CHAPTER XII.

The Gaelic accounts do not, of course, refer to the "Fairies" under that name. It is therefore unnecessary to add anything here to the many attempted solutions of the etymology of "Fairy." But the Gaelic records speak of these people as the _Fir Sithe_, or _Daoine Sithe_--the _Sithe_-folk. As already pointed out, this word is pronounced as if spelt _Shee_ or _Sheey[)e]_]. It is also written _Sidhe_, and this brings us to the older spelling before the dental had been aspirated out of existence. The older form of the word is _Side_, presumably pronounced as _Sheed[)e]_. What are the conclusions arrived at with regard to these _Fir Sidhe_?

"We know now," says a recent writer, already quoted, "that the Sidhe were early peoples and their gods, incorporated into the following races.... We find under the Arctic Circle, and among the Finns and other 'Altaic' or Turanian tribes of Russia, the same belief in 'Tshuds' or vanished supernatural inhabitants of the land, pointing to the same mixture of ideas we find in Ireland concerning dispossessed peoples of a different tongue but high civilisation, whose record remains only in legend. The 'Shee' of Ireland is the same word we find in Asia, but softened down in pronunciation. Among the early Russians and Irish we can safely infer the Turanian underfolk with its myths and manners of life, its subterranean dwellings and repute as magicians; in both we perceive remarkably clever members of the Finno-Ugrian women-folk gaining a power over chiefs of the conquering hordes, and going down into legend as supernatural Sidhes or Tshuds."[142] According to this writer, then, the "Fairies," whose treasures were seized by the Danes of Dublin in the ninth century, belonged to the Turanian or Finno-Ugrian race of the Tshuds. And the traditions current in Ireland and Scotland regarding the _Fir Sidhe_, are counterparts of those current in the north of Europe with regard to the _Tshuds_. It does not certainly tend to the simplification of a very complex question to discover that the North Europeans, who remember so much about those _Tshuds_, are the very people who, of all modern Europeans, seem to have most resemblance to the _Fir Sidhe_. In reviewing a recent collection of Lapp folk-tales, Mr. Ralston states that "the traditions relating to the constant struggle maintained between the Lapp aborigines and their foreign enemies" forms an important portion of the collection. "The first nine stories all refer to the foes known as _Tsjuderne_, the _Tsjuder_--the Chudic Finns of the Baltic and other coasts. When these dreaded enemies appeared, the Lapps would take refuge in their underground retreats."[143] Thus, in accepting Tshud as identical with _Side_ or _Sidhe_, we have to recognize that the people so _named_ were the bitter foes of the very race that most resembles them--the "underground" folk of Lapland. Perhaps the explanation of this apparent contradiction is, that the fact of antagonism existing between two nations is no proof of any great racial difference between them.

Whether the word "Tshud" is, or is not, a variant of _Sidhe_, there seems good reason for believing that such a variant ought to be recognized in the _seid_ of the Sagas. We are told by Thorpe that witchcraft was _seidhr_, which word some derive from _siodha_ (modern _seethe_), to boil. "Boiling 'seid,' or the witches' broth, was the chief art in witchcraft," says Mr. Du Chaillu; who adds that "the witchcraft songs which were used for the seid" were called _Vard-lokur_,--"weird or fate songs." The "seid" platform and the rites performed on and around it are described at the same place (_Viking Age_, ii., 394-398):--"_Seid_ was to be performed. A _Seid-hjall_, or platform consisting of a flat stone, was laid upon three or four posts, and women were to be found who knew how to recite or sing the so-called Vardlokur. When all this was ready, and the _Volva_ [sibyl] on the platform, the women formed in a circle round it, and the effective song was chanted while the seeress, with the strangest gesticulations, made her conjurations and received her revelations." "Once at a feast, according to ancient custom, Ingjald prepared incantation (_seid_), that men might know their fates. There was a Finn woman skilled in witchcraft.... The Finn woman was placed high, and splendid preparations made for her; each of the men went from his seat to inquire of her about their fates."

