Chapter 2
An addition to the Bibliography of this subject is made in the above-named volume (p. 88). "In his _Scottish Scenery_ (1803), Dr. Cririe suggests that the germ of the Fairy myth is the existence of dispossessed aboriginals dwelling in subterranean houses, in some places called Picts' houses, covered with artificial mounds. The lights seen near the mounds are lights actually carried by the mound-dwellers." Mr. Lang adds: "Dr. Cririe works out in some detail 'this marvellously absurd supposition,' as the _Quarterly Review_ calls it (vol. lix. p. 280)."]
[Footnote 1: _The Testimony of Tradition_. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1890.]
[Footnote 2: Such as at pp. ci.-cix. of Vol. I., and pp. 46, 101, and 275 of Vol. II.]
[Footnote 3: Scott, however, had only imperfectly grasped this idea. In numerous passages he inconsistently refers to "the little people" as purely the creatures of imagination.]
[Footnote 4: A description of those dwarfs, obtained from Japanese records and pictures, may be seen in my monograph on "The Aïnos" (Supplement to Vol. IV. of the _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, Leiden, 1892). Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London.]
[Footnote 5: Similarly, the "little Bushmen" referred to by Miss Olive Schreiner's _Waldo_ (as quoted by me on the title-page) would be remembered with as much uncertainty a century hence if the modern population of South Africa had nothing but tradition to depend upon. (It may be explained, in case of misapprehension on the part of any too-literal reader, that that quotation is not supposed to prove that the earth-dwellers of the Hebrides were small and ugly, with "little yellow faces," any more than it proves the reindeer of Scotland to have been identical with the wild buck of South Africa. But the cases are analogous, and the quotation seems _à propos_.)]
[Footnote 6: _Le Surnaturel dans les Contes Populaires_, Paris, 1891, p. iv.]
[Footnote 7: Some portions of it I have already amplified: in a pamphlet entitled "The Underground Life," Edinburgh, 1892 (privately printed); in a paper on "Subterranean Dwellings," contributed to _The Antiquary_ (London: Elliot Stock) of August 1892; and at pp. 52-58 of "The Aïnos," previously quoted.]
[Footnote 8: By "mankind" need only be understood the race to which Einar Gudmund belonged. It is well known that many races apply the term "men" to themselves alone. At the same time, Gudmund's words may denote a very marked difference in the two types.]
[Footnote 9: Scott again quotes this story, in fuller detail, in the Appendix to _The Lady of the Lake_, Note 3 C.]
[Footnote 10: "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 385 (3rd edition).]
[Footnote 11: London, Macmillan and Co., 1873.]
[Footnote 12: London, Trübner and Co., 1883.]
[Footnote 13: London, David Nutt, 1891.]
[Footnote 14: _Asiatic Quarterly Review_, July 1892.]
[Footnote 15: For an exhaustive account of "The Pygmy Tribes of Africa," treated from the purely scientific and ethnological point of view see Dr. Henry Schlichter's articles in _The Scottish Geographical Magazine_ of June and July 1892.]
[Footnote 16: _Memoirs_ of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. iii. 1870, pp. 320, 321.]
[Footnote 17: Blackwood and Sons, 1888.]
FIANS, FAIRIES AND PICTS.
The general belief at the present day is that, of the three designations here classed together, only that of the Picts is really historical. The Fians are regarded as merely legendary--perhaps altogether mythical beings; and the Fairies as absolutely unreal. On the other hand, there are those who believe that the three terms all relate to historical people, closely akin to each other, if not actually one people under three names.
