Why Are Goblins Such Good Bankers?
NOT NEARLY AS FRIENDLY AS ELVES, AND more clever
than gnomes, the goblins of Harry’s world have rebelled against
wizards several times in the past. The truce between the two sides
is uneasy, and the wizard world has not yet embraced goblins.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
The word goblin derives
from the Greek kobalos , meaning “rogue.”
The same word produced the German kobold or
kobolt and the French gobelin. As “rogue” suggests, goblins tend not to
haunt a single family or home but rather are given to roam.
Sometimes goblins are portrayed as more
industrious than evil—adept at mining and metalwork, for example.
Their cousins, the hobgoblins, also tended to be more pranksters
than malefactors. Puck, “that merry wanderer of the night” from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is
the best example.
People used to rid themselves of goblins by
spreading flax seeds on their kitchen
floor. For some reason, the goblin was compelled to pick up all the
seeds—a very boring task. The goblin would soon look for fun
elsewhere.
They have even been known to do good deeds. Long
before he wrote A Christmas Carol, Charles
Dickens wrote “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,” a
Christmas story in which goblins showed a man named Gabriel
Grub—“an ill-conditioned, cross-grained, surly fellow; a morose and
lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himself ”—the error of
his ways:
Seated on an upright tombstone, close to him, was a strange, unearthly figure, whom Gabriel felt at once was no being of this world. His long, fantastic legs which might have reached the ground, were cocked up, and crossed after a quaint, fantastic fashion; his sinewy arms were bare; and his hands rested on his knees. On his short, round body, he wore a close covering, ornamented with small slashes; a short cloak dangled at his back; the collar was cut into curious peaks, which served the goblin in lieu of ruff or neckerchief; and his shoes curled up at his toes into long points. On his head, he wore a broad-brimmed sugar-loaf hat, garnished with a single feather. The hat was covered with white frost; and the goblin looked as if he had sat on the same tombstone very comfortably, for two or three hundred years. He was sitting perfectly still; his tongue was put out, as if in derision; and he was grinning at Gabriel Grub with such a grin as only a goblin could call up.
“I am afraid my friends want you, Gabriel,” said
the goblin, thrusting his tongue farther into his cheek than
ever—and a most astonishing tongue it was—“I’m afraid my friends
want you, Gabriel,” said the goblin.
Like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol who show Scrooge the meaning of Christmas, the goblins show Gabriel that the world isn’t as bad as it seems.
However, goblins are most often portrayed like
those of Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market”:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots? . . .
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.
Magical creature expert Carol Rose says some
goblins are known to be nice to children even if they don’t like
adults.
See also: Boggarts Cornish
Pixies Trolls Veela
J. R. R. Tolkien introduced bad goblins in
The Hobbit and then made them truly wicked
in The Lord of the Rings, for which he
changed their name to “Orcs.” In his invented history of
Middle-earth the Orcs were bred from tortured Elves, the creatures
Tolkein loved, and became the Elves’ opposites. As Tolkien scholar
Robert Foster says, “They hated all things of beauty, and loved to
kill and destroy.” The Orcs become the army of Tolkien’s Dark
Lord.
J. K. Rowling’s goblins seem to be somewhere
between good and evil. That balance makes them perfect guardians
for Gringotts Bank, a task that requires they be both trustworthy
and ruthless.