Fians, Fairies and Picts

The following treatise is to some extent a re-statement and partly an amplification of a theory I have elsewhere advanced.[1] But as that theory, although it has been advocated by several writers, especially during the past half-century, is not familiar to everybody, some remarks of an explanatory nature are necessary. And if this explanation assumes a narrative form, not without a tinge of autobiography, it is because this seems the most convenient way of stating the case.

It is now a dozen years or thereabouts since I first read the "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," by Mr. J.F. Campbell, otherwise known by his courtesy-title of "Campbell of Islay." Mr. Campbell was, as many people know, a Highland gentleman of good family, who devoted much of his time to collecting and studying the oral traditions of his own district and of many lands. His equipment as a student of West Highland folklore was unique. He had the necessary knowledge of Gaelic, the hereditary connection with the district which made him at home with the poorest peasant, and the sympathetic nature which proved a master-key in opening the storehouse of inherited belief. It is not likely that another Campbell of Islay will arise, and, indeed, in these days of decaying tradition, he would be born too late.

In reading his book, then, for the first time, what impressed me more than anything else in his pages were statements such as the following:--

"The ancient Gauls wore helmets which represented beasts. The enchanted king's sons, when they come home to their dwellings, put off cochal [a Gaelic word signifying], the husk, and become men; and when they go out they resume the cochal, and become animals of various kinds. May this not mean that they put on their armour? They marry a plurality of wives in many stories. In short, the enchanted warriors are, as I verily believe, nothing but real men, and their manners real manners, seen through a haze of centuries.... I do not mean that the tales date from any particular period, but that traces of all periods may be found in them--that various actors have played the same parts time out of mind, and that their manners and customs are all mixed together, and truly, though confusedly, represented--that giants and fairies and enchanted princes were men ... that tales are but garbled popular history, of a long journey through forests and wilds, inhabited by savages and wild beasts; of events that occurred on the way from east to west, in the year of grace, once upon a time" (I. cxv.-cxvi.). "The Highland giants were not so big but that their conquerors wore their clothes; they were not so strong that men could not beat them, even by wrestling. They were not quite savages; for though some lived in caves, others had houses and cattle and hoards of spoil" (I. xcix.). "And though I do not myself believe that fairies are ... I believe there once was a small race of people in these islands, who are remembered as fairies, for the fairy belief is not confined to the Highlanders of Scotland" (I. c.) "This class of stories is so widely spread, so matter-of-fact, hangs so well together, and is so implicitly believed all over the United Kingdom, that I am persuaded of the former existence of a race of men in these islands who were smaller in stature than the Celts; who used stone arrows, lived in conical mounds like the Lapps, knew some mechanical arts, pilfered goods and stole children; and were perhaps contemporary with some species of wild cattle and horses and great auks, which frequented marshy ground, and are now remembered as water-bulls and water-horses, and boobries, and such like impossible creatures" (IV. 344).

And much more to the same effect,[2] with which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader. Now, all this was quite new to me. If I had ever given a second thought to the so-called "supernatural" beings of tradition, it was only to dismiss them, in the conventional manner as creatures of the imagination. But these ideas of Mr. Campbell's were decidedly interesting, and deserving of consideration. It was obvious that tradition, especially where there had been an intermixture of races, could not preserve one clear, unblemished record of the past; and this he fully recognised. But it seemed equally obvious that the "matter-of-fact" element to which he refers could not have owed its origin to myth or fancy. The question being fascinating, there was therefore no alternative but to make further inquiry. And the more it was considered, the more did his theory proclaim its reasonableness. He suggests, for example, that certain "fairy herds" in Sutherlandshire were probably reindeer, that the "fairies" who milked those reindeer were probably of the same race as Lapps, and that not unlikely they were the people historically known as Picts. The fact that Picts once occupied northern Scotland formed no obstacle to his theory. And when I learned that the reindeer was hunted in that part of Scotland as recently as the twelfth century, that remains of reindeer horns are still to be found in the counties of Sutherland, Ross, and Caithness, sometimes in the very structures ascribed to the Picts, then I perceived this to be a theory which, to quote his words, "hung well together." Further, the actual Lapps are a small-statured race, the fairies also were so described, and this, too, I found to be the traditional idea regarding the Picts. Here the identification was closer still. Then came the consideration: The fairies lived in hollow hillocks and under the ground: what kind of dwellings are the Picts supposed to have occupied? The answer to this question still further strengthened Mr. Campbell's conjecture. There yet exist numerous underground structures and artificial mounds whose interior shows them to have been dwelling-places; and these are in some places known as "fairy halls" and in others as "Picts' houses." (Illustrations of these are shown in the present volume, and are specially referred to in the annexed paper.)

