Gnomes
/Those little red-hatted fellas that hang out in your garden? There’s enough for a whole Spirits episode on that? The answer might surprise you as we dig into the mythological (and alchemical, shoutout Paracelsus!) origins of just where they came from, and why they’re hanging out with your hydrangeas!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of grief, racism, drug use, drowning, immolation, abuse, sex, eugenics, animal attacks, and animal death.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And Amanda, recently, we were talking about our gardening superstitions, right?
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And it's finally spring. I'm out in the garden. I was doing some cleanup out in the garden the other day, and I love kind of, like, the post-winter cleanup of the garden.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Because, one, it's a lot of me telling Jake, "No, no, don't rake up those leaves. That's where all the bugs plant their eggs."
AMANDA: And then what does Jake say?
JULIA: Jake goes, "What kind of bugs?" I'm like, "Well, all kinds of bugs." And he said, "We should rake them up, then." I said, "No, you can't throw out the good bugs with the bad bugs. We need the pollinators." And he says, "Okay, I'll leave that corner of the yard unraked." And I said, "Fair enough."
AMANDA: That's compromise, baby.
JULIA: But one of the things he was also asking me, as we were starting to clean up the yard, was if there were any sort of decorations I wanted to put in the garden this year? Mostly because our local gardening store has a lot of, like, different, like, statues and, like, stone benches and stuff like that. So he was like, "You know, it could be nice to put something out there into the garden to make it feel, I don't know, homier." And it got me thinking a lot about all the different kinds of things that people put in their gardens, like, you know, the lawn flamingos, the ceramic bunnies, solar lights, and everything like that. And then a particular one that I think is of interest to us and relevant to us here on the podcast, which is the garden gnome.
AMANDA: How did that little guy get so known for being among people's hydrangeas, Julia?
JULIA: That's a great question, Amanda, because that's what I was thinking as well. I'm like, "What's the deal with gnomes? Where did they come from? Why are we putting them in our gardens? Did they always have those little red hats?"
AMANDA: I gotta know.
JULIA: I also had to know, Amanda. And as always, whenever we do an episode of Spirits that starts with me being like, "What's that all about?" The answer is much more complicated than you might think it is.
AMANDA: I love it, Julia. What a perfect subject for a podcast.
JULIA: The earliest records of what we now know to be a gnome, like our modern understanding of a gnome, probably the earliest representations that we're gonna see are from Greek and Roman influences. And in these stories, they are these, like, small cave-dwelling creatures that are associated with things like precious metals, gemstones, gold, silver, et cetera. All the fortunes that kind of come from the Earth, as well as good fortune.
AMANDA: I mean, that's good, and definitely makes sense in lots of mythologies we have. The sort of, like, little men that live by all the precious stuff and that has been twisted in many ways in modern culture, but definitely something that we see across many, many kinds of folklore.
JULIA: Yes. And in Greek, they were sometimes referred to as gnomos or earth-dweller, which makes sense if we're going to make them very much associated with being like underground and of the Eearth. It's a name that just totally is directly translated.
AMANDA: Geo to geography. We're in the geo center of things.
JULIA: Yes. And so we have plenty of examples of these sort of gnome-like creatures that existed in these older mythologies, but they're only identifiable to us in the English language as gnome because of a work of a man whose name you might recognize, but in my instance, like didn't know a ton about, which was a Swiss-German Renaissance philosopher by the name of Paracelsus.
AMANDA: Is this the guy we get Celsius from?
JULIA: I don't think so.
AMANDA: Oh, in that case, ringing no bells to me.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: Sounds like a likely subject for This Guy Sucked, Multitude's newest member show.
JULIA: You know, I don't know how much he sucked, but I do know he was important.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So Paracelsus, as we know him now, was born Theophrastus von Hohenheim. Now, he was, when we say Renaissance man, Amanda, what's the definition to you of a Renaissance man?
AMANDA: First of all, big hat with a feather.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: That— we gotta start there.
JULIA: Not inaccurate, actually.
AMANDA: I know that's not quite right, but anyway. Secondly, he's into all kinds of things. He is out there naming species of moss. He is probably trying to turn lead into gold. Maybe he's writing treatises about how, like, the liver works and also really into birds.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, not completely inaccurate, actually, fairly close. He was not only a physician, he was an alchemist. He was a lay person, theologian.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: He was a philosopher.
