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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fect, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

When I was a kid, my aunt gave me a number of volumes from the Time, Life, Enchanted World Book series,

which was originally published between the years 1984 and 1987.

I loved these books growing up, and in recent years I've been steadily accumulating the volumes that I missed out on,

because I didn't have a complete collection when I was a kid. Over Christmas, my family gave me the

1985 volume, Dwarves. And it, of course, contains some excellent retellings of Norse mythology.

There's some tales of mining spirits, which we have, of course, discussed on the show before.

And like all volumes of the Enchanted World, dwarves contains excellent artwork, including

a number of dwarf illustrations by the legendary Wayne Anderson.

This is the guy who illustrated the 1979 book, Flight of Dragons, which was made into an animated film that we've discussed on Weird House Cinema.

There's a section in the book titled A Sampling of Dwarf Types, and this is where we see multiple Wayne Anderson illustrations. And one

illustration in particular depicts a slightly moustachioed but otherwise clean-shaven dwarf dressed

in red cardinal robes and a wide-brimmed guerrillo hat. He holds a staff and stands beside an

open treasure chest.

This is the Municello, or little monk of Naples, Italy.

As the art indicates, he was said to guard hidden treasure,

and would part with some of it only to reclaim his splendid hat,

should someone be lucky or tricky enough to steal it from him.

He could also be a bit of a trickster himself, stealing a person's clothes or even pinching them,

...