the hobbit

From the text:

"...big goblins, great ugly-looking goblins..."

"The goblins were very rough, and pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices..."

"The goblins began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their flat feet on the stone..."

"For goblins eat horses and ponies and donkeys (and other much more dreadful things), and they are always hungry."

"Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones."

"Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far."