Goblins

The Goblins are a multitude of spirits seen beneath the earth during Sir Huldbrand of Ringstetten’s account of his passage through the forest. Their encounter makes precious metals seem worthless to them: they tumble among silver and gold for amusement, while their sudden attention to Huldbrand changes an uncanny spectacle into a source of terror.

Identity and Underground World

Huldbrand describes the Goblins as a crowd visible inside the solid soil, which appears to him transparent, like green glass. Through it he sees the earth as a rounded world containing spirits who roll head over heels among silver and gold. They pelt one another with the metals in play and blow gold dust into one another’s eyes. The scene offers no orderly display of treasure: riches that carry value above ground become material for rough, heedless amusement below.

The Goblins’ play is abundant and physically chaotic. At the direction of Huldbrand’s hideous companion, they reach up heaps of gold. The companion shows this treasure to Huldbrand, then flings it back into an immeasurable abyss with a ringing sound. The Goblins thus appear not as guardians presenting wealth for human use, but as participants in a world where precious metal can be handled casually and discarded into seemingly bottomless space.

Encounter with Huldbrand

The encounter turns when Huldbrand’s companion shows the Goblins a piece of gold that Huldbrand had given him. The Goblins laugh at the offering and hiss at Huldbrand; their metal-stained fingers point toward him as their attention gathers into a more threatening movement. More and more of the spirits clamber upward, transforming the distant underground multitude into an advancing swarm.

Huldbrand responds with terror, as his horse had done before. He spurs the animal and gallops wildly back into the forest. The contrast is sharp: a piece of gold, apparently trivial among the Goblins’ heaps, serves as the means by which their mocking attention is directed at him, and their approach converts a glimpse of their subterranean pastime into immediate danger.

Narrative Significance

The Goblins are defined in this episode through a brief, startling reversal of scale and value. Huldbrand first sees them at a distance, inside the earth, where their playful handling of silver and gold makes human wealth appear insignificant. When they notice the gold he has offered and point at him, that spectacle becomes personal: the observer is no longer safely outside the scene but the focus of a crowd moving toward him.

Their appearance also extends the forest’s sequence of disorientation. Huldbrand cannot reach safety simply by observing the unfamiliar world around him; the Goblins’ rising swarm drives him to flee farther among the trees. The episode gives them no individual names or separate motives, presenting them instead as a collective presence whose laughter, hissing, and movement turn subterranean abundance into menace.