Kobold
A kobold is a general or generic name for a household spirit in German folklore.
It can make noises invisibly or perform kitchen chores or stable work, helpfully. It can be a prankster as well. It may accept a bribe or offering of milk for its efforts or good behaviour. When mistreated, its reprisal can be utterly cruel.
A hütchen, meaning "little hat," is one subtype of kobold; this and other kobold sprites are known for their pointy red caps, such as the niss or puk which are attested in Northern Germany, alongside drak, a dragon-type name, as the sprite is sometimes said to appear as a shaft of fire with what looks like a head. There is also the combined form Nis Puk.
A house sprite Hinzelmann is a shape-shifter assuming many forms, such as a feather or animals. The name supposedly refers to it appearing in cat-form, Hinz being an archetypical cat name. The similarly named Heinzelmännchen of Cologne is distinguished from Hinzelmann.
The Schrat is cross-categorized as a wood sprite and a house sprite, and some regional examples correspond to kobold, e.g., Upper Franconia in northern Bavaria. The kobold is sometimes conflated with the mine demon kobel or Bergmännlein/''Bergmännchen, which Paracelsus equated with the earth elemental gnome. It is generally noted that there can be no clear demarcation made between a kobold and nature spirits.
The Klabautermann'' aboard ships are sometimes classed as a kobold.
Overview
A kobold is known by various names. As a household spirit, it may perform chores such as tidying the kitchen, but it can be prankish, and when mistreated, it can resort to retribution, sometimes of the utmost cruelty. It is often said that a household must put out sweet milk as offering to keep it on good behaviour.The legend of the house sprite's retribution is quite old. The tale of the hütchen is set in the historical background after c. 1130 and attested in a work c. 1500. This sprite that haunted the castle of the Bishop of Hildesheim retaliated against a kitchen boy who splashed filthy water on it by leaving the lad's dismembered body cooking in a pot. Similarly, according to an anecdote recorded by historian Thomas Kantzow, in 1327, the resident Chimmeken of Mecklenburg Castle allegedly chopped up a kitchen boy into pieces after he took and drank the milk offered to the sprite.
The story of the "multi-formed" Hinzelmann features a typical house sprite tidying the kitchen and repaying insolence. Though normally invisible, it is a shapeshifter as its name suggests. When the lord of Hudemühlen Castle fled to Hanover, the sprite transformed into a feather to follow the horse carriage. It also appears as a marten and serpent after attempts at expelling it.
A kobold by the similar name Heintzlein was recorded by Martin Luther. Although a group of house sprite names are considered to derive from diminutive pet name of "Heinrich", the name Hinzelmann goes deeper, and alludes to the spirit appearing in the guise of a cat, the name Hinz being an archetypical name for cats. Also Hinzelmann and Heinzelmänchen of Cologne are considered different house sprites altogether with the latter categorized as one of "literary" nature. The house sprite names Chim, Chimken, Chimmeken, etc. are diminutive informal names of Joachim.
The true form of a kobold is often said to be that of a small child, sometimes only confirmed by the touch of the hand, but sometimes a female servant eager to see it is shown a dead body of a child. The folklore was current in some regions, e.g. Vogtland that the kobold was the soul of a child who died unbaptized. The Grimms also seconded the notion of "kobold" appearing as a child wearing a pretty jacket, but Jacob Grimm stated contrarily that kobolds are red-haired and red-bearded, without examples. Later commentators noted that the house sprite Petermännchen sports a long, white beard. The Klabautermann is red-haired and white-bearded according to a published source.
The kobold often wears red pointy hats, a widely disseminated mark of European household spirits under other names such as the Norwegian nisse; the North or Northeastern German kobolds named Niss or Puk are prone to wearing such caps. The combined form Nis Puk is also known. In the north the house sprite may be known by the dragon-like name drak, said to appear in a form like a fire shaft.
Sometimes household sprites manifest as noisemakers. It may first rattle, then speak invisibly, and then do chores gradually making its presence and personality more clear. In some regions, the kobold is held to be the soul of a prematurely killed child.
They may be hard to eradicate, but it is often said that a gift of an article of clothing will cause them to leave.
The klopfer is a "noisemaker" or poltergeist type of kobold name while the poppele and butz are classed as names referring to a doll or figurine.
The name kobold itself might be classed in this "doll" type group as the earliest instances of use of the word kobold in 13th century Middle High German refer jokingly to figurines made of wood or wax, and the word assumptively also meant "household spirit" in MHG and certainly something of a "household deity" in the post-medieval period.
