Nice to see this -- and by all means feel free to mention my 'Fremlins + Grimms' version. I unfortunately can't recall just where I got it, but it must have been one of the three books I used as sources, i.e. either Funk and Wagnell's 'Dictionary of Folklore and Myth', or Gillian Edwards' 'Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck' (1974), or P. Beale's 'Concise Dictionary of Slang' (1989).

Jacqueline


--- On Sun, 5/10/08, kaligrafr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: kaligrafr <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Info About Gremlins?
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Sunday, 5 October, 2008, 12:25 AM
> Aloha,
> 
> Since the list members have been helpful about my
> wonderings about 
> gremlins,
> I figured I'd share a draft version of my blog post.
> 
> Musing Looking Puzzled About It! Rose,
> 
> Pitch
> 
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> Gremlins--20th Century Spirits Of Technology & Origins
> Of Terms
> 
> It's clear that the term "Gremlin" came into
> use during the early 20th 
> century,
> even though earlier lore about the broad category of
> fairies includes beings
> with particular affinities for technology, making, and
> handicrafts. And 
> it looks
> like the term arose somewhere in the community of British
> military pilots
> and/or those with ties to that community. The term seems
> first to have 
> appeared
> in print in an April 1929 number of "Aeroplane"
> published in Malta.
> 
> At first, gremlins concentrated their activities on
> aircraft, breaking 
> components,
> interfering with good operations of vital systems, altering
> the 
> equilibrium of
> aircraft in flight, and beglamouring or distracting the
> awareness of air 
> crew.
> Later, gremlins extended their activities into a host of
> different 
> technologies,
> so that we may talk about gremlins afflicting trains,
> bicycles, cars, 
> ships,
> computers, and other technologies.
> 
> Later, during WWII, the term and the notion of
> "gremlins" was disseminated
> widely through popular culture mass media. Roald Dahl,
> having heard of 
> "gremlins"
> during his early R.A.F. war service, wrote a children's
> story, "The 
> Gremlins." Dahl
> tells of gremlins appearing first during the Battle of
> Britain, but 
> clearly some pilots
> knew of gremlins before then,
> 
> The full text of Dahl's story with the accompanying
> Disney Studios 
> artwork is available
> online at Roald Dahl Fans.com:
> 
> http://www.roalddahlfans.com/books/gremtext.php
> 
> In 2006, Dark Horse Books reprinted the book.
> 
> http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/10-665/The-Gremlins-HC
> 
> That story led to cartoon art from the Walt Disney studio,
> including a 
> variety of unit insignia designs. For example, the
> Minnesota Civil Air 
> Patrol had a Disney deigned patch with a
> gremlin as their mascot. So did the Women Airforce Service
> Pilots, whose 
> patch featured the
> female gremlin mascot,"fifinella."
> 
> http://www.incountry.us/cappatches/MN/mnwg.html
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Airforce_Service_Pilots
> 
> In addition, Warner Bros studio produced well-known
> animated cartoons 
> featuring gremlins.
> Both Falling Hare (1943) and Russian Rhapsody (1944) were
> produced by 
> Bob Clampett.
> I probably first learned of gremlins when I saw these
> cartoons on TV.
> 
> http://www.toonopedia.com/gremlins.htm
> 
> Plus, the large and active military organizations of WWII
> undoubtedly 
> developed or
> elaborated lots of organization/office folklore all on
> their own. Look 
> at the
> efflorescence of aircraft nose art during this period. And
> this Royal 
> Air Force
> Journal article "The Gremlin Question" by Hubert
> Griffith provides 
> plenty of
> information, including a poem filled with details.
> 
> http://www.angelfire.com/id/100sqn/gremlins.html
> 
> About the possible origins of the term, The Online
> Etymological 
> Dictionary offers:
> 
> <<gremlin
> "small imaginary creature blamed for mechanical
> failures," oral use in 
> R.A.F.
> aviators' slang from Malta, Middle East and India said
> to date to 1923. 
> First
> printed use perhaps in poem in journal
> "Aeroplane" April 10, 1929; 
> certainly
> in use by 1941, and popularized in World War II and picked
> up by Americans
> (e.g. "New York Times" Magazine April 11, 1943).