AMANDA: I forgot the theology, philosophy. That's a huge component where he's like, "And also this is how you get into heaven."
JULIA: Yes. Well, that's also really important, and we'll talk about this in a second. So what we need to know about Paracelsus is his father was a physician. He wanted to be a physician as well. He started studying to be a physician, but he found that he was very disappointed with the instruction that he was receiving when he went to school.
AMANDA: Is it, because in those days, being a physician was like balance the humors, let out the bile? We'll see.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah. The problem was also— his father was very knowledgeable, but his father was also very poor. They would travel from town to town, kind of—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —just taking care of people, so they weren't really living the high life.
AMANDA: I see.
JULIA: And the schools probably that Paracelsus was going to, were not the greatest schools one could probably attend.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: Not happy with the formal education that he is getting, he goes to his father to be like, "Hey, how did you learn what you are doing right now?" And his father taught him, "Hey, if you want to learn about biology, observe nature. See what's going on. Understand literally the birds and the bees in order to understand the birds and the bees."
AMANDA: Julia, I really hoped you were gonna say from the gnomes, and his dad was, like, a strict believer in, I don't know, some kind of knowledge passed on from the core of Earth itself. But observing nature is a very good second answer.
JULIA: Around, like, Paracelsus' young adulthood, they moved to a town in Italy that was famous for its minds and its, like, smelting of metal. And so this is where Paracelsus learned his, like, core knowledge of chemistry.
AMANDA: Cool. And for anyone playing along at home, I am picturing that one island in Spiritfarer, where it's like all— you, like, have the gliding and it's in, like, the zip lining, and it has all of those, like, gold nodes all over the place.
JULIA: Interesting. I like that. I like that. I didn't play Spiritfarer because it came out at a time where I had too much mourning in my life.
JULIA: Yes. And—
AMANDA: And I said, "Julia, I am banning you specifically from playing this game right now."
JULIA: You said, "Julia, you would love this game, but not right now."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And I said, "Fair enough." And I still haven't gotten around gotten around to it. So he's studying biology, he's studying chemistry, he's doing, like, real life observations of both of these things. And as he's studying both, as well as reading a bunch of books about, like Greco-Roman philosophy, he is taking his understanding and his knowledge from his father and also the bad education he got to think about what, at that point, was modern understanding of medicine. And he realizes there is this huge gap between science and philosophy, even though both of them talk about the, like, human body and the laws of nature.
AMANDA: For sure.
JULIA: So he decides he's going to focus on studying that gap between science and philosophy.
AMANDA: Oh, Julia, he would have been such a good airport bestselling author. Can you imagine if this man had the access to essentially self-publish like Malcolm Gladwell can in this day and age? His any whim could have become a sort of, like, name in culture that managers of huge corporations use to justify laying off thousands of people.
JULIA: Well, I don't like that last part, but Amanda, I will say, he does kind of end up doing that.
AMANDA: Revolutionary.
JULIA: He is out here doing it all. He is studying all different kinds of science and philosophy and theology and everything like that. But what he probably becomes most famous for is his study of alchemy. Because when you think about it, alchemy really was that kind of gap between the science and the philosophy, right?
AMANDA: Good instincts, good questions, very nothing in its conclusions.
JULIA: Yes. And I mean, like alchemy— some alchemists that we have studied in the past do end up sort of stumbling upon real science and real medicine in a way that you're like, "Okay, that's probably not what you were going for at the time, but you did discover something that is genuinely useful." Kind of, like, how there's certain medicines where they're like, "We put this medicine out to treat foot fungus, but it does actually increase your serotonin levels, so now we're gonna give it to depressed people."
AMANDA: Yeah. One of my first antidepressants, shout out, Wellbutrin, initially made for smoking cessation, but also, as it turns out, real good for anxiety and depression.
JULIA: There you go. See? So a lot of alchemists are like modern medicine, in that they stumbled upon a thing that they didn't intend to set out to do, right?
AMANDA: Because, in all seriousness, they're discovering elements, right? Like they are doing chemistry—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —you know, to whatever ends they were trying to. They did things like distillation, really helpful for making medicine. All kinds of stuff.
