Gnome
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depicted as small humanoids who live underground. Gnome characteristics are reinterpreted to suit various storytellers and artists.
Paracelsus's gnome is recognized to have derived from the German miners' legend about Bergmännlein or dæmon metallicus, the "metallurgical or mineralogical demon", according to Georg Agricola, also called virunculus montanos by Agricola in a later work, and described by other names such as cobeli. Agricola recorded that according to the legends of that profession, these mining spirits acted as miming and laughing pranksters who sometimes threw pebbles at miners, but could also reward them by depositing a rich vein of silver ore.
Paracelsus also called his gnomes occasionally by these names in the German publications of his work. Paracelsus claimed gnomes measured 2 spans in height, whereas Agricola had them to be 3 tall.
The name of the element cobalt descends from kobelt, a 16th century German miners' term for unwanted ore, related as mischief perpetrated by the gnome Kobel. This Kobel is a synonym of Bergmännlein, technically not the same as kobold, but there is confusion or conflation between them.
The terms Bergmännlein/''Bergmännchen'' or are often used in German publications as the generic, overall term for the mine spirits told in "miners' legends".
Lawn ornaments crafted as gnomes were introduced during the 19th century, growing in popularity during the 20th century as garden gnomes.
Etymology
The word comes from Renaissance Latin gnomus, gnomos, which first appears in A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits by Paracelsus, published posthumously in Nysa in 1566.The term may be an original invention of Paracelsus, possibly deriving the term from Latin *gēnomos, itself representing a Greek *γηνόμος, approximated by "*gē-nomos", literally "earth-dweller". This is characterized by the Oxford English Dictionary as a case of "blunder", presumably referring to the omission of the ē to arrive at gnomus. However, this conjectural derivation is not substantiated by any known prior attestation in literature, and one commentator suggests the truth will never be known, short of a discovery of correspondence from the author.
Paracelsus
Paracelsus uses Gnomi as a synonym of Pygmæi and classifies them as earth elementals. He describes them as two spans tall. They are able to move through solid earth, as easily as humans move through air, and hence described as being like a "spirit". However the elementals eat, drink and talk, distinguishing them from spirits.According to Paracelsus's views, the so-called dwarf is merely monstra of the earth spirit gnome.
Note that Paracelsus also frequently resorts to circumlocutions like "mountain people" or "mountain manikins" to denote the gnomi in the German edition.
Precursors
There was a belief in early modern Germany about beings that lurked in the mines, known as Bergmännlein, equatable to what Paracelsus called "gnomes". Paracelsus's contemporary, Georgius Agricola, being a supervisor of mines, collected his well-versed knowledge of this mythical being in his monograph, De amantibus subterraneis. The title suggests the subject to be "subterranean animate beings". It was regarded as a treatise on the "Mountain spirit" uses these various mine-lore terminology in his German sermon, so that the noxious ore which Agricola called cadmia is clarified as that which German miners called cobelt, and a demon the Germans called kobel was held responsible for the mischief of its existence, according to the preacher. The kobel demon was also blamed for the "" or horse's poison.Agricola
Agricola, in his earlier Latin work Bermanus, sive, de re metallica, did delve into a limited discussion on the "metallurgical or mine demon" touching on the "Corona rosacea" mine disaster and the framework of Psellosian demonology. A Latin-German gloss in later editions identify the being he called daemon metallicus as code for German Bergmännlein.Much more details were presented in Agricola's later Latin work De animantibus subterraneis , known as a monograph on Berggeist in the Grimms' Deutsche Sagen. The equivalent German appellations of the demons/spirits were made available by the subsequent gloss published 1563. Agricola here refers to the "gnome/mine spirit" by a variety of other terms and phrases, such as virunuculus montanos or Greek/Latin /cobelus .
The pertinent gloss, also quoted by Jacob Grimm, states that the more ferocious of the "underground demons" were called in German Berg-Teufel or "mountain-devil", while the milder ones were called Bergmännlein, Kobel, Güttel. And the daemon metallicus "mine demon" aka Bergmännlein is somehow responsible for depositing rich veins of ore ".