Similar accounts are given by Thorpe, who states that it, _seid_, "was regarded as unseemly for men, and was usually practised by women only: we nevertheless meet with seid-men." And again:--"On account of its wickedness, it was held unworthy of a man to practise seid, and the seid-man was prosecuted and burned as an atrocious trollman.[144] The seid-women received money to make men hard, so that iron could not wound them." "The most remarkable class of seid-women were the so-called Valas, or Völvas. We find them present at the birth of children, when they seem to represent the Norns." "That the Norns, who appeared at the birth of children, were of the race of the dwarfs," is elsewhere suggested by Mr. Thorpe.[145]

Scott, also (_The Pirate_, Note R), quotes from Kaspar Bartholin a long account of one of those "Valas," as given in the _Saga of Eric Rauda_. From which it is seen that, according to the custom described by Thorpe and Du Chaillu, she stood "on a sort of elevated stage," when delivering her prophecy.[146] Scott adds that Bartholin "mentions similar instances" to that of "the little Vala" (as this one was called), "particularly of one Heida, celebrated for her predictions," who attended festivals for the purpose of telling fortunes, accompanied by "thirty male and fifteen female attendants."

In all these accounts we see the fairies of tradition, notably the "fairy godmother" who came to the birth or christening of children. The man who practised _seid_ rendered himself liable to be prosecuted and burned as a _trow_, "an atrocious trollman;" or, in the Gaelic, a _fear-side_. If the words "seid" and "side" are not practically one, it is at least evident that they relate to the very same people. And the _bean-side_ (banshee) of Gaelic tradition is simply the seid-woman, remembered chiefly in her less pleasing aspect, as the foreboder of death or misfortune.

Thus, whether _side_ ought to be held as primarily denoting the incantations, or the enchanters themselves, it is this worship that is indicated in the metrical life of St. Patrick, which says of him (Skene's "Celt. Scot.," II. 108):--

"He preached threescore years The Cross of Christ to the _Tuatha_ [people] of Feni. On the _Tuatha_ of Erin there was darkness. The _Tuatha_ adored the _Side_."

Nor is there anything inconsistent with these deductions in the appearance of a _Finn_ woman as a celebrated _seid_-woman. For, in Shetland, the Finns are even yet "reckoned among the Trows."[147]

To return, however, to the _Sidhe_ people of the British Islands. The Blackwater valley of Leinster, whose "fairy" strongholds and abodes were entered and plundered by the ninth-century Danes, reminds one by its name that the Blackwater valley of Munster is also famous for its fairy associations. In one of Mr. William Black's novels ("Shandon Bells") there are frequent references to a chief of the Fir Sidhe named _Fierna_,[148] who is remembered as the leader of the "little people" of the south-west. His chief residence appears to have been a certain _Knockfierin_, or Fierna's Hillock, which has perhaps been investigated by local archæologists. Several of the Limerick traditions relating to Fierna have been contributed by Mr. David Fitzgerald to the "Revue des Traditions populaires" (April 1889), and one of these tells how a mysterious stranger one night aroused a poor cripple and gave him a letter to take to Fierna. The messenger entered the fairy "hill," where he saw the chief--an old, white-bearded man. On reading the letter, Fierna declared it to be a challenge of battle on the part of the "King of the Sidhfir of the North"; a challenge which Fierna was loath to accept, because, as he explains, "my people of Munster are the weaker party."

This legend, then, shows the Fir Sidhe (or Sidhfir) as a people not always friendly to each other, although of kindred race. Moreover, it suggests that those of Ireland were divided into at least two sections--the Sidhfir of Munster and those of "the North." When we remember that in the ninth century "Feens and Fairies" were equally regarded as owners of the "underground" dwellings which were then plundered (and which still remain), it is noteworthy that in this very detail we have another parallel between the two castes--if they were two. For the Feens of Ireland were also divided into sections, and it may be remembered that two of these--"the Feens of Leinster and the east of Ulster," and those of "Connaught and the west of Ireland," were referred to on a previous page as engaged in building a famous hill-fort for their great leader, Fin. If the "Sidhfir of the North" were not the same as the Feens of Leinster and the east of Ulster, they occupied much of the same ground, and had so many points in common, that it is difficult to say wherein they differed.

