CHAPTER X.

In the immediately preceding pages we have been considering the people known as "Pechts." But it is contended that the "Feens" of Gaelic story ought to be identified with the "Pechts." When the leader of the "Feens" landed in "the country of the big men," he was at once seized upon as eminently fitted to be the court dwarf, into which office he was duly installed; from which it was reasonably inferred that he was a "pegh," or dwarf. Now, in one of the many songs ascribed to the son of this "pegh," Oisin, who is ever bemoaning the departed glories of his race, he laments the fact that he finds himself in his old age "wearily dragging stones along to the church on the hill of the priest." "Here, where he is a drudge, he has seen the Feinne in their glory.... Were they alive, shavelings would not hold this mound." Thus laments Oisin, the representative of the old heathen Feens, bitter in his denunciations of Patrick the priest, and the new order which he represents, and ever bewailing the vanished "glory of the Feinn."

We find Oisin, therefore, accepted universally as the type of his race, unwillingly occupied in "dragging stones for priests to build churches," in his old age and after the downfall of his people. Nor was it only as the serf of another race that he had so worked; because, he explains to Patrick that this old age of drudgery had been foretold to him by his leader, Fin, on a previous occasion, before the coming of Patrick, and on that occasion not only Oisin, but a great number of the Feens of Ireland, were engaged in a similar task. The great difference was that then they were not working as the drudges of another people, but for themselves, and at the command of their leader. And it was not a church, but a hill-fortress, that they were building, "on Cuailgne's bare and rounded hill." Oisin speaks of it as Fin's "famous fort," and the hill on which it was built is "said to be in the county of Armagh," or, as another writer states, in County Louth. According to Oisin, two-thirds of the materials for the fort were brought thither by the Feens of Connaught and the west of Ireland, and the remainder by the Feens of Leinster and the east of Ulster, to which section both Oisin and Fin belonged. Assuming these traditional accounts to be correct, we thus see the Feens, in the day of their independence, "dragging stones" to the top of a hill, in order to build a fortress; and later on we see them, personified by Oisin, occupied in a similar manner, but as the drudges of Christian priests and the builders of Christian churches. The one account applies to Scotland and the other to Ireland; but the Pechts of the White Cater Thun have their counterparts in the Feens who reared the "famous fort" "on Cuailgne's bare and rounded hill;" and the Pechts who built the churches of Glasgow and Corstorphine are also duplicated in the conquered Feens, "weary dragging stones for priests to build churches," in Ireland. Consequently, the traditional fame of the Pechts of Scotland, as a great race of builders, is not at all at variance with the belief that they and the Feens were of one nation.[117]

But, if Fin and his Feens were builders of the hill-forts of the "Pechts," and were themselves veritable Pechts, it is evident that the Feens built and inhabited the dwellings known as "Pechts' houses." This is quite borne out when we regard that class of building which, although an archæologist already quoted (Mr. Petrie) does not hold it to be strictly entitled to the designation of "Pecht's house," is nevertheless a variety of the same species, and often receives the same title. The variety referred to differs from what has been accepted as the true "Pecht's house," in that it has no superimposed covering of earth or turf. But the two varieties undoubtedly belong to the same general class. Now, with regard to this second order of "Pecht's house," we have such a statement as the following: "Glenlyon, in Perthshire, is remarkable for the great number of remains of aboriginal works scattered through it, in the shape of circular castles built entirely of dry stones. The common people believe these structures to have belonged to their mythic hero, Fion,... and have a verse to that effect:

'Bha da chaisteal dheug aig Fionn Ann an Crom-ghleann-nan-clach.'

That is, _Fion had twelve castles in the Crooked Glen of Stones_ (such being an old name for Glenlyon)."[118] And a like belief prevails in other Perthshire glens, such as Glenshee and Glenalmond, beside the latter of which, as every reader of Wordsworth knows, Oisin himself is said to be buried.

The true "Pecht's house," however, is not this dry-stone circular "castle," open to air and sun. These "castles" are, indeed, popularly included among "Pechts' houses," but such an archæologist as the one recently referred to prefers to speak of them as "brochs." This word "broch" (akin to _burgh_, etc.) has been adopted by Dr. Joseph Anderson and other eminent students of such buildings, to distinguish this special structure; and although, etymologically regarded, the distinction is arbitrary, it is very convenient. But the "broch," standing visibly exposed like any other ruin, its stone walls uncovered to the sun, is by no means the same thing as the "Pecht's house" described by Mr. Petrie and others. This, it may be remembered, is almost or altogether identical with the dwellings of the North-Greenland Eskimos, as portrayed by the explorers of seventy years ago. It is approached through a long, dark tunnel, entered from the face of a bank or brae, so low that one has to crawl along it, its sides and roofs composed of large stone slabs, and the roof itself flush with, or even underneath, the surface of the ground. At the end of this long, dark, narrow passage one enters the central chamber of the dwelling of the North-Greenlander and the ancient Pecht. It, too, would be in darkness, were it not for the rude stone lamp, fed with the oil of seal or whale, soaking through moss or the pith of rushes, which hangs from the roof and is always burning. Here and there at the side of this central chamber are openings in the wall which lead into small cavities used as sleeping-places. Briefly and imperfectly, that is the interior of the Pecht's house.[119]

