Produced by Jo Churcher  HTML version by Al HainesTHE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLINbyGEORGE MACDONALDCONTENTS   1  Why the Princess Has a Story About Her   2  The Princess Loses Herself   3  The Princess andWe Shall See Who   4  What the Nurse Thought of It   5  The Princess Lets Well Alone   6  The Little Miner   7  The Mines   8  The Goblins   9  The Hall of the Goblin Palace  10  The Princesss KingPapa  11  The Old Ladys Bedroom  12  A Short Chapter About Curdie  13  The Cobs Creatures  14  That Night Week  15  Woven and then Spun  16  The Ring  17  Springtime  18  Curdies Clue  19  Goblin Counsels  20  Irenes Clue  21  The Escape  22  The Old Lady and Curdie  23  Curdie and His Mother  24  Irene Behaves Like a Princess  25  Curdie Comes to Grief  26  The GoblinMiners  27  The Goblins in the Kings House  28  Curdies Guide  29  Masonwork  30  The King and the Kiss  31  The Subterranean Waters  32  The Last ChapterCHAPTER 1Why the Princess Has a Story About HerThere was once a little princess whose father was king over a greatcountry full of mountains and valleys  His palace was built upon oneof the mountains and was very grand and beautiful  The princesswhose name was Irene was born there but she was sent soon after herbirth because her mother was not very strong to be brought up bycountry people in a large house half castle half farmhouse on theside of another mountain about halfway between its base and its peakThe princess was a sweet little creature and at the time my storybegins was about eight years old I think but she got older very fastHer face was fair and pretty with eyes like two bits of night skyeach with a star dissolved in the blue  Those eyes you would havethought must have known they came from there so often were they turnedup in that direction  The ceiling of her nursery was blue with starsin it as like the sky as they could make it But I doubt if ever shesaw the real sky with the stars in it for a reason which I had bettermention at onceThese mountains were full of hollow places underneath huge cavernsand winding ways some with water running through them and someshining with all colours of the rainbow when a light was taken inThere would not have been much known about them had there not beenmines there great deep pits with long galleries and passages runningoff from them which had been dug to get at the ore of which themountains were full  In the course of digging the miners came uponmany of these natural caverns  A few of them had faroff openings outon the side of a mountain or into a ravineNow in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beingscalled by some gnomes by some kobolds by some goblins  There was alegend current in the country that at one time they lived above groundand were very like other people  But for some reason or otherconcerning which there were different legendary theories the king hadlaid what they thought too severe taxes upon them or had requiredobservances of them they did not like or had begun to treat them withmore severity in some way or other and impose stricter laws and theconsequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of thecountry  According to the legend however instead of going to someother country they had all taken refuge in the subterranean cavernswhence they never came out but at night and then seldom showedthemselves in any numbers and never to many people at once  It wasonly in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountainsthat they were said to gather even at night in the open air  Those whohad caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered inthe course of generations and no wonder seeing they lived away fromthe sun in cold and wet and dark places  They were now notordinarily ugly but either absolutely hideous or ludicrouslygrotesque both in face and form  There was no invention they said ofthe most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil that couldsurpass the extravagance of their appearance  But I suspect those whosaid so had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblinsthemselvesof which more by and by  The goblins themselves were notso far removed from the human as such a description would imply  Andas they grew misshapen in body they had grown in knowledge andcleverness and now were able to do things no mortal could see thepossibility of  But as they grew in cunning they grew in mischiefand their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoythe people who lived in the openair storey above them  They hadenough of affection left for each other to preserve them from beingabsolutely cruel for crueltys sake to those that came in their waybut still they so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against thosewho occupied their former possessions and especially against thedescendants of the king who had caused their expulsion that theysought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd astheir inventors and although dwarfed and misshapen they had strengthequal to their cunning  In the process of time they had got a king anda government of their own whose chief business beyond their ownsimple affairs was to devise trouble for their neighbours  It willnow be pretty evident why the little princess had never seen the