“Once there was a Goblin living in a hole.” So begins a little song in a story that J. R. R. Tolkien read as a child. It quite obviously resonated in his mind because several decades later Tolkien wrote about another diminutive hole-dwelling creature in the famous first line of his first novel: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
The story is The Princess and the Goblin* by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872, and is largely concerned with conflicts between diminutive Miners and Goblins in underground tunnels, which strongly foreshadowed subterranean skirmishes between Tolkien’s Hobbits and Goblins.
HOBBITS and GOBLINS appear to have occupied the same hole.
HOBBITS and GOBLINS appear to have been preoccupied with feet.
In Tolkien’s story oversized Hobbit feet are important. In MacDonald’s story oversized Goblin feet are important~but for different reasons. Tolkien’s Hobbit feet are seen as a strong and positive characteristic. MacDonald’s Goblins’ feet are their only weakness, and the Miners defeat the Goblins by stamping on their feet and singing magic spells. In Tolkien’s story Goblins could be repelled by certain spells, but their feet were iron shod. It was the Hobbits who went barefoot. However, in MacDonald’s story, we have the rhyme: “Once there was a goblin living in a hole:/busy he was cobblin, a shoe without a sole.” This rhyme is a kind of riddle~and one worthy of a Hobbit, at that.
RIDDLE: Why does the Goblin make a shoe without a sole?
ANSWER: Because the Goblin is a creature without a soul!
Tolkien’s Goblins are protected by iron-shod shoes, but they share MacDonald’s Goblins’ soulless condition; while Tolkien’s barefoot Hobbits share MacDonald’s Goblins’ soleless condition.**
HOBBIT + GOBLIN 
HOBGOBLIN
Hobgoblin~one of the thirteen magic words from our Hocus-Pocus Dictionary~was critical to the evolution of the Hobbit as a species, and to the development of The Hobbit as a novel. Hobbit is a diminutive form of the root word Hob. Hobgoblin is a composite word:
HOB~a benevolent spirit
GOBLIN~an evil spirit
The resulting Hobgoblin is usually a mischievous creature: either a rather warped good spirit, or a somewhat redeemed evil spirit. Either way, a Hobgoblin is an ambivalent creature, frequently at odds with human justice.
More importantly, Hobgoblin is a statement of opposites, and this was the spark that ignited the dramatic tension in Professor Tolkien’s novels.
In Hobgoblin, we have a word that embodies the struggle between the forces of good and evil. In Tolkien’s novels, with Hobbit and Goblin we have two diminutive, hole-dwelling races that embody the struggle between the forces of good and evil. Hobgoblin is the magic word that imaginatively links Hobbit (a diminutive of Hob) with Goblin, but there was at least one other link that makes one realize that~creatively~Hobbit and Goblin emerged from the same hole.
GOLLUM AS A HOBGOBLIN
Smeagol Gollum was a Hobgoblin, wherein Goblin overwhelmed the Hobbit.
IF BILBO BAGGINS IS THE ORIGINAL HOBBIT, THEN SMEAGOL GOLLUM IS THE ANTI-HOBBIT.
In the beginning, Gollum was given the name Smeagol. He was a Hobbit and his name largely defined his nature, as it meant “burrowing, worming in.” He was possessed by a restless, inquiring nature. He was always searching, and digging among the roots of things; burrowing, but also twisting and turning, this way and that.
ENGLISH~Smial*** burrow.
OLD ENGLISH~Smygel Smeagol burrowing, worming in
HOBBITISH burrow Rhovenian trahan Trahald burrowing, worming in
Smeagol lived east of the Misty Mountains in the ancient ancestral river valley homeland of the Stoorish Hobbits. There Smeagol often fished and explored with his cousin Deagol. It was this cousin, Deagol, who first discovered the Dark Lord’s Ring on the river bottom. Immediately Smeagol was seized by avarice. He murdered Deagol and stole the One Ring.
ENGLISH~Dial**** secret
OLD ENGLISH~dygel Deagol secret, hiding away
HOBBITISH~Nah secret Rhovenian nahan Nahald secret, hiding away
GOLLUM’S SECRET
Deagol’s name literally meant “secret.” This was doubly appropriate as the cursed Smeagol always insisted on his ownership of the Ring. His darkest secret was that he had acquired the Ring only through murder and theft. Guilt and fear that someone might discover his secret and take the Ring from him so terrified Smeagol that he hid himself away, “burrowing and worming in” beneath the roots of the Misty Mountains.
SMEAGOL AS GOLLUM
The evil power of the Ring lengthened Smeagol’s miserable life for centuries, yet it warped him beyond recognition. Thereafter he was called Gollum because of the nasty guttural sounds he made when he spoke. Gollum became a murderous ghoul and cannibal who shunned light and found grim solace in dark caverns and dank pools.
GOLLUM AS HOBGOBLIN
Smeagol Gollum was a Hobgoblin that became almost purely a Goblin or, to use Tolkien’s term, Orc. Indeed, Tolkien’s drafts tell us that for some time after writing The Hobbit the author was not sure whether Gollum was some form of Orc or some form of Hobbit.
GOLLUM AS ORNACEA
Tolkin decided on Hobbit, but in many ways Gollum was Orkish, with specific reference to the evil demons known in Anglo-Saxon texts (especially Beowulf), as the Ornacea, meaning “walking corpse.” Truly Gollum was one of the living dead or a “walking corpse” animated by a sorcerous power of the Ring.
GOLLUM THE GOLEM
In this undead state Gollum also resembled the Gollum, according to legend a massive and vengeful “Frankenstein monster,” who was made of clay and animated by a Jewish sorcerer’s spell to destroy the enemies of the Jews of Prague, but who eventually turned into a hateful destroyer of all life.
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* Curiously, MacDonald uses the terms Goblin, Hob, and even Cob interchangeably. (Cob from the German kobold, Goblin from the Latin gobelinus~the source of the English goblin~and Hob from the English hobgoblin.)
** This foot obsession was a long-standing one. Curiously enough, the first poem known to have been published by Tolkien as a teenage student in 1915 at Oxford was entitled “Goblin Feet.” Furthermore, it would be difficult to reject MacDonald’s influence, for late in life Tolkien wrote (in a letter) that his Goblins were in the MacDonald tradition: “except for the soft feet, which I never did believe in.”
*** Smial is pronounced Smile;
**** Dial also rhymes with Smile.