A different entry in the gloss reveals that the "metallurgical demon" or Bergmännlein is somehow responsible for leaving a rich vein of ore, specifically a rich vein of silver.According to Agricola in De animantibus subterraneis, these mountain-cave demons were called by the same name, cobalos, in both Greek and German. The Latin form is appended in the margin. They earned such names due to their alleged habits of aping or mimicking humans. They have the penchant to laugh, and pretend to act like they are doing something meaningful, without actually accomplishing anything.
In classical Greek literature, kobalos refers to an "impudent rogue", or in more modern parlance, "joker" or "trickster". The chemist J. W. Mellor had suggested "mime".
These were otherwise called the virunculos montanos, literally translatable into German as Bergmännlein, or English as "mountain manikin" due to their small stature. They had the appearance of old age, and dressed like miners, in laced/filleted shirt and leather apron around the loins. Although they may pelt miners with gravel/pebbles they did no real harm, unless they were first provoked.
Agricola goes on to add there are similar to the beings which the Germans called Guteli, which are amicable demons that are rarely seen, since they have business at their home taking care of livestock. A Gütel or Güttel is elsewhere explained as not necessarily a mountain spirit, but more generic, and may haunt forests and fields. The Hoovers render these as "goblins".
Agricola finally adds these resemble the Trullis as they are called especially by the Swedes, said to shapeshift into the guise of human males and females, and sometimes made to serve men.
Rosenkranz mine, Annaberg
Purportedly a mountain demon incident caused 12 fatalities at a mine named Rosenkrans at Anneberg or rather Rosenkranz or Rosenkrone at Annaberg-Buchholz, in the Ore Mountains in Saxony. The demon took on the guise of the horse, and killed the twelve men with its breath, according to Agricola.Demonology
Agricola has a passage in Bermanus which is quoted by a modern scholar as relevant to the study of his contemporary Paracelsus. The passage contains the line basically repeated by Olaus, as "there exist in ore-bearing regions six kinds of demon more malicious than the rest".This is probably misstated or misleading, since Bermanus cites Psellus, who devised a classification of six demon classes, where clearly it is not all six, but just the fifth class of subterranean demons which are relevant to mining.
This demon class is also equatable to Agricola's Cobali and Getuli according to commentators.
It has also been noted that Agricola distinguished the "mountain devil", exemplified by Rübezahl with the small-statured Bergmännlein; although the popular notion was that Rübezahl was indeed lord of the gnomes, as told in folktales around the Giant Mountains region in Silesia, published by 18th century folktale collector Musäus.
Agricola explaining that the "mine demon" dæmon metallicus or Bergmenlin somehow deposited "rich mines" was mentioned above.
Cobalt ore
Agricola knew of certain noxious unwanted ores the German miners called kobelt, though he generally referred to it by the Greek term,. This cadmia/kobelt has conventionally been interpreted as referring to cobalt–zinc ore, but Agricola ascribes to it corrosive dangers to the miners' feet, so modern commentators have suggested a better candidate to be smaltite, a cobalt and nickel arsenide mixture which presents corrosive properties. This ore, which defied being smelted by the metallurgy of that time, may also have been cobaltite, composed of cobalt, arsenic, and sulfur.The presence of this nuisance ore kobelt was blamed on the similar-sounding kobel mine spirits, as Mathesius noted in his preaching. The inferred etymology of kobelt deriving from kobel, which Mathesius does not quite elocute, was explicitly articulated by Johannes Beckmann in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Erfindungen.
The kobel spirit that was possibly the namesake of the ore is characterized as a "gnome or a goblin" by science writer Philip Ball. However, 20th century dictionaries had suggested derivation from Kobold, for example, Webster's in 1911 which did not distinguish kobel from Kobold and lumped them together, and the OED which conjectured that the ore kobolt and the spirit kobolt/Kobold was the same word. An alternative etymology deriving kobolt ore from, a type of bucket mentioned by Agricola, has been suggested by Karl Müller-Fraureuth. Peter Wothers suggests that cobalt could derive from cobathia for noxious smoke.