Nor is this deduction at variance with the belief that the people just named were one with the Pechts of history. For the _Cruithné_ of Ulster formed a distinct division of the Pechts; and, indeed, to be still more specific, were latterly associated with the _eastern_ part of that province. And, as for internecine warfare, that forms no obstacle to the identification of the historical Pechts, in their later stages, with the _Sidhfir_ of popular legend.[149]

Like the rivers of the same name in Leinster and Munster, there is a Blackwater in Perthshire which has fairy traditions, and, in consequence, the valley through which it flows is known as Glenshee (_Gleann-sith_). It is also remembered as a favourite hunting-ground of the Feens. Here they used to come, says an ancient poem,[150] to chase the deer and elk. The stories of Fin and his Feens are full of references to their hunting exploits. And an old poem[151] recites how, even while Ireland was chiefly peopled and ruled by another race, the ancient rights of the Feens, in this as in other respects, were still duly acknowledged. Fin, we are told,

"possessed the old rights Which previously were his. From Hallowmass on to Beltin, His _Feens_ had all the rights. The hunting without molestation, Was theirs in all the forests."

The "rights" possessed by these people between All Hallow-tide and Beltin, or from the first of November to the first of May, were, according to Keating,[152] that they were quartered upon the country-people, who had to support them during all that period. But from the first of May on to the first of November, the Feens were obliged to support themselves, which they did by hunting and fishing. It was during this latter period, therefore, that "the hunting without molestation was theirs in all the forests." Perhaps the expression "_all_ the forests" is too comprehensive. Mr. J. F. Campbell, in referring to the Feens,[153] speaks of their "maintaining themselves by hunting deer, extensive tracts of land being allotted to them for that purpose." Perhaps, also, the word "forest" ought to be understood much in the way that "deer forest" now is.

"It was said at that time," says a West Highland tale,[154] "that Ireland was a better hunting-ground than the Scotch Highlands; that there were many great beamed deer in it, rather than in the Highlands. It was this which used to cause the Feens to be so often in Ireland." Nevertheless, the poem by Allan MacRuaridh, already referred to, states that the Perthshire Glenshee (or rather, the more important of the two Perthshire glens so named) was famous as a hunting-ground of the Feens, for the reason that it abounded in "deer and elk." Whether the "elk" of the one writer, and the "great antlered deer" of the other represent the same animal, or two separate species now extinct in these islands, is uncertain. In the account contributed to the (Old) Statistical Account of Scotland, the minister of the parish of Clunie, Perthshire, which is not very far from Glenshee, remarks (ix. 256-7, _note_): "The head of the urus has been dug up in this neighbourhood, as also the palmated horns of the elk, together with the horns and skeletons of large deer, supposed to be the moose-deer."[155] One of the tales of the Feens, which is common from County Mayo to Sutherlandshire, says Mr. J. F. Campbell, has reference to the hunting of an animal called the _lon-dubh_, which word Mr. Campbell, on the suggestion of his collector (Mr. MacLean), believes ought to be translated "black elk." This "black elk," then, which the Feens used to hunt, was an animal of much greater size than the deer, on the testimony of these tales, told in the degenerate days when the "black elk" and its hunters had become only a memory. "These [tales] _may_ date from the days when men hunted elks in Erin, as they now do in Scandinavia," says Mr. Campbell.[156] It is to be remembered, however, that at the battle of Gawra, and, indeed, long after that date, the Feens of Scandinavia were in association with those of Ireland and of Scotland; and traditions relating to animals long extinct in Britain might really refer to incidents in Scandinavia, within comparatively modern times. But, on the other hand, there is the visible testimony of the "palmated horns of the elk, together with the horns and skeletons of large deer, supposed to be the moose-deer," dug up in the very neighbourhood which is famous as a favourite hunting-ground of the Feens, where they came "to chase the deer and elk." The inference is, then, that either the tales which relate to that time are very old, or else that the animals referred to did not become extinct in these localities at a very remote date.