To those unacquainted with the views of the realists, or euhemerists, it is necessary to explain that the popular definition of Fairies as "little people" is one which that school is quite ready to accept. But the conception of such "little people" as tiny beings of aërial and ethereal nature, able to fly on a bat's back, or to sip honey from the flowers "where the bee sucks," is regarded by the realists as simply the outcome of the imagination, working upon a basis of fact. An illustration of this position may be seen in the Far East. There is a tradition among the Aïnos of Northern Japan that they were preceded by a race of "little people," only a few inches in height, whose pit-dwellings they still point out. But the pottery and the skeletons associated with these habitations show that not only were their occupants of a stature to be measured by feet rather than by inches, but also that, by reason of a certain anatomical peculiarity common to both, the traditional dwarfs were very clearly the ancestors of the Aïnos--a race which, though now blended, was once most distinctly a race of dwarfs, if one is to believe the earliest Japanese pictures of them. Similarly, the dwarfs of European tradition are believed to have had as real an origin as the little people of Aïno legend, at any rate by those who hold the realistic theory.
Any attempt to reconcile the pygmies of the classic writers with actual dwarfs of flesh and blood is outside my province. Moreover, this has been admirably, and, as it seems to me, successfully done quite recently by M. Paul Monceaux, in an article in the _Revue Historique,_[18] wherein he compares the traditional and historical descriptions with the statements of modern travellers, and draws the inference that the pygmies of the Greek and Roman writers, sculptors and painters, are all derived from actual dwarfs seen by their forefathers in Africa and India. (Still less doubt is there with regard to the dwarfs in Ancient Egyptian paintings.) And whereas Strabo is, says M. Monceaux, the only writer of antiquity who questions the existence of the dwarfs, all the others are on the side of Aristotle, who says--"This is no fable; there really exists in that region (the sources of the Nile), as people relate, a race of little men, who have small horses and who live in holes." And these little men were of course the ancestors of Schweinfurth's and Stanley's dwarfs.
But although M. Monceaux confines his identification to equatorial Africa and to India, he does not omit to state that Pliny and other writers speak of dwarf tribes in other localities, and among these are "the vague regions of the north, designated by the name of Thule." This area, vague enough certainly, is the territory with which Fians and Picts are both associated; as, also, of course, the Fairies of North European tradition.
The attributes with which the "little people" of North Europe are accredited cannot be given in detail here. It is enough to note that they were believed to live in houses wholly or partly underground, the latter kind being described as "hollow" mounds, or hills; that when people of taller race entered such subterranean dwellings (as occasionally they did) they found the domestic utensils of the dwarfs were of the kind labelled "pre-historic" in our antiquarian museums; that the copper vessels which dwarf women sometimes left behind them when discovered surreptitiously milking the cows of their neighbours, were likewise of an antique form; further, that they helped themselves to the beef and mutton of their neighbours, after having shot the animals with flint-headed arrows; that melodies peculiar to them are still sung by the peasants of certain localities; that words used by them are still employed by children in their games; and that many families in many districts are believed to have inherited some of their blood.[19] Of this intercourse between the taller races and the dwarfs, there are many records in old traditions. In the days of King Arthur, when, as Chaucer tells us, the land was "ful-filled of faërie," the knights errant had usually a dwarf as attendant. One of King Arthur's own knights was a Fairy.[20] According to Highland tradition, every high-caste family of pure Gaelic descent had an attendant dwarf. These examples show the "little people" in a not unfriendly light. But many other stories speak of them as "malignant" foes, and as dreaded oppressors. Of which the rational explanation is that these various tales relate to various localities and epochs.
The connection visible between Fians and Fairies, between Fians and Picts, and between Picts and Fairies, may now briefly be stated.
The earliest known association of the first two classes occurs in an Irish manuscript of the eleventh or twelfth century,[21] wherein it is stated that when the ninth-century Danes overran and plundered Ireland, there was nothing "in concealment under ground in Erinn, or in the various secret places belonging to Fians or to Fairies" that they did not discover and appropriate. This statement receives strong confirmation from a Scandinavian record, the _Landnáma-bok_, which says[22] that, in or about the year 870, a well-known Norse chief named Leif
"went on warfare in the west. He made war in Ireland, and there found a large underground house; he went down into it, and it was dark until light shone from a sword in the hand of a man. Leif killed the man, and took the sword and much property.... He made war widely in Ireland, and got much property. He took ten thralls."