> Possibly from a dial. 
> survival
> of O.E. gremman "to anger, vex" + -lin of goblin;
> or from Ir. gruaimin 
> "bad-tempered
> little fellow." Surfer slang for "young surfer,
> beach trouble-maker" is 
> from 1961.>>
> --Online Etymology Dictionary
> 
> Lycos iq offers:
> 
> <<Although today's word first emerged during
> World War II, evidence 
> suggests a
> predecessor was in circulation among the RAF a bit earlier.
> In the 1920s 
> it was
> used to refer to anyone saddled with a menial task but that
> sense never 
> quite
> caught on. Charles Graves wrote in 'The Thin Blue
> Line' (1941) that the 
> word
> referred to goblins that clambered out of Fremlin beer
> bottles, a 
> popular beer
> among RAF pilots in India and the Middle East before World
> War II. Get it?
> Goblin + Fremlin = gremlin. No one has proposed a more
> convincing or
> authoritative explanation.>>
> 
> --at Lycosiq beta
> 
> From:
> http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/wotd.pl?date=2005-12-0
> 
> Yes, this Lyco iq origin is persuasive, not conclusive.
> There is a rare 
> English surname,
> "Fremlin." They were brewers before and during
> WWII. According to "The 
> Directory
> of UK Real Ale Breweries," Fremlins Ltd was located in
> Maidstone, Kent.
> 
> http://www.quaffale.org.uk/php/brewery/739
> 
> This page from the Royal Engineers 37 Armoured  Squadron
> web site 
> provides some
> photos of the Fremlins Brewery building, beer labels, and
> coasters. 
> Fremlins featured
> an elephant called "Noddy" in its graphics.
> 
> http://www2.army.mod.uk/royalengineers/org/35regt/37sqn/traditions.htm
> 
> Coining a new term by combining part of one that rhymes
> with the 
> corresponding
> part of the other and maintaining the second word part is
> typical, a 
> portmanteau word.
> "Frem" shifts to "Grem," keeping the
> "lin."
> 
> Interestingly, "gremlin" inspired another
> portmanteau word which has 
> itself become
> recognized in popular culture--"Femlin."
> 
> <<The Femlin is a character used on the Party Jokes
> page of Playboy 
> magazine.>>
> 
> <<Femlins were created by LeRoy Neiman in 1955 when
> publisher/editor 
> Hugh Hefner
> decided the Party Jokes page needed a visual element. The
> name is a 
> portmanteau of
> "female" and "gremlin." They are
> portrayed as mischievous black and 
> white female
> sprites, apparently ten to twelve inches tall, wearing only
> opera 
> gloves, stockings and
> heels. They are usually drawn in two or three panel
> vignettes, 
> interacting with various
> life-sized items such as shoes, jewelry, neckties, and so
> forth.>>
> 
> <<Femlins have appeared on the Party Jokes page in
> every issue since 
> their creation,
> and were featured on the magazine's cover numerous
> times, either as 
> drawn by Neiman
> or in photographed tableaus which utilized sculpted clay
> models.>>
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femlin
> 
> So what have I got here?
> 
> Gremlins were first recognized by name early in the 20th
> Century by 
> British airmen
> as unusual beings who did things to hinder aircraft
> operations and 
> flight. The term
> may have come from an Old English dialect survival or an
> Irish word. Or 
> the term
> may have been coined as a portmanteau word tying together
> the name of a 
> popular
> brewery and a diminutive. (For no particular reason beyond
> a taste for 
> good beers,
> I favor this origin story.)
> 
> The functions that gremlins perform, however, involving
> handicrafts, 
> technology, and
> trick-playing reach back further into old lore. Elves,
> pixies, sprites, 
> dwarves, goblins,
> imps, and other mythological beings took an interest in
> human 
> technologies and
> makings, sometimes helping, sometimes not. So while
> gremlins fiddling 
> with aircraft
> strikes us as a new activity, maybe its more our human new
> activity that 
> called forth
> the gremlins and gave us that term. And a little later, a
> popcult term 
> for a sexy magazine
> mascot.
> 
> Maybe gremlins are beings we earlier called other names.
> 
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^