Note 1487 — COBALT, ZAFFER, SMALT.

Mathesius, in his tenth Sermon, p. 501, where he speaks of the cadmia fossilis, says, “Ye miners call it kobolt; the Germans call the black devil, and the old devil’s whores and hags, old and black kobel, which by their witchcraft do injury to people and to their cattle.”... Whether the devil, therefore, and his hags gave this name to cobalt, or cobalt gave its name to witches, it is a poisonous and noxious metal. Agricola, De Animantibus Subterraneis, says, at the end, “Dæmones, quos Germanorum alii, aut etiam Græci, vocant cobalos, quod hominum sunt imitatores.” Bochart, in his Canaan, i. 18, p. 484, gives a Hebrew derivation of κόβαλος. It appears to be the same as covalus and gobelinus, the latter of which was used by Ordericus Vitalis in the eleventh century as the name of a spirit or phantom. See Menage, Diction. Etymol. i. 681.