And the latter inference is, in point of fact, the right one; if we do not restrict _lon-dubh_ to the precise meaning of "black elk." Mr. J. F. Campbell not only tells us that certain "great antlered deer" were formerly hunted by the Feens, but he also points out Sutherlandshire traditions which tell how witches and fairies used to _milk_ the female deer. And this statement forms one of the reasons which lead him to believe that Fairies, Picts, and Lapps were practically one people; for his deduction therefrom is this:--"Fairies, then, milked deer, as Lapps do." Now, the point of this is that the deer milked by the Lapps is the _reindeer_, and not any variety of deer now existing in the British Islands. Mr. Campbell's further reference to "a story published by Grant Stewart, in which a ghost uses a herd of deer to carry her furniture," quite bears out his belief that the reindeer was domesticated, as well as hunted, by the little people. And it is an actual historical fact that the reindeer was hunted in Caithness so recently as the twelfth century. In a very full and exhaustive "Notice of Remains of the Rein-Deer, _Cervus tarandus_, found in Ross-shire, Sutherland, and Caithness,"[157] the late Dr. John A. Smith, Sec. S. A., Scot., has pointed out that the seventeenth-century historian, Torfæus, mentions that it was the custom of two earls of Orkney, during the twelfth century, to cross over to Caithness from the Orkneys, for the purpose of hunting the roe-deer _and the reindeer_. Dr. Smith adds that the correctness of Torfæus' statement having been at one time called in question, the matter was placed beyond all doubt by a reference to the work of a learned annotator and editor of Torfæus (of the year 1780), who shows that the original manuscript whence Torfæus derived his information uses the words "rauddýri edr _hreína_" to denote those roes and reindeer of Caithness. Indeed, Dr. Smith's paper affords plenty of confirmation of this historical statement, since it is chiefly devoted to a consideration of the reindeer's horns found in various parts of the north of Scotland; some of them in those very "brochs" which are so associated with "the little people." And as, even at the present day, the higher mountains of Scotland abound in reindeer-lichen, there is nothing in the natural condition of the place to contradict the assertion of the historian. Therefore, Mr. Campbell's hypothesis that the fairy "herds of Glen Odhar" were herds of reindeer, receives every confirmation from history, tradition, and fact. And, thus, the figure of the reindeer incised on the monumental stone near Grantown, in the same quarter of Scotland (of which a representation is given on page 122 of Dr. Anderson's "Scotland in Early Christian Times"), may have been "drawn from life" at that very place, and need not be any older than the twelfth century.[158]

"Hunting appears all along to have been a favourite amusement of the _Seelie Court_," says a writer on the fairies of Clydesdale,[159] "and innumerable are the stories which are told concerning the magnificence and splendour of the royal retinue." There is also a Highland tale[160] which describes how the dwarfs used to be seen "hunting on the sides of Ben Muich Dhui, dressed in green, and with silver-mounted bridles to their horses which jingled as they rode." And a writer of the seventeenth century[161] tells "how there was a King and Queen of Pharie, of such a Court, and train, as they had, and how they had the teind [tithe] and dutie, as it were, of all corn, flesh, and meale, how they rode and went alongs the sides of hills, all in Green apparel." That green was the special colour of the fairies, everybody knows. And that it was also the colour of the Feens is what certain sections of the people of modern Ireland do not allow one to forget.