JULIA: Exactly. Which is why Paracelsus, in his study of alchemy, became known as one of the fathers of toxicology.
AMANDA: Whoa. That's a very cool title.
JULIA: It's extremely cool. Probably his most famous in relation to toxicology thing that he did was he literally invented laudanum.
AMANDA: Huge. We would not have any sort of, like, checked out mothers-in-law in Regency novels without it. And I mean—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —very important for anesthesia.
JULIA: Laudanum, or as he called at the time, tincture of opium. Basically, through his studies, he discovered that opium was more soluble in alcohol, and by doing that, it made it easier to take pain from people. It also stopped people from overdosing as much as they were when they were taking straight opium.
AMANDA: Fascinating and complex legacy, if there ever was one.
JULIA: Yes. But keep in mind, this was also a alchemist version of laudanum.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: This was not the laudanum that Regency novel mother-in-laws were taking, but rather, it was opium dissolved into alcohol, but then it also had stuff like crushed pearls and musk and amber, which sounds like a candle that I could get at Walgreens for $5.
AMANDA: Yeah, it really does. Like, when you try to shop for perfume online, and then you read the description, and it's like, "I believe you Sandalwood, but, like, I don't know what this means for me."
JULIA: I simply don't know what the smell of amber smells like.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah, I know.
JULIA: And I shouldn't, because it's basically a rock. But this was a start. This was a very, very important first step for actual medicine, and it came from alchemy, which is really interesting. And his work really helped to establish the early modern medical movement that started in the Renaissance and then went the way that it went later on.
AMANDA: So cool. And Julia, it's making me think, what if we did a crossover episode with Tiny Matters? Wouldn't that be fun?
JULIA: I think that would be really interesting.
AMANDA: Wouldn't that be cheeky? Wouldn't that be exciting?
JULIA: Hmm. Who can say?
AMANDA: Hmm, hmm.
JULIA: But Amanda, what does all this and Paracelsus have to do with gnomes?
AMANDA: I simply must know. I'm hearing that he is living in a town with lots of precious metals and mining, so I'm feeling like maybe some kind of local superstitions and beliefs, perhaps, lead him down into the mines.
JULIA: As I mentioned before, gnomes trace their origins back to Greece and Roman folklore. And we absolutely can also see creatures that might have been a through line to the modern day gnome, like the Germanic kobold or hobgoblin, something like that.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But the modern gnome first began to form from Paracelsus' alchemical theories and works.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: In his Philosophia Magna, specifically in the liber de nymphis, Paracelsus describes four beings that represent one of the four classic elements, so, earth, fire, water, air. The four nations live in harmony.
AMANDA: It's very exciting. Also, a great— how would you describe Earth, Wind and Fire? A, like, jam band or a rock—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah? Classic rock?
JULIA: That feels right.
AMANDA: Is this a situation where he comes up with sort of, like, symbols that people are like, "Saw that guy last week"?
JULIA: Sort of. Okay. So this all— this is also falling into the philosophy and theologian part of him as well, so—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —I'm just gonna give you a quote directly from Paracelsus, because I think this really describes how he is talking about how these are creatures from the past in mythology and folklore, but he, Paracelsus, has discovered what they truly mean and they truly represent, right?
AMANDA: Okay, great.
JULIA: Quote, "These are not good names, but I use them, nevertheless." LOL.
AMANDA: Incredible. Working title, a working title.
JULIA: "The names have been given to them by people who do not understand them. But since they designate the things and since they can be recognized by the names, I shall leave it at that. The name of the water people is also undina and of the air people, sylvestres, and of the mountain people, gnomi, and of the fire people, vulcani rather than salamandri. Whatever it may be and however the differentiation may be understood, let it stay."
AMANDA: Fascinating and a real kind of, like, "Don't shoot the messenger. I didn't come up with these names. The people did," sort of vibe.
JULIA: Yes, yes. And there is also a reason, because he takes preferences for some names over other names. So, for example, he likes vulcani rather than salamandri, but uses salamandri a lot in the rest of the designations.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: So we have these four different beings from Paracelsus here. We have the water spirit being the undine, the air being the sylph, the fire being salamander, and, of course, Earth being gnome. And we referred to these in the sort of modern day as elementals, but Paracelsus himself saw them more as like a halfway between a spirit and an animal, and referred to them collectively as the sagani.
