In the omnibus At the Back of the North Wind/The Princess and the Goblin/The Princess and Curdie, published by Octopus, 1979, 166 p (for The Princess and the Goblin.)

As a fairy tale (its first three words are “There was once”) this is not my usual fare. I only read it as it was in the Herald’s “100” best Scottish Fiction Books. The title seems a little askew as there was not one goblin in the story but many, who live under a mountain near to the castle where the Princess (who has the very unprincessly name of Irene) lives. She is to be kept away from the forest and hill at night in case she encounters the goblins but her nurse, Lootie, mistakes the time one day and the pair would have been at their mercy but for the intervention of a miner’s son, Curdie. A lot of the tale is in fact Curdie’s as he later ventures into the mines and discovers what the goblins are up to, but several sequences involve the princess’s meetings with a strange old woman claiming to be her great-great grandmother (though on the second meeting she has become young) spinning away in the upper floors of the castle, invisible threads which, Theseus-like, aid the princess and Curdie in the plot’s working-out.

To twenty-first century eyes the demonisation of the goblins stands out. I suppose they are some sort of sexual metaphor – the princess has to be protected from nastiness – and the King is presented as far too noble. Still; it is a fairy tale. A certain degree of simplicity is to be expected.

The king spends most of the time absent, on kingly duties, and I note there is no mother, no queen, to be seen. A perennial trope of the children’s tale is such a separation from parents.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing end quote, rhymster (rhymester,) horid (horrid,) “The cobs dropped persecuting me and look dazed” (looked,) “they came to the conclusion it had been slain in the mines, and had crept out there to die” (slain implies death; so how could it then have crept out to die?) balnkets (blankets.)