Although the Scandinavian record does not speak of the owner of the earth-house as either a "Fian" or a "Fairy," it is quite evident that this is an example of the plundering referred to in the Irish chronicle, and that the Gaels of Ireland seven or eight centuries ago, if not a thousand years ago, regarded the underground people as indifferently Fians and Fairies.[23]
Many other associations of Fians with Fairies are to be seen. In one of the old traditional ballads regarding the Fians, they are described as feasting with Fairies in one of their "hollow" mounds.[24] A Sutherlandshire story relates the adventures of the son of a Fairy woman, who took service with Ossian, the king of the Fians.[25] One of the Fians (Caoilte) had a Fairy sweet-heart.[26] Another of them (Oscar) has an interview with a washerwoman who is a Fairy.[27] A Fenian story recounts how one day the Fians were working in the harvest-field, in the Argyleshire island of Tiree, and on that occasion they had "left their weapons of war in the armoury of the Fairy Hill of Caolas";[28] from which one is to infer that the Fians made use of Fairy dwellings. In the same collection of tales we are told[29] that one time when the Fians were hunting in the Isle of Skye, they left their wives in a dwelling which bore a title "applied to dwellings of the Elfin race." It is further stated that one popular belief in the Scottish Highlands is that the Fians are still lying in the hill of Tomnahurich, near Inverness, and that "others say they are lying in Glenorchy, Argyleshire."[30] Now, both the Inverness-shire mound and the mounds in Glenorchy are also popularly regarded as the abodes of Fairies.[31] The vitrified fort on Knock-Farril, in Ross-shire, is said to have been one of Fin McCoul's castles;[32] and Knock-Farril, or rather "a knoll opposite Knock-Farril" is remembered as the abode of the Fairies of that district.[33] Glenshee, in Perthshire, is celebrated equally as a Fairy haunt and as a favourite hunting-ground of the Fians. The Fians, indeed, were said to have lived by deer-hunting, so much so that Campbell of Islay suggests that their name signifies "the deer men"; and the deer, it is believed, "were a fairy race."[34] The famous hound of the famous leader of the Fians was "a Fairy or Elfin dog." In short, the connection between Fians and Fairies, recognised in the Gaelic manuscript of eight or ten centuries ago, is apparent throughout the traditions of the Gaelic-speaking people.
But if the Fians were either identical with, or closely akin to the Fairies, they must have been "little people." The belief that they were so is supported by one traditional Fenian story. This is the well-known tale of the visit of Fin, the famous chief of the Fians, to a country known to him and his people as "The Land of the Big Men." The story tells how Fin sailed from Dublin Bay in his skin-boat, crossed the sea to that country, and shortly after landing was captured and taken to the palace of the king, where he was appointed court dwarf,[35] and remained for a considerable time the attached and faithful adherent of the king. The collector of this story has assumed that it is purely imaginary. But let it be contrasted with the following extract from the _Heimskringla_. The period is the early part of the eleventh century, and the scene Norway: "There was a man from the Uplands called Fin the Little, and some said of him that he was of Finnish race. He was a remarkable [? remarkably] little man, but so swift of foot that no horse could overtake him.... He had long been in the service of King Hrorek, and often employed in errands of trust.... Now when King Hrorek was set under guards on the journey Fin would often slip in among the men of the guard, and followed, in general, with the lads and serving-men; but as often as he could he waited upon Hrorek, and entered into conversation with him."[36] And, like Fin the dwarf in the Gaelic story, this little Fin rendered great service to his king. Now, the _Heimskringla_ Fin is unquestionably a historical personage, and the account of him was written by a twelfth century historian. The Gaelic story was only obtained in the Hebrides, and reduced to writing twenty-three years ago. Although Fin of the Fians is stated in Irish records to be the grandson of a Finland woman,[37] and although the Scandinavian and the Hebridean tales look very much like two versions of one story, this cannot precisely be the case, as the Fenian Fin is placed in an earlier era than his namesake of Norway. A dwarf king named Fin is also remembered in Frisian tradition;[38] and that he and his race were small men is pretty clearly proved by the fact that when one of the earth-houses attributed to him was opened some years ago, it was found to contain the bones of a little man.