The Princess and the Goblin

Torrential rains pour down and Irene is stuck inside. She is completely bored, despite having more toys than most people could imagine. When Irene’s nurse leaves the bedroom, Irene decides to satisfy her curiosity and explore an old secret passage she found in the wall some time before. She makes her way through the door and up a steep staircase that leads to “nothing but passages and doors everywhere!” (6). Soon lost, Irene becomes frightened and cries, but remains brave and tries to find her way out. She is unsuccessful, but she manages to find another staircase leading further upward. Despite her fear, she cannot resist seeing where it leads. An illustration shows Irene standing in the long corridor, with fear in her eyes.

Irene finds herself in a room with three doors and starts to hear a sound “like the hum of a very happy bee that had found a rich well of honey in some globular flower” (9). Curiosity once again overruling her fear, Irene presses her ear against each door to determine the source of the sound. When she does, she opens the door and finds a very old woman spinning thread inside. The woman’s hair is long and white, and her skin is smooth and youthful, but her eyes indicate her age and wisdom. The woman invites Irene inside, and Irene obeys.

The woman wipes Irene’s face of tears and reveals that her name too is Irene. Irene (the child) is shocked to hear that she is meeting her great-great-grandmother, and although Irene struggles to understand what that means, she does realize that the woman is a queen. Queen Irene explains that she lives in this tower but has never been seen by anyone else. She takes Irene to the roof and shows her the pigeons that provide the eggs that she eats, and Irene marvels at the beauty of the birds. Queen Irene sees Irene back down the stairs and waits until the nurse finds her before returning to her spinning wheel “with another strange smile on her sweet old face” (14). The narrator speaks to the reader, begging them to guess what Queen Irene is spinning.

The nurse admits she was afraid when she could not find Irene, but she refuses to say what she fears. When Irene starts telling the nurse about her encounter with Grandmother, the nurse believes that Irene is making up stories. The nurse begins lecturing Irene, incredulous that Irene expected her to believe the story. She tells Irene that lying is “not at all becoming in a princess” (18). Irene becomes upset and cries; at dinner, she eats very little. She does not complain about being called a liar, although it upsets her deeply. The nurse loves Irene and feels guilty for getting angry with her, and at bedtime, the nurse begins to cry when she sees how upset Irene remains. Irene agrees to give the nurse a hug and kiss but asks that she accompany her to see Grandmother. The nurse agrees to follow her anywhere.

Irene decides she must ask Grandmother if she can take Lootie, her nurse, up to meet her. She reasons that if Grandmother is living off pigeon eggs, she likely wants to remain unseen. At her first opportunity, Irene sets off up the staircase; however, she cannot seem to find her way up to Grandmother, becoming lost in the passages. Eventually, Irene finds the staircase back down and decides returning is better than remaining lost. She begins to wonder if she did in fact dream the meeting and wonders if she will ever see Grandmother again. Irene decides not to bring it up with Lootie again, realizing that she has little chance of proving it.

The rain finally clears the next afternoon: “[T]he clouds were rolling away in broken pieces, like great, overwoolly sheep, whose wool the sun had bleached till it was almost too white for the eyes to bear” (25). Irene is ecstatic to see the sun and asks Lootie to take her for a walk up the mountain. As they make their way, Irene enjoys the streams that have filled up with the rain. Lootie realizes the sun is going down and tells Irene it is time to go home, but Irene presses on. Suddenly, a large shadow darts overhead, and Lootie insists that they turn back. As Lootie starts running down the mountain, Irene chasing behind her, Irene starts noticing odd-looking people behind the rocks and trees, which only turn out to be illusions. Irene falls in her hurry and hears someone laughing, but Lootie tells her it is nothing. The servants are not allowed to tell Irene about the goblins.

When Lootie and Irene realize they are lost, they begin to hear a boy singing a rhyming song: “We’re the merry miner-boys, Make the goblins hold their noise” (28). Lootie is horrified to hear him singing about goblins, worried that he will draw them near, but the boy explains that goblins cannot stand singing because they themselves cannot sing. The boy’s name is Curdie, and although he is pale from working underground, he seems happy and his eyes sparkle. He introduces himself as the son of a miner named Peter and explains that the goblins stay away from him because he does not fear them. When he hears that Irene is the princess, he warns her and Lootie to get home as soon as possible. Curdie offers to help them find their way back, noting that they must not run.

On the way, Irene starts talking to Curdie, insisting that he call her Irene and nothing more. A dark creature seems to lurk on the path ahead of them. When it starts to move, Curdie sings again and then rushes at it, sending it up the mountain and away. When they reach home, nobody seems to have realized they were gone past sundown. Irene remembers she promised to give Curdie a kiss, but Lootie insists she come inside immediately. Curdie promises to return another time so that Irene can keep her promise. Lootie realizes she has to watch Irene extra carefully from now on, to protect her not only from the goblins, but from Curdie, whom she sees as a simple miner unworthy of Irene’s attention. An illustration shows Lootie angrily tugging Irene inside as Curdie stands innocently watching.

Curdie heads home in a cheerful mood, resolving not to mention the princess to protect Lootie from getting in trouble. In the middle of the night, he wakes to find several goblins outside his window, chittering. The moment he begins to sing, they vanish, and he concludes they must be annoyed with him for protecting Irene. The next morning, Curdie and his father set off for the mines. Through an opening in the hillside, the men and their sons enter. Miners go off in various directions, mining their own personal “gangs”—“the passages out of which the ore was dug” (38).

As they work, they can hear each other, either at a distance or close by, digging, tapping, and setting off explosions. Some miners stay overnight to earn extra money, and they often report hearing tapping for which there is no identifiable source, “for the miners’ night was the goblins’ day” (39). Only the miners who cannot remember verses to sing are afraid of the goblins; those like Curdie and his father stay overnight without fear. Curdie asks if he may stay overnight alone, citing a desire to earn the wages for a new coat for his mother; his father agrees, and Curdie remains in the mine after nightfall. He also wants to see if he can figure out why the goblins were at his window the night before.