coblyn, showing that we are not dealing with a linguistic dead-end, and giving an inkling of where the word might go in the coming centuries as language changes and interacts. The coblyn is classified as a type of Knocker- a more brownie- or leperchaun-esque being which I've only heard about for the first time in researching this video. It's an interesting point for later exploration, but for now we've got to stay on topic.
Now that we've got an idea of the word, let's take a look at its earliest uses. Tune in next [insert time frame here] for a look at the nature and actions of goblins and their ancestors in myths, as well as folklore- that last great bastion for all half-discarded things which have fallen out of the favor of dominant mythologies and belief systems.
Operative word being "tried".
In the end, I just don't have the skill, patience, or computer processing power to be able to build a video series from scratch.
So instead, I've decided to throw the audio up onto Soundcloud!
Come listen to the first episode of Goblin Watch here.
In this new format, I'll be approaching the history of the "goblin" in a rambling solo-cast style, but also providing each episode's script as a textual post of its very own, in case anxious, high-pitched voices aren't quite your cup of tea. So feel free to click above or scroll down, or both if you're feeling generous, and enjoy.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for how I can improve this (besides getting a better mic, of course. I am a bit limited on funds for now), and let me know if you would prefer future episodes to be shortish like this (5-15 minutes total), or if they should be beefier (20-30 minutes or more).
Additionally, if you would like me to dedicate a Ko-Fi post to audio, let me know in advance! I am still eagerly awaiting CuPost material.))
Goblin Watch, Episode 01.
Hello, and welcome to Goblin Watch! The mini-series dedicated to the origins and iterations of everyone's favorite folkloric critters and adventurer fodder.
Have you ever wondered where goblins come from? Well, when a mother goblin and a father goblin love each other...
Wait, wrong episode.
Ahem!
But seriously, have you ever wondered where the idea of a goblin comes from? Who invented it, and in how many different parts of the world? What makes a goblin different from or similar to other mythical creatures like elves, or dwarves? In what state was the idea of the goblin when that Tolkien git came along and got his hands on the word, and what has it been like ever since he left his indelible mark on it and in part wedded it to the revolutionary new idea of orcs?
These and many other questions will be raised, and hopefully we'll be able to find some good answers to them.
I am, appropriately enough, the Furtive Goblin, and I will help lead the way.
Over the next few weeks, or months, or however long this lasts, we will be delving into the history of the concept of the goblin, and how people have used that idea over the centuries.
This exploration will take us through vast stretches of mythology, literature, cinema, video gaming, and even pop culture, though not in any particular order.
It will also be a journey of self-discovery for me, as I come to grips with my identity.
Without any further ado, let's begin with the first step taken in any ambitious series: A soul-crushing lesson in etymology and dead languages!
Just a head's up, I am not a linguist, and my ability to pronounce words in other languages, even Romance languages, is pretty abysmal, so my apologies for getting many things wrong.
The Modern English word g-o-b-l-i-n “goblin” is the current most common version of the word, with several other spellings having been around and attested to for a while before most writers decided on the simplest one. So, the vast majority of goblins we'll come across from here on out will be just goblins. Goblyn with a 'y' is something we are going to come back to in a couple of chapters once we hit tabletop role-playing games, however.
English goblin first appeared in the 14th century CE, deriving from the earlier Anglo-Norman word gobelin, which itself derives from an Old French word of the same spelling.
(Little known fact, a contingent of 200 goblin cavalrygobs was instrumental in the victory at the Battle of Hastings. They rode on William the Conqueror's hunting dogs.)
This French word in turn deviated in around the 12th century CE from the Medieval Latin word cabalus or possible gobalus. We aren't quite sure which, because of the different ways Latin handled /g/, /c/, and /k/ sounds in written script.
Finally, our old Latin friends seemed to have ripped the idea from the Greeks, who used the word kobalos, plural kobaloi. In addition to being a rude name you'd call someone you might deem a rogue, knave, or thieving jerk, the kobalos is a class of spirits or other minor divinities in Greek Mythology- again, material we'll be sure to touch upon in a later episode.
And that's pretty much all there is. I was somewhat disappointed to find that there isn't a strong suggestion anywhere of what the Greek word might come from, or if there was a single Proto-Indo-European word from which all of this descends.
But that's only the more popular etymology for goblin in modern discourse.
Another theory which I'm personally more skeptical of is that goblin is ultimately a diminutive sort of pet-version of the proper name Gobel/Gobeau, possibly of Germanic or French origin.
A third theory is that goblin derives from the name for the continental Germanic kobold, but given that kobold shares Greek kobalos as the same etymological root, this theory sort of turns around into the first etymology.
(Side note, this also gives an etymological precedent for kobolds being so similar in behavior and physical appearance to goblins in the first few iterations of Dungeons & Dragons, despite my personal preference for those of a more recent, scalier persuasion.)
Goblin itself is the origin for the Welsh creature called a coblyn, showing that we are not dealing with a linguistic dead-end, and giving an inkling of where the word might go in the coming centuries as language changes and interacts. The coblyn is classified as a type of Knocker- a more brownie- or leperchaun-esque being which I've only heard about for the first time in researching this video. It's an interesting point for later exploration, but for now we've got to stay on topic.
Now that we've got an idea of the word, let's take a look at its earliest uses. Tune in next [insert time frame here] for a look at the nature and actions of goblins and their ancestors in myths, as well as folklore- that last great bastion for all half-discarded things which have fallen out of the favor of dominant mythologies and belief systems.
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