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The kobold (occasionally cobold) is a sprite stemming from Germanic mythology and surviving into modern times in German folklore. Although usually invisible, a kobold can materialize in the form of an animal, fire, a human being, and a candle. The most common depictions of kobolds show them as humanlike figures the size of small children. Kobolds who live in human homes wear the clothing of peasants; those who live in mines are hunched and ugly; and kobolds who live on ships smoke pipes and wear sailor clothing. Legends tell of three major types of kobolds. Most commonly, the creatures are house spirits of ambivalent nature; while they sometimes perform domestic chores, they play malicious tricks if insulted or neglected. Famous kobolds of this type include King Goldemar, Heinzelmann, Hödekin. In some regions, kobolds are known by local names, such as the ''Galgenmännlein'' of southern Germany and the ''Heinzelmännchen'' of Cologne. Another type of kobold haunts underground places, such as mines. A third kind of kobold, the ''Klabautermann'', lives aboard ships and helps sailors. Kobold beliefs are evidence of the survival of pagan customs after the Christianisation of Germany. Belief in kobolds dates to at least the 13th century, when German peasants carved kobold effigies for their homes. Such pagan practices may have derived from beliefs in the mischievous ''kobalos'' of ancient Greece, the household ''lares'' and ''penates'' of ancient Rome, or native German beliefs in a similar room spirit called ''kofewalt'' (whose name is a possible rootword of the modern ''kobold''). Kobold beliefs mirror legends of similar creatures in other regions of Europe, and scholars have argued that the names of creatures such as goblins and ''kabouters'' derive from the same roots as ''kobold''. This may indicate a common origin for these creatures, or it may represent cultural borrowings and influences of European peoples upon one another. Similarly, subterranean kobolds may share their origins with creatures such as gnomes and dwarves and the aquatic Klabautermann with similar water spirits. The name of the element cobalt comes from the creature's name, because medieval miners blamed the sprite for the poisonous and troublesome nature of the typical arsenical ores of this metal (cobaltite and smaltite) which polluted other mined elements. ==Origins and etymology== The kobold's origins are obscure. Sources equate the domestic kobold with creatures such as the English boggart, hobgoblin and pixy, the Scottish brownie, and the Scandinavian nisse or tomte;〔Baring-Gould x.〕〔Bunce 58.〕〔Keightley 239.〕〔Maclaren 223.〕〔Snowe 99.〕 while they align the subterranean variety with the Norse dwarf and the Cornish knocker.〔Grimm 501.〕〔Rose 182–3.〕 Irish historian Thomas Keightley has argued that the German kobold and the Scandinavian nis predate the Irish fairy and the Scottish brownie and influenced the beliefs in those entities, but American folklorist Richard Mercer Dorson has discounted this argument as reflecting Keightley's bias toward Gotho-Germanic ideas over Celtic ones.〔Dorson 54.〕 Kobold beliefs represent the survival of pagan customs into the Christian and modern eras and offer hints of how pagan Europeans worshipped in the privacy of their homes.〔Dowden 229–30.〕 Religion historian Otto Schrader has suggested that kobold beliefs derive from the pagan tradition of worshipping household deities thought to reside in the hearth fire.〔Schrader 24.〕 Alternatively, Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse have said that the earliest kobolds were thought to be tree spirits.〔Arrowsmith and Moorse 135.〕 According to 13th-century German poet Conrad of Würzburg, medieval Germans carved kobolds from boxwood and wax and put them "up in the room for fun".〔Grimm 502.〕 Mandrake root was another material used.〔Arrowsmith and Moorse 136.〕 People believed that the wild kobold remained in the material used to carve the figure.〔 These kobold effigies were 30 to 60 cm (one to two feet) high and had colourful clothing and large mouths. One example, known as the ''monoloke'', was made from white wax and wore a blue shirt and black velvet vest.〔 The 17th century expression ''to laugh like a kobold'' may refer to these dolls with their mouths wide open, and it may mean "to laugh loud and heartily".〔 These kobold effigies were stored in glass and wooden containers.〔 German mythologist Jacob Grimm has traced the custom to Roman times and has argued that religious authorities tolerated it even after the Germans had been Christianised.