The etymology of kobold that Grimm supported derived the word from Latin cobalus, but this was also Georg Agricola's Latin/Greek cypher for kobel syn. denoting mine spirits, i.e. gnome. This Greek etymology has been superseded by the Germanic one explaining the word as the compound kob/kof 'house, chamber' + walt 'power, authority'.
The gütel has a variant heugütel, a hayloft or stable kobold, which tampers with horses.
Nomenclature and origins
The "kobold" is defined as the well-known household spirit, descended from household gods and hearth deities, according to Grimms' dictionary.However, Middle High German "kóbolt, kobólt" is defined as "wooden or waxen figures of a nixie-ish house spirit", used in jest.
Kobold as generic term
The term "kobold" was being used as general or generic term for "house spirit" known by other names even before Grimm, e.g., Erasmus Francisci who discusses the hütchen tale under the section on "Kobold". The book Hintzelmann was an expanded reworking by an anonymous author based on the older-dated diaries of Pastor Feldmann which also used "kobold" and "poltergeist" in commentary, but this cannot be considered an independent source since the book cites Erasmus Francisci elsewhere. Both these were primary sources for the kobold tales in Grimms' Deutsche Sagen, No. 74, 75.Praetorius discussed the household spirit under names such as Hausmann, kobold, gütgen, and Latin equivalents.
Steier glossing kobold as "Spiritus familiaris" perhaps indicates kobold being considered a generic term.
Glossed sources
It is a relatively late vocabularius where kobelte is glossed as the Roman house and hearth deities "Lares" and Penates, as in Trochus, or "kobold" with "Spiritus familiaris" as in Steier.While the term "kobold" is attested in Middle High German glossaries, they may not corroborate a "house spirit" meaning. The terms kobult together with bancstichil, alp, more to gloss procubus in Diefenbach's source may suggest "kobold" being regarded more like an alp and mare which are dream demons.
But indications are that these Germanic household deities were current in the older periods, attested by Anglo-Saxon cofgodu and Old Frankish and for house or hearth deities also glossed as penates.
;Middle High German location spirit stetewalden
There is an attestation to a kobold-like name for a house or location spirit, given as stetewalden by Frater Rudolfus of the 13th century, meaning "ruler of the site".
Ur-origins
also observed that "cult of the hearth-fire" developed into "tutelary house deities, localized in the home", and the German kobold and the Greek agathós daímōn both fit this evolutionary path.Etymology
The kobalt etymology as consisting of kob "chamber" + walt "ruler, power, authority", with the meaning of "household spirit" has been advanced by various authors, as early as who postulated a form *kobwalt, quoted in Grimms' dictionary. Other writers such as Müller-Fraureuth also weighed in on the question of its etymology.Other linguists such as Otto Schrader suggested ancestral *kuba-walda "the one who rules the house". Dowden offers the hypothetical precursor *kofewalt.
The kob/kub/kuf- root is possibly related to Old Norse/Icelandic: kofe "chamber", or Old High German: chubisi "house". and the English word "cove" in the sense of 'shelter'.
This is now accepted as the standard etymology. Even though the Grimm brothers were aware of it, Jacob Grimm seemingly endorsed a different etymology, though this eventually got displaced.
Kobold as doll
There are no attested uses of the word "kobold" prior to the 13th century. Grimm opines that earlier uses may have existed but remain undiscovered or lost.The earliest known uses of the word kobold in 13th century Middle High German refer jokingly to figurines made of wood or wax. The exemplum in Konrad von Würzburg's poem refers to a man as worthless as a kobold-doll made from boxwood.
This use does not directly support the notion of the kobold being regarded as a spirit or deity. The scenario conjectured by Grimm was that home sprites used to be carved from wood or wax and set up in the house as objects of earnest veneration, but as the age progressed, they degraded into humorous or entertaining pieces of décor.
;Stringed puppet
The kobolt and Tatrmann were also boxwood puppets manipulated by wires, which performed in puppet theater in the medieval period, as evident from example usage. The traveling juggler of yore used to make a kobold doll appear out of their coats and make faces with it to entertain the crowd.
Thomas Keightley comments that legends and folklore about kobolds can be explained as "ventriloquism and the contrivances of servants and others".
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".
;Dumb doll insult
There are other medieval literary examples using kobold or tatrmann as a metaphor for mute or dumb human beings.
Note that some of the kobold synonyms are specifically classified as Kretinnamen, under the slander for stupidity category in the HdA, as aforementioned.