#I knew I'd get sth for my reblog on warm's post lol

[obaewankenope]

'Goblins only existed because the France invaded, because written examples of Goblins only existed in that time' Cool, any sources or are we just gonna have it so that Tumblr makes shit up again, like the time we made up a Greek Goddess.

Well you could always use your brain cell and fingers in conjunction to Google goblins, read the sources yourself buuuuut that's too much to ask, naturally.

Anyway, I guess I'll do the work for you.

Any paragraph in a block quote is from external sources, like Wikipedia or reference sites. All references are at the bottom of this post under a readmore. Read them and weep, anon.

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Goblins, folklore, devils, history of Jews in Europe, Not Fictional Tumblr Bullshit Sorry Not Sorry

The origins of goblin as a term, as a folklore creature, can be summed up below, with English records of the term goblin showing up in the 14th century and coming from earlier languages etc etc.

English goblin is first recorded in the 14th century and is probably from unattested Anglo-Norman *gobelin, [Hoad, 1993] 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, [CNRTL: Du Cange et al, 1678] which was the name of a devil or daemon haunting the country around Évreux, Normandy. 

So, that's Wikipedia, yes, with the references there giving you the etymological origins of goblin, since you can't seem to search it up yourself. Now I'll give you the information about crusades in France, Jews in France at the time, and, of course, the fantastic fact that Jews existed looooong before goblins did. Aka a brief history of Jews in Europe. Enjoy.

Hellenistic Judaism, originating from Alexandria, was present throughout the Roman Empire even before the Jewish–Roman wars. Large numbers lived in Greece (including the Greek isles in the Aegean and Crete) as early as the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. The first recorded mention of Judaism in Greece dates from 300 to 250 BCE, on the island of Rhodes (The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, p. 3).

I think, good sir, we may now be sure Jews existed in Europe before many things did (which is kinda frickin obvious since Christianity is younger than it, showed up during Roman times, annnd had to spread across an existing population which, funnily enough, I learnt in primary school, tended to target and ostracise Jews as a result of precious Christianity spreading). But... You know, that whole "tumblr making shit up again" thing is waaaaay easier for you to believe than a two minute Google search.

Here's a big ol chunk of info with some references lobbed in which may help you understand just how extensive Jews were in Europe loooong before a bit of folklore was imagined by a French guy.

Persecution of Jews in Europe begins with the presence of Jews in regions that later became known as the lands of Latin Christendom (c. 8th century CE)[Cantor, 1993: Lewis & Wigen, 1997: Davies, 1996]  and modern Europe [Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopaedia, 2007].  Not only were Jewish Christians persecuted according to the New Testament, but also as a matter of historical fact anti-Jewish pogroms occurred not only in Jerusalem (325 CE), Persia (351 CE), Carthage (250 CE), Alexandria (415), but also in Italy (224 CE), Milan (379 CE) and Menorca (418CE), Antioch (489), Daphne-Antioch (506), Ravenna (519), amongst other places. Hostility between Christians and Jews grew over the generations under Roman sovereignty and beyond; eventually forced conversion, property confiscation, synagogue burning, expulsion, stake burning, enslavement and outlawing of Jews—even whole Jewish communities—occurred countless times in the lands of Latin Christendom [Laqueur, 2006, Grosser & Halperin, Grosser, Halperin, St. John, & Littell, 1979].

To fast forward to around the time goblin was introduced as a folklore creature (actually a name for a devil, not as a goblin™ yet) we jump to France, Crusades, and the Middle Ages. Like so.

Persecution of Jews in Europe increased in the High Middle Ages in the context of the Christian Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096), flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed; see German Crusade, 1096. In the Second Crusade, (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including in 1290 the banishing of all Jews from the Kingdom of England by King Edward I with the Edict of Expulsion. In 1394, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France. Thousands more were deported from Austria in 1421. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland (Holocaust Center of United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh: Weinryb, 1973: Woodworth, ).

Sooooo... French crusades where Jews in France were target in 1100s onwards and a devil that developed into the modern goblin springing up in 1141... Eventually becoming a creature often described with a hooked nose, short stature, conniving, untrustworthy, and greedy, that is a danger to good (Christian) folk...

I don't see the connection at all. Honest. [S a R C a S M].

Now, honestly, I'm not actually saying ALL VERSIONS OF GOBLINS ARE ANTISEMITIC HONEST because that's just unlikely. Just like all versions of fae are unlikely to be from The Same Source, it's not tenable because ideas do develop over time and sometimes similar ideas reach the same conclusion from different start points. But goblins are, at the root, at the centre of a vast web of later folklore creatures which owe their origins to that Old French name for a devil. Are Rowling's goblins potentially based on some attributes that were ascribed to Jewish individuals at the time of goblin becoming a folklore creature? Possibly.

But here's the thing. Rowling's goblins are not the same as other goblins.