Thus, in regarding these people as hunters, any distinction between "Feens and Fairies" seems to vanish altogether. Although it does not appear to be stated in so many words that the Feens "had the tithe and dutie, as it were, of all corns, flesh, and meale," yet the same fact is practically stated when we are told that, during the six months of autumn and winter, the Feens were kept in idleness by the people of the country ("billeted upon the country," as Keating has it), and this as a matter of right. The very dates upon which this period began and ended--Hallow-E'en and Walpurgis-night--are pregnant with "fairy" associations. And when the green-clad Feens, typified by their dwarf chief, had the exclusive right of hunting, during the spring and summer months, up till the end of October, over "extensive tracts of land allotted to them for that purpose," they could not have greatly differed from those little people who are even yet remembered as "hunting on the sides of Ben Muich Dhui, dressed in green." And it was distinctly understood that this right was theirs "without molestation." There is a real matter-of-fact meaning in the ballad, placed in the mouths of people of a taller race, and relating to that period and those privileged hunters--

"Up the airy mountain, Down the rocky glen, We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men."

Of which the historical interpretation, as applied to Scotland, apparently is, that these popular traditions relate to the time when the Pechts, conquered by the Scots, who subsequently were reinforced by various later immigrant races, still retained a certain amount of independence, with special rights in certain districts, reserved to them as "Pecht lands." Their dwarfish stature is seen from the very word by which they are known, as well as from the dwellings they inhabited. Their small horses are spoken of in the earliest accounts of them,[162] and indeed still survive, though no doubt in blended forms, as the small breeds of Galloway, Shetland, and various parts of England. Their favourite colour gave them, in their earliest days, the title of Green Men or _Virides_; although then the colouring was applied in a more primitive fashion.

Apart from all the resemblances specially referred to, there is a general association in the popular mind between Pechts and Fairies. Both are regarded as extinct races, and the date of their disappearance, though vague, points to the one period; and localities known as the abodes of Pechts are also known as the abodes of Fairies. For example, an antiquary of that neighbourhood (Sir Herbert Maxwell) states that "the fortified promontory of the Mull [of Galloway] is locally believed to have been the last stronghold to which the Picts of Galloway retired before an overwhelming force of Scotic (?) invaders." In the same paper,[163] and referring to the same promontory, the writer specifies "a small fortification called the 'Dunnan,' credited with having been a favourite haunt of the fairies." Again, the famous Pictish hill-fort in Forfarshire, known as the "White Cater Thun," is equally famous as a fairy stronghold. This celebrated fortress has been described on a previous page. It crowns a hill in the neighbourhood of the ancient city of Brechin, the centre of a district which was indisputably a territory of the Pechts. Even yet one may discern in the ruins of this fort the traces of the dwellings which so closely characterize the architecture of the Pechts, the chambers made within the thickness of the wall. Within the long elliptical enclosure of the White Cater Thun there are, indeed, faint traces of other buildings; but the great majority of its garrison must have been housed, after the fashion of the race, in the chambers that are traceable all along the actual rampart itself. And of this chambered fortress local tradition states that it was "the abode of fairies, and that a brawny witch carried the whole [of the stones] one morning from the channel of the West Water [a neighbouring river] to the summit of the hill, and would have increased the quantity ... but for the ominous circumstance of her apron-string breaking, while carrying one of the largest! This stone was allowed to lie where it fell, and is pointed out to this day on the north-east slope of the mountain! This tradition, it may be remarked," continues our authority,[164] "however _outré_, is curious from its analogy to that concerning the castles of Mulgrave and Pickering in Yorkshire, the extensive causeways of which are said to have been paved by genii named Wada and his wife Bell, the latter, like the Amazonian builder of Caterthun, having carried the stones from a great distance in her apron!" Among all the exaggeration and confusion of these statements two things are quite discernible--the identity of Pechts with fairies or other "supernaturals" in general--and (in particular) the identity of the descriptions given of people so denominated, in the region of Caterthun and of Yorkshire, and the descriptions of the Northumbrian Pechts as quoted on a previous page.[165] Indeed, the accounts given of the Pechts in the locality last-named, as well as some features of the traditional builders of Abernethy Round Tower, render it impossible to distinguish, in these two cases, between "Pechts" and "Fairies," or "Witches." And this, indeed, as we have seen, was the popular belief.