[39] Both of these dwarf Fins, Little Fin of Norway and Little Fin of Denmark, are undoubtedly real; and there seems no good reason to suppose that the dwarf Fin of Hebridean tradition was not equally real. Whether they were three separate people is a problem. "Fin" appears to have been at one time a not uncommon name, whatever its etymology and that of "Fian" may be. At any rate, there is nothing in history (which speaks of a close intercourse between Scandinavia and the British Isles, in former times), and nothing in the ethnology of North-Western Europe, to make us regard as mythical the capture and enthralment of any one of these three "little Fins." If Fin of the Fians, therefore, was a typical Fian, they were little people.[40]
In regarding the Fians as a race of dwarfs, I do not overlook the fact that they are also spoken of as "giants." But to assume them to have been of gigantic stature is both totally at variance with the bulk of the evidence regarding them, and at variance with the fact that the word "giant" has very frequently been used to denote a savage, or a cave-dweller.[41] No more appropriate illustration of this can be found than the local tradition that a certain artificially hollowed rock in the island of Hoy, Orkney, was the abode of "a giant and his wife." Now, this same "giant" is also remembered as a "dwarf," and the largest cell in his dwelling is only 5 feet 8 inches long. Similarly, there is in Iceland a certain _Tröllakyrkia_ (literally "the dwarfs' church") which is translated "the _giants'_ church."[42] For these reasons, then, I do not regard any reference to the Fians as "giants" as indicating that they were of tall stature; although I see no objection to the assumption that they were savages and cave-dwellers.
Fians, then, are closely connected with the "little people" called "Fairies." The connection between Fians and Picts is equally well marked.
Regarding them historically, Dr. Skene identifies the Fians with one or other of two historical races believed to have occupied Ireland before the coming of the Gaels. These two races are known in Irish story as the Tuatha De and the Cruithné.[43] Now, the Tuatha De _are_ the Fairies of Ireland.[44] Therefore, according to Dr. Skene, the Fians were either Fairies or Cruithné. Now, Cruithné is simply a Gaelic name for the Picts. Consequently, the Fians were either Fairies or Picts--according to Dr. Skene. In one traditional story, already referred to, the Fians seem to be unhesitatingly regarded as Picts. This story, obtained in Sutherlandshire, tells how a certain king lived for a year with a _banshee_, or fairy woman,[45] by whom he had a son. When this son grew up he went to the country of the Fians,[46] and there he entered into the service of their king, who was no other than the celebrated Oisin. The Gaelic narrator calls him "Oisin, Righ na Feinne," that is, "Ossian, King of the Fians"; but the collector of the story,[47] who had no doubt obtained the translation on the spot, renders _Righ na Feinne_ as "King of the Picts." No explanation or comment is given, and one is therefore led to infer that in Sutherlandshire _Feinne_ is without question regarded as a Gaelic name for the Picts. This identity is, indeed, borne out otherwise. There is a Gaelic saying in Glenlyon, Perthshire, to the effect that "Fin had twelve castles" in that glen, and the remains of these "castles," all said to have been built by him and his Fians, and of which one in particular is styled "Castle Fin,"[48] are known to the English-speaking people of Scotland as "Picts'" houses. For they belong to a peculiar class of structures, all radically alike, and all known, in certain districts, as "Picts' houses." The term "Picts' house" is unknown in the Hebrides, says one writer. "In the Hebrides tradition is entirely silent concerning the Picts ... there the Fenian heroes are the builders of the duns."[49] Yet the self-same class of building is elsewhere assigned to the Picts. To these structures I shall presently refer more particularly; but it is enough to note in passing that, just as Oisin, King of the Fians, is translated into Ossian, King of the Picts, so the dwellings ascribed to the Fians in one locality, are in another said to have been made and inhabited by the Picts.
Fians, then, are associated or identified with Fairies, and also with Picts. To complete my equilateral triangle, the Picts ought also to be regarded as Fairies, or as akin to them.