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: Now, he believed that the sagani were invisible to most humans, but otherwise, were physical beings that required the same things to live as other living things, so like food, and sleep, and shelter, et cetera. So he goes on to say that they are capable of moving freely through their own elements. So, for example, a gnome, according to Paracelsus, could pass through rocks, stone walls, and soil as if they were a fish in water.
AMANDA: Oh, my God, really Artemis Fowl coded. Julia, do you remember this?
JULIA: I vaguely remember. You were an Artemis Fowl girlie. I think I was a little bit more in my Warrior Cats phase while you were doing that.
AMANDA: That's fine. As an Irish person, I had Irene [15:52] book, but yes, they had a gnome that essentially, like, processes and moves through dirt through their digestive system—
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: —as if it's a fish letting, like, water pass through it as it swims through water, so that's incredible.
JULIA: Maybe they were drawing from Paracelsus. Who knows?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So the interesting part, too, is Paracelsus says that they needed to be surrounded by their element in order to survive, much like if you remove a fish from water, it is not going to be able to keep on living.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: If they were removed from the presence of their element, they would sicken and eventually die. The same was said if they were exposed to an elemental force besides their own. Logically, that makes a lot of sense.
AMANDA: Totally. You don't want to be burning the air creature probably.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. So Paracelsus goes on to describe the different beings. So for example, he describes the undine as being the most human like in appearance, but not in nature.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: The sylphs, who he describes as being coarser and stronger than the undines were more like us, because they could move through air as humans do, but they also would, like, drown in water and burn in fire, or could be trapped in rocks. Paracelsus really kind of harps on his like, "Well, what makes, for example, a sylph different than a human, then, or a human different than a sylph?" And so Paracelsus is believed that the sagani, these like elementals, lacked a, and here's the Christianity part, immortal soul, the way that humans do.
AMANDA: Exactly. I mean, that's it, right? Like, ultimately, every religion is asking, what makes us different? Why are we here? What are we doing?" And differentiating us from another creature that looks or behaves similarly and even lives in a similar environment of like this, you know, terra firma, like above the earth, in air.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I understand why that's like a really urgent and soul-shaking question for him.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, of course, he's also like, "But could they have souls?" So Paracelsus postulates that if a sagani were to marry a human and have children together, not only would their children have souls, but the sagani would gain a soul as well.
AMANDA: It's that magic D, Julia. It's that curse-breaking D— or V, as it happens.
JULIA: Yeah, sometimes. It depends. He used the example of a, like, human man and an undine woman being the couple in this situation.
AMANDA: And people call Guillermo del Toro weird for making a highly fuckable fish man. Our question throughout all of folklore is always, can I have sex with it? And if not, why not?
JULIA: Exactly.? Why not? Why aren't we out here? So I think this is really interesting, because in my mind, they're almost like jinn, which we have talked about, like, in passing on the podcast, in the sense that they aren't like demons or devils or anything like that. They are particularly like creatures of God, but they have the capacity to be, quote-unquote, "saved," except jinn intrinsically have a soul, whereas sagani have to ,quote-unquote, "earn the soul."
AMANDA: Interesting. And again, theologically, I understand how this has sort of, like, textual basis. Like there were— human beings were creatures under Christian theology that, you know, existed pre-saving or pre-soul. And I get how these could also fit in as a sort of, like, proto or pre human.
JULIA: Yes. And Paracelsus takes it one step further, saying that the sagani's purpose on Earth is to make and guard the treasures of the Earth from man. And specifically, they were made by God to act as a warning that God could rid the world of man at any point and still have beings that could take care of the Earth.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Which sounds like a lot of sci-fi fantasy nowadays, doesn't it?
AMANDA: It sure does. Also kind of like the theology of the people who want to just start over again on Mars.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: It also reminds me— I was just flashing back briefly to my childhood, where at some point various people said to various of my siblings, "We can take you back, you know?" "No, you can't. No, you can't. You can't take us back to the store. No, you can't."
JULIA: You can't, no.
AMANDA: But the threat was helpful.