The examination, therefore, of this interesting theory not only helped greatly to bear out its probable correctness, but it further began to appear that by following this method of inquiry new lights might be thrown upon history--perhaps upon very remote history. It was clear that the question was not a simple one. All tradition is obscured by the darkness of time, and genuine fact is mixed up with ideas which belong to the world of religion and of myth. Even in Mr. Campbell's own statements there were seeming contradictions. These, however, it is not my present purpose to discuss; since they do not vitally affect his main contention.

The Lapp-Dwarf parallel was gone into very fully by Professor Nilsson in his Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, written twenty years before the "West Highland Tales." Not that he, either, was the originator of that theory, for it is frequently referred to by Sir Walter Scott, who accepted it himself.[3] "In fact," he says, "there seems reason to conclude that these duergar [in English, _dwarfs_] were originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish, Lettish and Finnish nations, who, flying before the conquering weapons of the Asae, sought the most retired regions of the north, and there endeavoured to hide themselves from their eastern invaders." Scott, again, refers us back to Einar Gudmund, an Icelandic writer of the second half of the sixteenth century, whom I would cite as the earliest "Euhemerus" of northern lands, were it not for the fact that he is obviously much more than a theorist, and is beyond all doubt speaking of an actual race, as may be seen from an incident which he relates.

But, although the popular memory may retain for many centuries the impress of historical facts, these become inevitably blurred and modified by the lapse of time and the ignorance of the very people who preserve the tradition. As an illustration of this, I may cite the instance of the dwarfs of Yesso, referred to in the following pages. These people still survived as a separate community until the first half of the seventeenth century, if not later. They occupied semi-subterranean or "pit" dwellings, and are said to have been under four feet in height. But, although the modern inhabitants of that island still describe them, on the whole, in these terms, a new belief regarding them has recently sprouted up in one corner. The Aïno word signifying "pit-dweller" is also not unlike the word for a burdock leaf. It was known that those dwarfs were little people. Obviously, then, their name must have meant "people living under burdock leaves" (instead of "in pits"). And so, to some of the modern natives of Yesso, those historical dwarfs of the seventeenth century "were so small that if caught in a shower of rain or attacked by an enemy, they would stand beneath a burdock leaf for shelter, or flee thither to hide."[4]

In that instance, we see before our eyes the whole process by which a real race has been transformed into an unreal impossibility, within a period of two centuries or so. Had the extinction (or modification by inter-marriage or by the processes of evolution) of those Yesso dwarfs taken place a thousand years earlier, the difficulty of identifying them would have been greatly increased. After a race has once disappeared from sight, the popular terms describing it must become more vague and confused with every century. Thus, in a certain traditional Scotch story there is mention of a number of "little black creatures with spades." The description is delightfully comprehensive. It would be quite applicable to a gang of Andaman coolies. On the other hand, if we exclude the "spades," it might be applied to any "little black creatures"--say a colony of tadpoles or of black-beetles. So that, when a poet or an artist gets hold of a tradition which has reached this stage of uncertainty, he may give the reins to his fancy, so long as he portrays some kind--any kind--of "little black creatures."[5]

Before parting altogether from the Yesso dwarfs, notice may be taken of a folk-tale containing an incident which obviously derives its existence from them, or from a branch of their race. In Mr. Andrew Lang's "Green Fairy Book" there is introduced a certain Chinese "Story of Hok Lee and the Dwarfs." It appears to be also current in Japan, to judge from a reviewer's remark, that "the clever artist who has illustrated the book must have known the Japanese story, for he gets some of his ideas from the Japanese picture-maker." In the story of Hok Lee the dwarfs are represented as living in subterranean dwellings, and in the picture they are portrayed as half-naked, with (for the most part) shaggy beards and eyebrows, and bald heads. It is wonderfully near the truth. The baldness is one of the most striking characteristics of those actual dwarfs, and is caused by a certain skin-disease, induced by their dirty habits, from which a great number of them suffer, or did suffer. The shaggy beards and eyebrows are equally characteristic of the race; and their custom of occupying half-underground dwellings has given them the name by which they are remembered in Japan at the present day. The exact scene of the story is a matter of minor importance. Those people appear to have been known to the Chinese for at least twelve centuries, and to the Japanese for a much longer period. Thus, it was quite unnecessary for any novelist in China or Japan to invent such people, since they already existed. As for the details of that particular story, or of any other of the kind, it is not to be supposed that a belief in its historical basis necessarily implies an acceptance of every statement contained in it. On this principle, one would be bound to accept the truth of every "snake-story," for the simple reason that one believed in the existence of snakes. Still, it is possible, and perhaps not improbable, that tales which preserve the memory of those people, may also be fairly accurate in many of the statements made regarding them. The reason, however, of introducing this particular story is to show that the Chinese or Japanese romancer did not require to create a race of bald-headed, shaggy, half-wild dwarfs, seeing that that had already been done for him by the Creator.