Theme: Religion

A Goblin is a monstrous creature from European folklore, first attested in stories from the Middle Ages. They are ascribed various and conflicting abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. They are almost always small and grotesque, mischievous or outright evil, and greedy, especially for gold and jewelry. They often have magical abilities similar to a fairy or demon. (Similar creatures include brownies, dwarves, duendes, gnomes, imps, and kobolds.) English “Goblin” is first recorded in the 14th century and is probably from unattested Anglo-Norman gobelin, similar to Old French gobelin, already attested around 1195 in Ambroise of Normandy’s Guerre sainte, and to Medieval Latin gobelinus in Orderic Vitalis before 1141, which was the name of a devil or daemon haunting the country around Évreux, Normandy. It may be related both to German kobold and to Medieval Latin cabalus, or *gobalus, itself from Greek κόβαλος (kobalos), “rogue”, “knave”, “imp”, “goblin”. German Kobold contains the Germanic root kov- (Middle German Kobe “refuge, cavity”, “hollow in a rock”, Dial. English cove “hollow in a rock”, English “sheltered recess on a coast”, Old Norse kofi “hut, shed” ) which means originally a “hollow in the earth”. The word is probably related to Dial. Norman gobe “hollow in a cliff”, with simple suffix -lin or double suffixation -el-in (cf. Norman surnames Beuzelin, Gosselin,Étancelin, etc.) An elf (plural: elves) is a type of human-shaped supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to have meant ‘white being’. The Green Man is a god of vegetation and plant life. He symbolizes the life that is found in the natural plant world, and in the earth itself. Consider, for a moment, the forest. In the British Isles, the forests a thousand years ago were vast, spreading for miles and miles, farther than the eye could see. Because of the sheer size, the forest could be a dark and scary place. However, it was also a place you had to enter, whether you wanted to or not, because it provided meat for hunting, plants for eating, and wood for burning and building. Several other ancient cultures also had green deities, often with some features in common with the Green Man. These include: Humbaba, the ancient Sumerian guardian of the cedar forest, as well as Enkidu, the wild man of the forest in Sumerian mythology. As far as i know it begins with the deluge.