JULIA: Understandable, understandable. Sure, sure.
AMANDA: Maybe effective, not helpful.
JULIA: So we can sort of see where the inspiration for these spirits comes from, like where Paracelsus is drawing this from. His undine really resemble the water nymphs of Greek mythology, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: The sylphs are like the dryads and the satyrs, which you've talked a lot about here on the podcast. Pliny the Elder wrote about salamanders in his writing, not the actual, like, cute, little guys you could find at the river, but like the fire elemental salamander. And also many European folklores already connected salamanders with fire, along with a lot of the dragon lore that we saw all through Europe. Where, Amanda, was he drawing from when he was talking about gnomes?
AMANDA: I gotta know.
JULIA: Well, you'll find out, Amanda, as soon as we get back from our refill.
AMANDA: Ah, shit. I got ya.
[theme]
AMANDA: What's up y'all? It's Amanda, and welcome back to the refill. Thank you so much, Julia, for helping me out in the last couple weeks, while I have been busier than ever. And thank you so much to the new people who have joined our Patreon as paying members to help us keep the show going. Specifically, thank you to Em, Becca And, Abbie Powell, and White Snake Fairy 26. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, guys. I made a typo when I wrote out that list of names, and then when I look back at my list, it said Em, Abbie Powell, Becca and the White Snake. So I would just like to invite you both, Becca and White Snake Fairy 26 to, perhaps, collaborate on a new wave folk band if you wanted. I think that my happy accident should be your happy accident. So thank you to Becca and the White Snake, my absolute favorite, I don't know, Belle and Sebastian cover band. Thank you as well to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah). And our legends, absolute ledge. I did a studio rental the other day for a lovely woman from the West of England who said, "Legend," every time I got her anything, like I would get her water or tea, she's like, "Legend." She's like, "Amanda, my guest is running five minutes late." I said, "Not a problem." She goes, "Legend." So I know that that's just kind of like a word in Britain, but it made me feel great. So legend-level patrons, we love you, absolute ledge, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. As a reminder, we are doing monthly newsletters on the 15th of every month for all of our paying patrons, with all the recommendations, the games, music, gardening, books that Julia and I have been enjoying. I have a incredible reality TV show to recommend to you, and some excellent books that I have been reading out in the sunshine. So join us as a paying patron for that newsletter, ad-free episodes, director's commentaries, recipe cards, and so much more. That's patreon.com/spiritspodcast. You know, a way to participate in Spirits and help the show and a cool way to have your name read on the show that has nothing to do with money, is also to write in with your urban legends. Specifically, you can leave us your voicemails, if you want to ask us a question, tell us about a creepy dream, or recall to us a story that you grew up with or you heard or something that happened at work, we would love to hear it. If you're in the US, you can dial 617-420-2344, that number is in the episode description of every single podcast episode, by the way. Or if you're outside the US, just take a voice memo on your phone and email it to spiritspodcast@gmail.com. It can be as short as, like, you know, 10 or 20 seconds, if you're telling us or asking us a question, to even, like, three or four minutes. We will play it through, we'll pause, we'll comment. It's so much fun. We love hearing your voices, and I think you're gonna enjoy hearing your voice on the pod. So send us that voice memo, either 617-420-2344, that is the closest area code we could get to Salem, Mass, or email that voice memo to spiritspodcast@gmail.com. If you are loving Spirits, which I know you are, you're listening to the midroll, like you're true blue, you are also really going to enjoy This Guy Sucked. It is the newest member podcast here at Multitude, and it's a history podcast by and for haters. Join historian Dr. Claire Aubin and a new expert every week to pull back the scholarly curtain on some of the world's biggest bummers. No dead person is safe, and the show's guests prove that the best part of understanding the past is criticizing it. There are new episodes every Thursday on figures from Charlemagne to Carl Schmitt, and every episode gives you the ammo you need to next time one of these names comes up, be like, "Oh, that guy? The worst." And you'll have specific things that are also very fun to hear about and recount. I promise you're gonna love it. New episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. We are sponsored this week by Tempo. Now, I've been doing a lot of driving recently. I've had a lot of long days, and so when I get home and I just need to, like, eat something before I pass out, I am looking for something quick, even like making tuna salad is a few steps too long, and definitely a few minutes too long for me. And when you think about fast food, you probably think about, like, drive-through fried, you know, like something that, like, is ultimately frozen, and then they just, kind of, like, deep fry, it whatever. But if you're on a tight schedule and have to save time, you have options. 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[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And since Paracelsus' gnomes are spirits of the Earth, I wanted to create a cocktail that feels a bit more on the earthy side, right?
