Gnomes, the Beings of Earth

Gnomes are the beings of earth, whom Paracelsus calls pygmaei and gnomi, describing them as moving through earth and rock as we move through air, guarding the metals and the treasures of the mountains, and appearing to miners. The word gnome is, like sylph, apparently his coinage and has no clear earlier source; the usual suggestion is a Greek formation meaning earth-dweller, though this is disputed. He was drawing on real mining folklore of central Europe, in which the Bergmannlein or Kobold of the mines is a well-attested figure, and the metal cobalt takes its name from it, having been blamed on the kobold for poisoning ore and sickening the miners. From Paracelsus the gnome passed into the occult tradition as the elemental of earth, and, by an entirely separate and much later route through Romantic fairy tale and German garden ornament, into the ordinary modern sense of a small bearded figure.