It was based on a 1936 book by Upton Sinclair entitled The Gnomobile. The children were played by Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice, familiar from their role as the Banks children in Mary Poppins. The children and their uncle stumble on a pair of gnomes in the forest. The plot revolves around their effort to protect the "little people" from a freak show owner and a group of land developers. The uncle, who is thrown into a mental institution because he is seeing the gnomes, adds to the excitement. Basically, a typical Disney movie.
According to the alchemist Paracelsus, gnomes are the most important of the elemental spirits of the classical element of earth; they move as easily through the earth as humans walk upon it, and the sun's rays turn them into stone.
Gnomes feature in the legends of many of central, northern and eastern European lands by other names: a kaukis is a Prussian gnome, and barbegazi are gnome-like creatures with big feet in the traditions of France and Switzerland.
Gnomes and Secrets of the Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet are illustrated fictional guidebooks to the mythical creatures, and resulted in the spin-off animated series David the Gnome.
The GNOME team has finally released the first rough cut of version 2.0 of its ideologically-correct desktop environment, a year later than originally promised.
The GNOME Project's great gift to the world has been to spur development of the older, more established rival KDE and more importantly, to prompt Trolltech into making the Qt libraries that underpin KDE free software.
A visiting Martian would surely conclude that the GNOME Project has served its purpose, and that for the community to continue bifurcated development is simply handing victory to The Beast.
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