AMANDA: And does that mean having unnecessary gold leaf that I can't taste on the drink?
JULIA: No, because I'm not bougie like that.
AMANDA: Oh, fair.
JULIA: I'm not charging you $25 for this cocktail. So this cocktail, I am calling the Caves Beneath the Earth.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So it uses Sotol, which is similar to tequila and mezcal, but it has a little bit more of an earthy flavor. Like, I almost consider it like a— if whiskey and mezcal had a baby.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Now, I would recommend combining this with lime juice and then a herbal simple syrup of your choice. I'm always partial to rosemary. I think thyme would also be—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —a really good one for this. Maybe like Mexican oregano, if you want to stay in sort of that, like, Central America, sort of vibe. But I also recommend doing a black salt rim on that bad boy.
AMANDA: Yum.
JULIA: And then serving it up to your local earth spirit.
AMANDA: Thank you so much. I'm happy to share with you, gnomes.
JULIA: Yes. Oh. I don't know how the gnomes would feel about a— an alcoholic bevvy like this. I think, in my mind, they're much more, you know, rustic, "I'm gonna have an ale, and that's about it, sort of vibes," but—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. An ale, a mead, something like that.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So Amanda, with our drinks in hand, let's talk about where Paracelsus was pulling his inspiration for his gnomes from. So, much like his inspiration from the undine and the salamanders and the sylphs, his influence seems to have come from Greek mythology from a very specific description of a mythological group of creatures mentioned in the Iliad, as well as a lot of different myths, and that is the pygmies. Now, I understand that there are instances where this term is used in a derogatory sense, but we're using it here as the direct Greek term for a group of diminutive beings from mythology, and this group has nothing to do with the extremely outdated terminology used by Victorian colonizers to describe groups from the Congo Basin, for example.
AMANDA: Gotcha. Yeah.
JULIA: So the name translates from Greek to fist or specifically distance from elbow to knuckles.
AMANDA: Getting a eugenics vibe, but let's keep going.
JULIA: Yes. So in the Iliad, they are described as beings who are less than three spans in height, and a span is specifically the distance between the tip of the thumb and the little finger on a spread out hand.
AMANDA: Julia, of course, this is how all horse girls measure horses is in hands or sometimes spans, so this part, I am oriented to.
JULIA: Yes. So I— in my mind, that is about a foot and a half, if I had to guess.
AMANDA: It wildly varies and it's probably based on one king's hand size.
JULIA: Based on my hand size, that's about a foot and a half to two feet—
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: —let's say. In the Iliad, they are described as living in a remote mountainous region where every winter, they went to war with the cranes that would migrate into their lands. You'll see a lot of art of them in Greek pottery. Nearly every time on the pot, they are fighting a flock of herons or cranes.
AMANDA: I mean, I would also be pretty surprised to see that on a vase, and that makes sense to me as an image you would repeat again and again, because you're like, "Who are those guys again? Oh, the ones that have to punch the birds. That's right, that's right."
JULIA: Yeah, hold on. Let me pull up a thing for you to see what I mean. It's a— there's a penis out, it's not safe for work, but I do want to share it with you, Amanda, real quick.
AMANDA: You know, I have to say, the penis is very artistically rendered, very minimalist.
JULIA: It's very swirly—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —is how I would describe it.
AMANDA: A lot more detail on the bird's feathers, this is an image that won't ever leave me. Wow.
JULIA: Well, there you go, Amanda. So now, you can picture lots and lots of vases and other pottery that looked like that.
AMANDA: Shout out.
JULIA: The war between these two factions was said by Ovid to have begun when the Queen Gerana made a classic Greek mythology error. Do you wanna guess what she did?
AMANDA: Oh, said she's better than the god?
JULIA: Ha, she claims she was more beautiful than a goddess.
AMANDA: Come on. Come on.