Viewed from the outside, what does it resemble? The underground passage of approach is invisible. The "house" itself "is generally of a conical form, and externally closely resembles a large bowl-shaped barrow. It consists of a solid mass of masonry, covered with a layer of turf a foot or more in thickness, and has a central chamber surrounded by several smaller cells." Or, as another writer describes it, "all that meets the eye at first is a green, conical mound ... resting silently amid the moorland solitude." The entrance to this seeming hillock, situated sometimes at its base, more frequently, perhaps, at the extremity of a narrow, underground tunnel, was never very conspicuous, since it was only about a couple of feet high. In the days when the Pechts were actually inhabiting these "green hillocks," it is likely they took the precaution to conceal this outer orifice, small though it was, as well as possible. Thus, the adventurer or colonist of another race, arriving at a settlement of Pechts' houses, saw nothing but one or more grassy, conical hillocks rising out of the surrounding moor.

Since the Gaelic term _broch_ (for it is Gaelic, though not exclusively so) is used to denote the one variety of these "Pictish" dwellings, let us employ, if only temporarily, the Gaelic term which denotes the other. That kind of _broch_, then, which is covered over with earth and turf so as to resemble a conical green mound, is known in Gaelic by the name of _sith-bhrog_, or _sith-bhrugh_; that is to say, the broch of the _sith_. Still more commonly, it is styled a _sithean_, or _sith_-place. When rendered in our modern English spelling, according to its pronunciation, this distinctive _sith_ becomes spelt _shee_; as in the case of _Gleann-sith_, which is written "Glenshee." And, similarly, _sithean_ becomes _sheean_. It is the "sheean," then, and not the "broch" proper, that is regarded by such archæologists as Mr. Petrie as peculiarly the dwelling of the Pechts.

Now, if any Highlander were asked his opinion as to the former inhabitants of the "sheeans," he would have but one answer to give. And the nature of that answer is very clearly shown by those Highlanders who have compiled the leading Scottish-Gaelic dictionaries. _Brog_ (_i.e._, "broch") is itself defined as an obsolete term for "a house"; but _bruth_ and other variants connect, if they do not identify, the "broch" with the "sheean." The various definitions are these: _Bruth_, "a house half under the surface," "the dwelling of fairies in a hill"; _sith-bruth_, _sith-bhrugh_, "a fairy hill or mansion"; _sith-bhrog_, _sith-bhruach_, _sith-bhruth_, "a fairy hill," "a fairy residence," "fairyland"; _sithean_, "a little hill or knoll," "a fairy hill"; _sithain_, "a green knoll or hillock, tenanted, according to superstitious belief, by fairies."[120]

Thus, the houses of the Pechts or dwarfs were inhabited by the people known as "fairies." As the fairies were "little people," there is here no contradiction in terms. We have, moreover, seen that the same "conical, green mounds" are remembered in Orkney and Shetland as the homes of the "trows." "Trow," however, is itself equivalent to _droich_, or dwarf. Therefore, the belief that those outward-seeming "green hillocks" were the abodes of Pechts is quite in agreement with the traditions that refer to those mound-dwellers as _trows_ and _fairies_ (otherwise "the little people"). Because _pecht_ (or _pech_), _trow_, and _fairy_ are all synonyms for "dwarf."

FOOTNOTES:

[117] For these references to Oisin and the Feens see Skene's "Book of the Dean of Lismore," pp. 12-14 (English version), and 10-11 (Gaelic). Also Mr. J. F. Campbell's "Leabhar na Feinne," pp. xiii, 47 and 49.

[118] Chambers's "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," 1870, pp. 254-55.

[119] Although the Pechts made use of stone lamps similar to those of the northern Eskimos, it is perhaps too much to assume that the dwellings of the former admitted nothing of the light of day. Mr. Petrie states that the walls of the Pechts' houses "converge towards the top, where they approach so closely that the aperture can be spanned by a stone a couple of feet in length." If this aperture remained open during the day, which seems quite likely, then the above reference as to the ever-burning lamp is only applicable to the dwellings of the northern Greenlanders. For the sake of safety, while their lands were over-run by hostile forces, it is probable that the Pechts did cover the two-foot hole in the roof with a large stone, which itself would need to be hidden by earth and turf. But the fact that such an aperture was left in the building indicates that it was frequently uncovered; perhaps always at night, and also, during times of safety, in the day. In the latter case, the interior of this underground dwelling would thus receive, through the hole overhead, enough light to fill the central chamber with a sort of twilight, although the smaller cells might have been quite in darkness.

[120] See the dictionaries of Armstrong, McLeod and Dewar, and McAlpine. McAlpine also defines the word _digh_ as a "conical mound," "an abode of fairies"; and that more uncommon term is thus employed in an Islay story of Mr. J. F. Campbell's (_West Highland Tales_, ii, 48).