Chapter 1

All inconsistencies of spelling and punctuation in the First Edition
have been retained by the Publishers. The portions of manuscript
reproduced on pages 38, 42, 56, 58, 70, 92 and 136 appeared originally
on the verso of the facing manuscript page.

/Title/

A Christmas Carol

In Prose

Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

By Charles Dickens

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The Illustrations by John Leech
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Chapman and Hall 186 Strand

MDCCCXLIII

/My own, and only, MS of the Book/

Charles Dickens

PREFACE

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of
an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves,
with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their
houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,

C. D.

December, 1843.

STAVE I.

MARLEY'S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the
undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's
name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his
sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even
Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was
an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and
solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to
relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died
before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
out after dark in a breezy spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for
instance--literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it

stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.
The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered
to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old
sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck
out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his
thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty
rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his
office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth
could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came
down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My
dear Scrooge, how are you? when will you come to see me?" No beggars
implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was
o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to
such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen's dogs appeared
to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners
into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though
they said, "no eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to
keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the

people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their
hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement-stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone
three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day:
and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices,
like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in
at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although
the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere
phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was
brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his
eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of
tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.
But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own
room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master
predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the
candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he
failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It
was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that
this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean
that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! what right have you to be
merry? what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be
dismal? what reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said,
"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew.

"What else can I be" returned the uncle, "when I live in such

a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!
What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour
richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em
through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about
with 'Merry Christmas,' on his lips, should be boiled with his own
pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He
should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own
way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you!
Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which
I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew: "Christmas
among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,
when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred
name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from
that--as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time:
the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men
and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and
to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other
journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of
gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it _has_ done me good, and
_will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately
sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
last frail spark for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from _you_" said Scrooge, "and you'll keep
your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful
speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go
into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why
give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never
had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the
trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the
last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He
stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the
clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
them cordially.

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my
clerk, with fifteen shillings a-week, and a wife and family, talking
about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other
people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now
stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and
papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen,
referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge,
or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He
died seven years ago, this very night."

"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving
partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the
ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and
handed the credentials back.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman,
taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should
make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common
necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts,
sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in
operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they
were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said
Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very
glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of
mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us
are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all
others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I
put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I
wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at
Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to
support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and
those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know
that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to
understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.
Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved
opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with
him.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about
with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in
carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a
church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge
out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the
hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations
afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up
there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of
the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had
lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men
and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes
before the blaze in rapture. The waterplug being left in solitude, its
overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The
brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the
lamp-heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed.
Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious
pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such
dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to
his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five
shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in
the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his
lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good
Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of
such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant
young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed
by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a
Christmas carol: but at the first sound of--

"God bless you merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer
fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial
frost.

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an
ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the
fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his
candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, Sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be
bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think _me_ ill-used, when I pay a
day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I
suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning!"

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.
The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long
ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted
no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran
home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at
blindman's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and
having read all the news-papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening
with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which
had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of
rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must
have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek
with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old
enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the
other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that
even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his
hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the
house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful
meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the
knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact,
that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy
about him as any man in the City of London, even including--which is a
bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne
in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his
last mention of his seven-years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge,
having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without
its undergoing any intermediate process of change: not a knocker, but

Marley's face.

Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects
in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster
in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge
as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its
ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or
hot-air; and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its
horror seemed to be, in spite of the face and beyond its control,
rather than a part of its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious
of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy,
would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He _did_ pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door;
and he _did_ look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected
to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into
the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the
screws and nuts that held the knocker on; so he said "Pooh, pooh!" and
closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,
and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have
a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be
frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the
hall, and up the stairs: slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old
flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean
to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it
broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door
towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width
for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.
Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the
entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
Scrooge's dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and
Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through
his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection

of the face to desire to do that.

Sitting room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody
under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate;
spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a
cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the
closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a
suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old
fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs,
and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in;
double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured
against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and
slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before the fire to take his
gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was
obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract
the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The
fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and
paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels; Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of
Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts; and yet
that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's
rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank
at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
old Marley's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in
the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell,
that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and
so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were
dragging

a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge
then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were
described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs;
then coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through
the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its
coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried "I know him!
Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pig-tail, usual waistcoat,
tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his
pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he
drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him
like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of
cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in
steel. His body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and
looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat
behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had
never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom
through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which
wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and
fought against his senses.

"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want
with me?"

"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I _was_."

"Who _were_ you then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're
particular--for a shade." He was going to say "_to_ a shade," but
substituted this, as more appropriate.

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

"I can."

"Do it then."

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so

_London · Chapman & Hall, 186 Strand._

[_This illustration is reproduced in full color on the front cover._]

transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and
felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on
the opposite side of the fire-place, as if he were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't," said Scrooge.

"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your
senses?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight
disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested
bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an
underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you,
whatever you are!"

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel,
in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried
to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping
down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in
his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something
very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was
clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its
hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot
vapour from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the
charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only
for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."

"Well!" returned Scrooge. "I have but to swallow this, and be for the
rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
creation.