〔 Several competing etymologies for ''kobold'' have been suggested. In 1908, Otto Schrader traced the word to ''kuba-walda'', meaning "the one who rules the house".〔 According to this theory, the root of the word is ''chubisi'', the Old High German word for house, building, or hut, and the word akin to the root of the English 'cove'. The suffix ''-old'' means "to rule".〔Lurker 103.〕〔"Cove", Merriam-Webster.〕 Classicist Ken Dowden has identified the ''kofewalt'', a spirit with powers over a single room, as the antecedent to the term ''kobold'' and to the creature itself.〔 He has drawn parallels between the kobold and the Roman ''lares'' and ''penates'' and the Anglo-Saxon ''cofgodas'', "room-gods".〔Dowden 229.〕 Linguist Paul Wexler has proposed yet another etymology, tracing ''kobold'' to the roots ''koben'' ("pigsty") and ''hold'' ("stall spirit").〔Wexler 289.〕 Grimm has provided one of the earlier and more commonly accepted etymologies for ''kobold'',〔 tracing the word's origin through the Latin ''cobalus'' to the Greek ''koba'los'', meaning "rogue". The change to the word-final ''-olt'' is a feature of the German language used for monsters and supernatural beings. Variants of ''kobold'' appear as early as the 13th century.〔Grimm 500.〕 The words ''goblin'' and ''gobelin'', rendered in Medieval Latin as ''gobelinus'',〔"(Goblins )," ''Encyclopedia of Arda''〕〔Barnhart, Robert K.; Steinmetz, Sol. 'The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology'. H.W. Wilson Co., 1988. Original from the University of Michigan ISBN 0-8242-0745-9, ISBN 978-0-8242-0745-8 Length 1284 pages. Page 440〕 may in fact derive from the word ''kobold'' or from ''kofewalt''.〔〔Knapp 62.〕 Related terms occur in Dutch, such as ''kabout'', ''kabot'', and ''kaboutermanneken''.〔 Citing this evidence, British antiquarian Charles Hardwick has argued that the house kobold and similar creatures, such as the Scottish bogie, French goblin, and English Puck, all descend from the Greek ''kobaloi'', creatures "whose sole delite consists in perplexing the human race, and evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid."〔Roby, John (1829). ''Traditions of Lancashire''. Quoted in Hardwick 139. The sources spell the word ''khobalus''.〕 In keeping with Grimm's definition, the ''kobaloi'' were spirits invoked by rogues.〔Liddell and Scott "koba_l-os , ho".〕 Similarly, British writer Archibald Maclaren has suggested that kobold beliefs descend from the ancient Roman custom of worshipping ''lares'', household gods, and ''penates'', gods of the house and its supplies.〔Maclaren xiii.〕 Another class of kobold lives in underground places. Folklorists have proposed that the mine kobold derives from the beliefs of the ancient Germanic people. Scottish historical novelist Walter Scott has suggested that the Proto-Norse based the kobolds on the short-statured Finns, Lapps, and Latvians who fled their invasions and sought shelter in northern European caves and mountains. There they put their skills at smithing to work and, in the beliefs of the proto-Norse, came to be seen as supernatural beings. These beliefs spread, becoming the kobold, the Germanic gnome, the French goblin and the Scottish bogle.〔Scott 110–1.〕 In contrast, Humorists William Edmonstoune Aytoun and Theodore Martin (writing as "Bon Gaultier") have proposed that the Norse themselves were the models for the mine kobold and similar creatures, such as dwarfs, goblins, and trolls; Norse miners and smiths "were small in their physical proportions, and usually had their stithies near the mouths of the mines among the hills." This gave rise to myths about small, subterranean creatures, and the stories spread across Europe "as extensively as the military migrations from the same places did".〔Gaultier 367.〕 German writer Heinrich Smidt believed that the sea kobolds, or ''Klabautermann'', entered German folklore via German sailors who had learned about them in England. However, historians David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen dispute this, claiming no evidence of such a belief in Britain. An alternate view connects the Klabautermann myths with the story of Saint Phocas of Sinope. As that story spread from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Scholar Reinhard Buss instead sees the Klabautermann as an amalgamation of early and pre-Christian beliefs mixed with new creatures.〔Kirby and Hiinkkanen 48–9.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kobold」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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