Welcome to the Wicked,
Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour!! A few of my author friends
from Broad Universe and I adore
Halloween, so we're trading blog posts every other day for this last week of
October.
I'm thrilled my first
post is from Vonnie Winslow Crist,
a woman after my own heart when it comes to faery tales and folklore. I just
love her post here!
Happy Halloween!!
Ogerhunches and other Goblins by Vonnie Winslow Crist
Goblins are dark Faeryfolk often associated with Halloween.
They appear in fantasy literature and film from J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit
and Lord of the Rings to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter to scary
nursery rhymes like Little Orphan Annie by James Whitcomb Riley. And
there are so many terrifying varieties of goblins that a Red-cap, Bogy,
Padfoot, Barguest, Tankerabogus, Grindee, or Ogerhunch could be hiding under
your stairs this very minute!
Not all goblins are as fearsome as Red-caps who wear hats
died crimson in the blood of their victims. Nor as frightening as a Bogy who is
known to follow people around calling out, “I want my bones.” Nor as unnerving
as a Padfoot who walks behind an unsuspecting person, then runs up to his side
and roars. Nor as scary as a Barguest with its horns, teeth, claws, and fiery
eyes. Nor as dreadful as a Tankerabogus who comes and carries naughty children
away to its pit-hole. Some goblins are actually more terrifying!
When I wanted to add goblins to my Young Adult fantasy
adventure novel, The Enchanted Skean, I had to decide what my goblins
would be called and what they'd look like. Plus, I wanted to give them
characteristics which would make them repulsive and fascinating at the same
time.
The first type of goblin I created are Grindees. They're
smallish nocturnal goblins that travel in swarms of 20
When it came to creating the second type of goblin for The
Enchanted Skean, I decided to find an archaic word for a frightening
creature. One of the fabulous words I found in Jeffery Kacirk's The Word
Museum was Ogerhunch. According to Kacirk an Ogerhunch is
“Any frightful or loathsome creature, especially a bat.” Well, I'm a fan of
bats, so I decided to make my Ogerhunches goblins that looked like forest
debris and stumps. A horde of Hunches will sneak up unnoticed, knock their
victims to the ground with their branch-like limbs, then suck their juices out
with their rootlets. Luckily for the protagonist in my novel, Ogerhunches
aren't especially smart and they're afraid of fire.
In the sequel to The Enchanted Skean, Grindee and
Ogerhunches are sure to appear. The trick will be to add an even more devious
goblin to the mix.
So this Halloween when your doorbell rings and you open your
door to trick-or-treaters, keep your eyes peeled for goblins. It's easy to
separate them from the neighborhood kids – their ugly faces aren't masks and
they don't come off with make-up remover. And remember “you better mind your
parents and your teachers fond and dear, and cherish them that loves ya, and
dry the orphans tears and help the poor and needy ones that cluster all about,
or the goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!”
About the guest writer: Vonnie Winslow Crist is author of a
YA fantasy novel, The Enchanted Skean, 2 speculative story collections, The
Greener Forest and Owl Light, and other books. A firm believer that
the world around us is filled with mystery, miracles, and magic, Vonnie
celebrates the power of myth in her writing.
Read an excerpt of The Enchanted Skean featuring Grindee
goblins: http://vonniewinslowcrist.com/books/the_enchanted_skean_excerpt
Learn more about Vonnie and her writing: http://vonniewinslowcrist.com
and http://vonniewinslowcrist.wordpress.com
Become
her fan: http://facebook.com/WriterVonnieWinslowCrist
and http://goodreads.com/vonnie_winslow_crist
Follow
her: http://twitter.com/VonnieWCrist
Purchase Vonnie's books: http://tinyurl.com/Vonnie-Winslow-Crist-Amazon and http://tinyurl.com/Vonnie-Winslow-Crist-UK-Amazon
The Wicked,
Weird and Whimsical Words Halloween Blog Tour runs every other day October
23-October 31. Join us all five days for
Halloween fun! Be sure to say hello on
any post to be entered in a giveaway at the end of the tour!
Posts
3 comments:
Thanks for hosting me, Trisha. For your readers' information, the quote at the end of the post comes from the "Little Orphan Annie" poem. The full version is available on-line, and is quite fun to read by candle-light on Halloween. Just watch out for the shadows!
Hi, Vonnie, your quotation from Little Orphan Annie immediately recalled for me a big, old book of stories, poems and ballads that my father used to read aloud to us from-- that poem was one of them. I remember how my dad would hunch his shoulders and lower his voice as he read the last line. Thanks for the memory!
You're welcome, Mary. My favorite "Orphan Annie" memory is of an annual Halloween poetry reading I used to be involved with. We read our poems in an old mansion (most certainly haunted), and at the end of the evening, we'd pass out "Little Orphan Annie" and read it out-loud together before blowing out the candles, turning off the lights, and heading home in the dark to our homes. :-)
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