The story of Luerk is a very sad one. In fact, it is so sad . . so unutterably pitiable and unenduringly that it is never told. Indeed the last time it was told was several hundred and fifty goblin years ago, when it was told to a small goblin named Hattersley,* who immediately went into a melancholic decline from which he never recovered. After the mall goblin's demise from this surfeit of grief, the story of Luerk was banned altogether from the Tale-Tellers' Circuit, and the last goblin bard who know it died long ago. Hence it is (perhaps fortunately) impossible to reconstruct the unhappy history. Only amongst the descendants of Luerk do snippets of the original tale survive to bear witness to its apotheosis of lachrymosity. There are hits of a fatal laundry bill (which, some say, remains unpaid to this day), suggestions of rust in the armour and heard, and occasionally you will hear dark mutterings about a beautiful visitor from the ungoblin world named Brassica Oleracea Botrytis, with whom the youthful Luerk fell head over heels in love, only to return home one day to learn that his mother had made her into cauliflower cheese.
      The significance of the small chiming apparatus, apparent in all representations of Luerk, is uncertain. Some believe it may have been a way of communicating with the laundry company to check on items that had gone astray.



* Hattersley: This is, of course, an odd name for a goblin, but it is believed to have derived from his mother, who found it embroidered on a name tag affixed to the towelling diapers of a changeling brought back from the ungoblin world in the time long since remembered.

Distantly related to the karbob family (see the Tale of Quiver, page 12) these tubers grow only behind the ears and around the necks of the much maligned Tallow Goblins (figs. h, b, and c). The Tallow Goblins are much maligned primarily because they are disgusting, shifty, aggressive little freaks who would cut their own granny open, stuff her,and use her as a sofa as soon as look at her. In fact, a sofa made out of their granny is considered an essential piece of furniture for all Tallow Goblin households.
      The Tallow Goblins grow the bakarbobs as offensive weapons. Harvested when they get to the size of the Tallow Goblin's own head, they are gutted (in much the same way as the grannies), the contents eaten by the Tallow Goblin (I told you they were disgusting),and the skin of the tuber sewn up to form a handbag. All the Tallow Goblins' non-earthly possessions (including the granny-sofa) are crushed up into a ball and placed in the bakarbob handbag, which is then swung with considerable force at anything or anyone that comes within spitting distance - and Tallow Goblins can spit up to distances of over half a mile!