This undoubtedly is a popular belief. The earliest alleged reference of this kind is placed by one writer in the middle of the fifteenth century, before the Orkney Islands had passed from the crown of Denmark to the crown of Scotland. A manuscript of the then Bishop of Orkney, dated Kirkwall 1443, states that when Harald Haarfagr conquered the Orkneys in the ninth century, the inhabitants were the two "nations" of the _Papæ_ and the _Peti_, both of whom were exterminated. By the former name is understood the Irish missionaries: the _Peti_ were certainly the Picts, or Pehts.[50] Now, of these Picts of Orkney it is said, that they "were only a little exceeding pigmies in stature, and worked wonderfully in the construction of their cities, evening and morning, but in mid-day, being quite destitute of strength, they hid themselves through fear in little houses under ground."[51]
The exact date of this statement is at present doubtful, but it is quite in accordance with the widespread ideas held throughout Scotland and Northumberland with regard to the Picts: that they were great as builders, but were of very low stature, and closely akin to Fairies.[52] Moreover, they are famous for doing their work during the night. Whatever be the explanation of the above curious statement that at mid-day they lost their strength and withdrew to their underground houses, it is at any rate interesting to compare with it the remark made by the traveller Pennant as he was passing along Glenorchy in 1772. This is the entry in his journal:--"See frequently on the road-sides small verdant hillocks, styled by the common people shi an (_sithean_), or the Fairy-haunt, because here, say they, the fairies, who love not the glare of day, make their retreat after the celebration of their nocturnal revels."[53] Now, as the "Picts' houses" are, to outward appearance, "small verdant hillocks," the parallel is very exact. With these two references compare also the mention, in a quaint old gazetteer printed at Cambridge in 1693,[54] of the tribe of the "Germara," defined as "a people of the Celtæ, who in the day-time cannot see." Although the author usually gives the sources of his information, in this instance he gives none. But the statement agrees perfectly with the belief found everywhere throughout Northern Europe that "the dwarfs could not bear daylight, and during the day hid in their holes."[55] It really seems impossible to avoid the inference that all this was perfectly true. When Leif went down into the underground house in Ireland, he could not see at first, though at length he saw in the obscurity the glimmer of his opponent's sword. Consequently, the denizens and builders of these subterranean retreats must either have had something very like "cat's eyes," or else they must in general have had numerous lamps burning. This will be understood by an examination of one or two of the accompanying diagrams. It seems to me beyond question that a people living this underground life must have differed very distinctly from ourselves in the matter of vision; and to them the brightness of noonday must have been blinding. This physical fact--if it be a fact--would explain much that is otherwise strange and incredible in the traditions relating to the Picts--or Pechts, as they were formerly called in Scotland. However, it is sufficient for my present purpose to note that this peculiarity associates, and indeed identifies, the Picts with the dwarfs or fairies of tradition.
Having thus shown that Fians, Fairies, and Picts are so closely associated as to be, in some aspects, almost indistinguishable from one another, I shall now refer to the structures which are popularly believed to have been their dwellings. Some of these are wholly underground, others partly so, and others quite above ground. In many other ways, also, they vary. But all of them are unquestionably links in one special style of structure; of which the most marked feature, or at any rate that which is common to all, is the use of what is called the "cyclopean" arch. This is formed by the overlapping of the stones in the wall until they almost meet at the dome or apex of the building, when a heavy "keystone" completes this rude arch. The principle of the arch proper was obviously quite unknown to the originators of such structures.
Of the various Hebridean specimens of these buildings, very interesting and complete descriptions have been given by the late Captain Thomas, R.N.,[56] and Sir Arthur Mitchell,[57] who visited some of them together in 1866. Referring to the most modern examples of this kind of structure, the latter writer says:--"They are commonly spoken of as beehive houses, but their Gaelic name is _bo'h_ or _bothan_. They are now only used as temporary residences or shealings by those who herd the cattle at their summer pasturage; but at a time not very remote they are believed to have been the permanent dwellings of the people." And he thus describes his first sight of the beehive houses:--
"I do not think I ever came upon a scene which more surprised me, and I scarcely know where or how to begin my description of it.