JULIA: In this case, it was Hera, and we know how vindictive Hera can be. Not really any more than the other goddesses. There's just more stories of her being vindictive.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So we think she's a vindictive goddess, right?
AMANDA: You know, that's good historiography, Julia. You're telling us about the hows and whys of what we associate different adjectives with different people in folklore.
JULIA: Exactly. So Hera transformed Gerana into a crane for her hubris.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Pliny the Elder goes on to say that they would lead regular raids on the nests of the cranes that occupied the area. And of course, we have to have a direct quote from Pliny the Elder.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "It is reported that in springtime, their entire band mounted on the backs of rams and she goats, and armed with arrows, goes in a body down to the sea and eats the cranes' eggs and chicks, and that this outing occupies three months. And that, otherwise, they would not protect themselves against the flocks of cranes that would grow up, and that their houses are made of mud and feathers and eggshells."
AMANDA: I mean, you can't blame the birds for being pissed after that.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: But, Julia, what came first, the egg aside or the bird attacks?
JULIA: I have to assume it was the bird attacks.
AMANDA: I also have to imagine the bird attacks. Maybe the first bird was confused, you know? You know?
JULIA: Yeah, maybe the first bird was their queen, and they were very confused as—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —why this bird was trying to give them orders. And they said, "Don't tell us what to us what to do, bird." And then they attacked her.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Pliny's description differs from Aristotle, who did, like, claim that this was a historical group of people. However, he claimed that they lived underground, rather than living in these houses made of mud and feathers and eggshells.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: So much like he was drawing from the nymphs and the dryads for his undines and his sylphs, this is where Paracelsus was pulling from when he was describing his Earth spirit gnomes, right? And as more and more people began to pull on Paracelsus' studies, and in particular, like in the studying of Paracelsus in order to establish early medicine, a lot of his Renaissance alchemical theory started to inform modern medicine, but also his version of the gnome became more and more popularized outside of alchemical practice. So they became quite popular starting in the 18th century, becoming these characters not of alchemy, but rather of fairy tales and romantic fiction.
AMANDA: Huh.
JULIA: Now, admittedly, we do see a lot of liberties taken from the gnomes of these stories compared to Paracelsus' gnomes, but something they always retained was their size, as well as their association with the Earth and the underground.
AMANDA: That makes sense to me.
JULIA: Now, the term gnome was first probably introduced to many readers by a satirical heroic narrative by the poet Alexander Pope called "The Rape of the Lock." Not rape in the sexual assault sense, but rather from the Latin word rapere, meaning to snatch or carry off something.
AMANDA: Oh, that explains why I'm sometimes like, "Why are you using that word like that?"
JULIA: Yeah. Hmm, interesting. And, like, that checks out from reading the actual text and being like, "Okay, no one was sexually assaulted here."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Literally, the poem, again, it is a satire, tells of an incident in which a woman named Arabella has a lock of her hair stolen by a suitor.
AMANDA: Gotcha.
JULIA: And this incident, again, because it's satirical, leads to an ongoing feud between Arabella's family and the suitor's family.
AMANDA: It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
JULIA: Now, basically, Pope takes something as inane as a lock of hair being taken and he blows it up to this epic proportion, kind of comparing it to the feuding of the Greek gods who are represented in the story, not by any Greek gods that we know by name, but rather by Paracelsus' elementals.
AMANDA: Gotcha. Oh, man. You can really tell when something in pop culture was from, like, a fairly-moneyed British guy who, like, read a specific set of books and then it yielded this, yeah.
JULIA: Oh, Amanda, I love when your English major brain comes out, because yes, exactly. So, in this case, it's gnomes as Earth's spirits warring with the sylphs as air spirits battling futilely to exert influence over this lead character, Arabella. And of course, Amanda, I got a little poetry corner for you here.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Just to show you how Pope goes about describing these elemental spirits.
AMANDA: Let's go.
JULIA: "For when the fair in all their pride expire, to their first elements, their souls retire. The sprites of fiery term against inflame mount up and take a salamander's name. Soft yielding minds to water glide away and sip with nymphs, their elemental tea. The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome in search of mischief still on Earth to roam. The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, and sport and flutter in the fields of air.
AMANDA: I am kind of into this. I like the idea that we may, you know, return in some way to our dominant element when we pass away.