The conclusion, therefore, to be drawn from what has been said upon this subject is that, although the term _Pict_ or _Pecht_ has been chosen by History as that by which a certain race of people, once found in Scotland, ought to be remembered, yet that term indicates nothing more[166] than _Trow_ or _Dwarf_, either of which names might as reasonably have been chosen as their synonym _Pecht_. And that when one speaks of _Pechts_, _Trows_, or _Dwarfs_, one is speaking of the same kind of people--the mound-dwellers, or "underground" races of the past. Further, that the people traditionally remembered in Shetland as _Finns_ belonged to that group; as also those whom Gaelic folk-lore styles the _Feinne_. And that, along with many other popular terms not here enumerated, one of the names by which such people have been widely known is that of "the Fairies."

FOOTNOTES:

[142] Mr. Charles de Kay, in _The Century_ of July 1889, p. 437.

[143] See Mr. Ralston's review in _The Academy_ of May 11, 1889.

[144] These trials and executions for "witchcraft" were the precursors of those which were carried down almost into our own times; and the above allusions to the "wickedness" of those rites only serve to strengthen the growing belief that the relentless persecution of "witches" was based upon most reasonable grounds, and that the motives actuating the "persecutors" were far higher and more sensible than a mere fanatical and narrow-minded hatred of paganism.

[145] For these extracts, see Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, I., 14, 212, 213, 214, and 238.

[146] The flat stone, supported on three or four posts, or pillars (as Thorpe calls them), upon which the seid-woman stood, is very suggestive of the _cromleac_ or _dolmen_. (Cf. the _grottes aux fées_ of Brittany.)

[147] The magical power of the Finns is still recognized by the Swedish peasantry of to-day. An illustration of this appears in an anecdote related in the London _Standard_ of 26 January, 1877, with regard to a Swedish lady "who had been so ill-advised as to insult a Finn, whose magical powers exceed those of the gipsies."

[148] It is no doubt owing to the infusion of Spanish blood in Southern Ireland, still visible in the complexion, as well as in the surnames (such as Costello and Jago, _i.e._, Diego) of people in that neighbourhood, that this Fierna receives the most un-British title of "Don" prefixed to his name.

[149] Compare this tradition, recorded by Thorpe (_Northern Mythology_, III., 39):--"In very old times the dwarfs had long wars with men, and also with one another."

[150] "The Death of Diarmaid," by Allan MacRuaridh. _See_ the "Dean of Lismore's Book," p. 30 (Eng. version), and p. 21 (Gaelic).

[151] "Dean of Lismore's Book," pp. 141-43 (Eng.) and 108-11 (Gaelic version).

[152] "History of Ireland"; Reign of Cormac Ulfada.

[153] "West Highland Tales," I. xiii.

[154] The Lay of Osgar: "West Highland Tales," III. 304-5.

[155] He adds:--"Some of these horns, which are of an amazing size, are in the custody of the Duke of Athole, and of Mr. Farquharson of Invercauld."

[156] "Tales," II. 107. The story referred to is on pp. 102-6.

[157] _See_ "Proc. of Soc. of Antiq. of Scot.": First Series, VIII. p. 186, _et seq._ (with a special reference to pp. 205-6).

[158] For Mr. Campbell's references, _see_ "West Highland Tales," I., ci.-cix., and II., 46. This parallel has also been drawn by Miss Gordon Cumming ("From the Hebrides to the Himalayas," Vol. I., p. 183).

[159] _Scots Magazine_, Vol. III., 1818, p. 154.

[160] One of Mrs. Ewing's "Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales": The Laird and the Man of Peace.

[161] George Sinclair, in "Satan's Invisible World Discovered."

[162] _See_ Ritson's "Annals," Vol. I. p. 12 (quoted from Dion Cassius, L. 76, c. 12).

[163] Which appears in the "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland," 1885-86, pp. 76-90.

[164] Mr. A. Jervise, "The Land of the Lindsays," Edinburgh, 1853, p. 265.

[165] Page 67.

[166] The Latin term _Picti_, though pointing to another characteristic of the dwarfs, is not here taken into account, as it misinterprets the original word.