They're really not. Historically, later (post French name for a devil becomes a type of creature ala goblin) goblins varied in descriptions and in nature. Most of the stories either have them as Outright Evil or mischievous with a helping of malicious. Eventual influences from society and cultural shaped goblins into what we know them as today, and Rowling's own version of goblins Is Part Of That Reason.

Goblins could be tall, could be short, ugly, pretty, invisible etc. But goblins didn't traditionally have connections to gold and finances as much as Rowling made them in HP.

Almost two decades of HP being mainstream really does affect portrayals of goblins, it truly does.

Would you like to know why?

Because Rowling's goblins are more like knockers or the Coblynau from Welsh folklore than the goblins seen more in English folklore in terms of description, where they live, and what they do.

Now, the Welsh term derives, eventually, from the French term gobelin (which gives rise to the modern goblin):

The word Coblynau is related to the English word Goblin and may derive from a Germanic source akin to the German Kobold, via the French Gobelin (Franklin, 2002).

And, generally speaking, the idea of knockers, or Coblynau is that they're either deceased miners or Jewish ones forced to mine in the 11 and 12th century (MacKillop 2004). Whatever the origins are, these Coblynau are more like Rowling's goblins than the larger existing style of goblin that became popularised by Tolkien (based on earlier literature) and DnD (based on Tolkien).

Coblynau and knockers helped find unground veins of precious metals for miners, and since Jews were used as miners in the 11th and 12th century, it definitely isn't a coincidence that some of the descriptions of Coblynau are very... Suss.

The Cornish described the creature as a little person 2 ft 0 in (0.61 m) tall, with a disproportionately large head, long arms, wrinkled skin, and white whiskers.

Basically, Rowling's goblins. Knockers, in essence, are a subset, a subtype of goblins in folklore, more specific to Cornwall and Wales than the larger geography of Europe where 'goblin' tended to be more amoral, trickster like than the goblins of Rowling's universe.

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Now, I'm done, and I'll even put all the references here, below a cut for you anon. Since I can't expect you to find them either when you can just whine about "tumblr making shit up again" to excuse your lack of knowledge.

[As an aside, the fake goddess thing was, from the outset, clearly a false goddess, based on initial posts that Made That Clear. The fact that you think a fake goddess that is the result of group thought where They Started On The Premise Of It Being Fake From The Outset is compatible to "so crusades that murdered Jewish people in France around same time a folklore creature started off and likely was used as an identifier for Jews because the creature itself was actually a name for a devil not a species first and Jews were often called devils by Christian folk lol lol" really is a you problem. Seriously.]

Anyway. Your references. Enjoy them.

T. F. Hoad, 1993, English Etymology, Oxford University Press, p. 196b.

CNRTL, Etymology of Gobelin, Online French, translated below:

It 1195 (Ambroise, Holy War, 8710 ds T.-L.), att. isolated (cf. again the lat. medieval. goblinus "id. ", av. 1141, Orderic Vital ds Of Cange); start xvies. gobellin (J . of Auton, Brown., ms. B.N. fr. 5082, fo28 rods Gdf., s.v. nuitin). Probably go back up, via the lat. chrét. * gobalus "Home genius", at the gr. κ ο ́ β α λ ο ς "sprite, evil genius", v. J. Brüch ds Z. rom. Philol. t. 52, 1932, pp. 340-341.

Du Cange et al, 1678, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis ...(online French and Latin).

Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 1993, "Culture and Society in the First Europe", pp. 185ff.

Martin W. Lewis & Karen Wigen, 1997, The Myths of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, pp. 23–25, 27–28.

Norman Davies, 1996. Europe: A History, by Norman Davies. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-19-820171-7. Retrieved 23 August 2010.

Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopaedia, 2007. Europe. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 27 December 2007.

Walter Laqueur (2006): The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-530429-2. pp. 46–48.

Grosser, P.E. and E.G. Halperin. "Jewish Persecution – History of AntiSemitism – Lesser Known Highlights of Jewish International Relations In The Common Era". simpletoremember.com. SimpleToRemember.com – Judaism Online. Retrieved 6 February 2015.

Paul E. Grosser & Edwin G. Halperin, foreword by St. Robert John, preface by Franklin H. Littell. (1979). Anti-Semitism: the causes and effects of a prejudice. Secaucus, N.J, Citadel Press. ISBN 0806507039. Retrieved 6 February 2015.

Why the Jews? Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, accessed November 24, 2009.

Weinryb, Bernard Dov, 1973. The Jews of Poland. ISBN 978-0827600164. Retrieved 9 November 2013.

Woodworth, Cherie, 2010. "Where Did the East European Jews Come From?" (PDF). Yale University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2013.

Franklin, Anna (2002). "Goblin", The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies. London: Paper Tiger. ISBN 1-84340-240-8. p. 108.

James MacKillop, 2004, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford University Press.