JULIA: Isn't that beautiful? Where do you think you would go, Amanda, based on Pope's descriptions of the elementals here?
AMANDA: You know, I'm a water sign so that that strikes— I don't know if I'm like a pliable mind necessarily, but I like to think I can be convinced and, you know, change my mind and all of that. I like to learn.
JULIA: I feel like I want to do the sylphs of the air.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But I am drawn a little bit more to the water element here. Like, I get to sip my elemental tea with the imps.
AMANDA: Hey. [37:27]
JULIA: Hell yeah, dawg. I'd love to do that. That sounds great.
AMANDA: Sounds very relaxing, yeah.
JULIA: It is because of Pope and the popularity of The Rape of the Lock that we get the exposure of the term and description of gnome to the general public. Now, Pope decided to include gnomes in the poem after reading a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis, which was also a satirical work. So it was kind of structured as a conversation between a student of esoterics describing the mysteries of the world to the author. And it was originally published anonymously, though it was later revealed to be the work of an abbot named Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon de Villars.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Now, modern scholars believe that de Villars was attempting to satirize Paracelsus' work, but it was taken at face value when it was published instead.
AMANDA: Ah, classic.
JULIA: So whether Pope also took it at face value, or if he saw it as the satire that it was, is not really clear to us now to this day. But what is clear is that it introduced him to the idea of the gnome. And in this piece, they go on to describe gnomes, as well as the other spirits from Paracelsus. But here's the portion on gnomes from Le Comte de Gabalis, "The Earth is filled almost to the center with Gnomes or Pharyes, a people of small stature, the guardians of treasures, of mines, and of precious stones. They are ingenious friends of men and easy to be commanded. They furnish the children of the sages with as much money as they have need of, and never ask any other reward of their services than the glory of being commanded." Now, this is interesting because I think it's Greek, so it should be the Gnomides.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "Or the wives of these Gnomes are little, but handsome, and their habit marvelously curious."
AMANDA: Interesting. I'm seeing so many qualities that I can now trace to damaging stereotypes and other just, like, high fantasy tropes that are pulling from this central description.
JULIA: Yes. And I think this is very interesting, because this, alongside Pope's poem, really did sort of popularize this image of the good natured gnome, right? It makes it very identifiable to the average person. It is not a deep description. You know, it's not a complex one that we're like, "Oh, but really, you know, if we dig further, are stories of gnomes, are they always like this? Are they always friends of men? Are they always easily commanded? Do they give—"
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "—without asking for anything in return?" However, like these works of fiction, because that's what they are, in turn, helped to include gnomes a lot more often in our folklore and fairy tales, especially as we're starting to get out of the 18th century into more Victorian era, where we're seeing the spread of fairy tales in, like, fairy tale books and everything like that.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And I think that is really interesting, because it is becoming extremely popularized at this point. What we're seeing in these works of fiction is also not exactly the garden gnome that you're picturing in your head, is it, Amanda?
AMANDA: No, it's not, because those guys are really focused on the mischief, in my recollection, or at least in pop culture. And they may exist— like you can maybe appease them, but I sort of picture someone, like, reaching, like an armistice, reaching a detente with the gnomes, where they're not there to, like, just helpfully bring forth the best of the Earth, and they're instead something you have to kind of, like, pacify or deal with.
JULIA: And I am really excited about that, because not only is the image of the gnome not exactly what we're picturing, and the personality of the gnome not exactly what we're picturing, and the reason behind that, Amanda, is there is a whole other influence outside of Paracelsus that we haven't even gotten to yet.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: Which is why, Amanda, next week, we're gonna be talking about the Nisse of Norway and some of its other Scandinavian cousins, and how that is also the basis for the gnomes that we know today.
AMANDA: Oh, I can't wait, a two-parter. Not every day on Spirits Podcast do you get a two-part episode.
JULIA: No, you do not. So, gang, I can't wait to talk to you more about this next week. I'm really, really excited. We haven't done a two-parter in a really long time, so—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —I— I'm going to leave this on a little bit of a cliffhanger for us. And remember next time that you go hunting for cranes—
AMANDA: Stay creepy.
JULIA: Stay cool. Later, satyrs.
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