Don't Eat the Fruit at the Goblin Market!
Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1862) and the dangers of forbidden fruit.
Lizzie and Laura lie by a stream as the afternoon succumbs to a fairy-twilight. They wait in rapt silence for a siren song of the Otherworld, and soon, the call hovers above the water, above the wind weaving its way through the reeds. “Come buy our orchard fruits, / Come buy, come buy…”1
Laura warns her sister to ignore the goblin merchants, whose succulent offerings include every fruit one could possibly imagine, all ripe together in summer weather, climate and season be damned. Yet Laura ignores her own advice and hazards a glance at the goblins. They are, in the great tradition of Britain’s “small gods,” entities of ambiguous species, not quite human, not quite divine—some appear cat-like, and others bearing the features of rats or wombats.2
As long-time readers have no doubt discerned, I am a bit obsessed with fairy folklore. (Crossroads patrons can find an entire series on the subject here.) The goblin emerged in folklore of …