



Produced by Jo Churcher.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN


by

GEORGE MACDONALD




CONTENTS


   1.  Why the Princess Has a Story About Her
   2.  The Princess Loses Herself
   3.  The Princess and--We Shall See Who
   4.  What the Nurse Thought of It
   5.  The Princess Lets Well Alone
   6.  The Little Miner
   7.  The Mines
   8.  The Goblins
   9.  The Hall of the Goblin Palace
  10.  The Princess's King-Papa
  11.  The Old Lady's Bedroom
  12.  A Short Chapter About Curdie
  13.  The Cobs' Creatures
  14.  That Night Week
  15.  Woven and then Spun
  16.  The Ring
  17.  Springtime
  18.  Curdie's Clue
  19.  Goblin Counsels
  20.  Irene's Clue
  21.  The Escape
  22.  The Old Lady and Curdie
  23.  Curdie and His Mother
  24.  Irene Behaves Like a Princess
  25.  Curdie Comes to Grief
  26.  The Goblin-Miners
  27.  The Goblins in the King's House
  28.  Curdie's Guide
  29.  Masonwork
  30.  The King and the Kiss
  31.  The Subterranean Waters
  32.  The Last Chapter




CHAPTER 1

Why the Princess Has a Story About Her

There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great
country full of mountains and valleys.  His palace was built upon one
of the mountains, and was very grand and beautiful.  The princess,
whose name was Irene, was born there, but she was sent soon after her
birth, because her mother was not very strong, to be brought up by
country people in a large house, half castle, half farmhouse, on the
side of another mountain, about half-way between its base and its peak.

The princess was a sweet little creature, and at the time my story
begins was about eight years old, I think, but she got older very fast.
Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky,
each with a star dissolved in the blue.  Those eyes you would have
thought must have known they came from there, so often were they turned
up in that direction.  The ceiling of her nursery was blue, with stars
in it, as like the sky as they could make it. But I doubt if ever she
saw the real sky with the stars in it, for a reason which I had better
mention at once.

These mountains were full of hollow places underneath; huge caverns,
and winding ways, some with water running through them, and some
shining with all colours of the rainbow when a light was taken in.
There would not have been much known about them, had there not been
mines there, great deep pits, with long galleries and passages running
off from them, which had been dug to get at the ore of which the
mountains were full.  In the course of digging, the miners came upon
many of these natural caverns.  A few of them had far-off openings out
on the side of a mountain, or into a ravine.

Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings,
called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins.  There was a
legend current in the country that at one time they lived above ground,
and were very like other people.  But for some reason or other,
concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had
laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or had required
observances of them they did not like, or had begun to treat them with
more severity, in some way or other, and impose stricter laws; and the
consequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of the
country.  According to the legend, however, instead of going to some
other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns,
whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed
themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once.  It was
only in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountains
that they were said to gather even at night in the open air.  Those who
had caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered in
the course of generations; and no wonder, seeing they lived away from
the sun, in cold and wet and dark places.  They were now, not
ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously
grotesque both in face and form.  There was no invention, they said, of
the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could
surpass the extravagance of their appearance.  But I suspect those who
said so had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblins
themselves--of which more by and by.  The goblins themselves were not
so far removed from the human as such a description would imply.  And
as they grew misshapen in body they had grown in knowledge and
cleverness, and now were able to do things no mortal could see the
possibility of.  But as they grew in cunning, they grew in mischief,
and their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoy
the people who lived in the open-air storey above them.  They had
enough of affection left for each other to preserve them from being
absolutely cruel for cruelty's sake to those that came in their way;
but still they so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against those
who occupied their former possessions and especially against the
descendants of the king who had caused their expulsion, that they
sought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd as
their inventors; and although dwarfed and misshapen, they had strength
equal to their cunning.  In the process of time they had got a king and
a government of their own, whose chief business, beyond their own
simple affairs, was to devise trouble for their neighbours.  It will
now be pretty evident why the little princess had never seen the sky at
night.  They were much too afraid of the goblins to let her out of the
house then, even in company with ever so many attendants; and they had
good reason, as we shall see by and by.



CHAPTER 2