Goblin Market includes only a few characters: the goblin men and Laura and Lizzie, late-adolescent sisters. The poem also mentions Jeanie, who died after eating goblin fruit, and Laura's and Lizzie's husbands and children in later life.

Laura and Lizzie see the goblin men "hobbling down the glen" each morning and evening crying, "Come buy, come buy." The goblins themselves are thoroughly repulsive, but their words are "sugar-baited." The goblins tempt young maidens to try their evil fruit "in tones as smooth as honey." Further, the goblin men describe their wares in sensuous detail: "Plump unpecked cherries,/ . . . Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,/ . . . Wild free-born cranberries ... " All are "sweet to tongue and sound to eye."

Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy...

The girls know these fruits are evil.

When they first hear the goblins, Laura cautions Lizzie, "We must not look at...