A Philological Essay Concerning The Pygmies Of The Ancients Part 4

7. The a.s.sociation of little people with water as a home is a widespread notion. The Sea-Trows of the Shetlanders inhabit a region of their own at the bottom of the sea. They here respire a peculiar atmosphere, and live in habitations constructed of the choicest submarine productions. They are, however, not always small, but may be of diverse statures, like the Scandinavian Necks. In Germany the Water-Dwarfs are also known. At Seewenheiher, in the Black Forest, a little water-man (_Seemannlein_) used to come and join the people, work the whole day along with them, and in the evening go back into the lakes.[A] The size of the Breton Korrigs or Korrigan, if we may believe Villemarque in his account of this folk, does not exceed two feet, but their proportions are most exact, and they have long flowing hair, which they comb out with great care. Their only dress is a long white veil, which they wind round their body. Seen at night or in the dusk of the evening, their beauty is great; but in the daylight their eyes appear red, their hair is white, and their faces wrinkled; hence they rarely let themselves be seen by day. They are fond of music, and have fine voices, but are not much given to dancing. Their favourite haunts are the springs, by which they sit and comb their hair.[B] The Maories also have their Water-Pigmies, the Ponaturi, who are, according to Mr. Tregear, elves, little tiny people, mostly dwellers in water, coming ash.o.r.e to sleep.[C] "The spirits most commonly met with in African mythology," says Mr. Macdonald, "are water or river spirits, inhabiting deep pools where there are strong eddies and under-currents. Whether they are all even seen now-a-days it is difficult to determine, but they must at one time have either shown themselves willingly, or been dragged from their hiding-places by some powerful magician, for they are one and all described. They are dwarfs, and correspond to the Scottish conception of kelpies or fairies. They are wicked and malevolent beings, and are never credited with a good or generous action. Whatever they possess they keep, and greedily seize upon any one who comes within their reach. 'One of them, the Incanti, corresponds to the Greek Python, and another, called Hiti, appears in the form of a small and very ugly man, and is exceedingly malevolent' (Brownlee). It is certain death to see an Incanti, and no one but the magicians sees them except in dreams, and in that case the magicians are consulted, and advise and direct what is to be done."[D]

[Footnote A: Grimm ap. Keightley, p. 261.]

[Footnote B: Villemarque, ibid., 431.]

[Footnote C: Tregear, _ut supra._]

[Footnote D: _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xx. 124.]

Dr. Nansen, speaking of the Ignerssuit (plural of Ignersuak, which means "great fire"), says that they are for the most part good spirits, inclined to help men. The entrance to their dwellings is on the sea-sh.o.r.e.

According to the Eskimo legend, "The first earth which came into existence had neither seas nor mountains, but was quite smooth. When the One above was displeased with the people upon it, He destroyed the world. It burst open, and the people fell down into the rifts and became Ignerssuit and the water poured over everything."[A] The spirits here alluded to appear to be the same as those described by Mr. Boas as Uissuit in his monograph on the Central Eskimo. He describes them as "a strange people that live in the sea. They are dwarfs, and are frequently seen between Iglulik and Netchillik, where the Anganidjen live, an Innuit tribe whose women are in the habit of tracing rings around their eyes. There are men and women among the Uissuit, and they live in deep water, never coming to the surface. When the Innuit wish to see them, they go in their boats to a place where they cannot see the bottom, and try to catch them with hooks which they slowly move up and down. As soon as they get a bite they draw in the line. The Uissuit are thus drawn up; but no sooner do they approach the surface than they dive down headlong again, only their legs having emerged from the water. The Innuit have never succeeded in getting one out of the water."[A]

[Footnote A: Nansen, _ut supra_, p. 259.]

[Footnote A: _American Bureau of Ethnology_, vi. 612.]

8. Amongst habitations not coming under any of the above categories may be mentioned the moors and open places affected by the Cornish fairies, and lastly the curious residences of the Kirkonwaki or Church-folk of the Finns. "It is an article of faith with the Finns that there dwell under the altar in every church little misshapen beings which they call Kirkonwaki, i.e., Church-folk. When the wives of these little people have a difficult labour, they are relieved if a Christian woman visits them and lays her hand upon them. Such service is always rewarded by a gift of gold and silver."[A] These folk evidently correspond to the Kirkgrims of Scandinavian countries, and the traditions respecting both are probably referable to the practice of foundation sacrifices.

[Footnote A: Grimm ap. Keightley, p. 488.]

IV.

The subject of Pigmy races and fairy tales cannot be considered to have been in any sense fully treated without some consideration of a theory which, put forward by various writers and in connection with the legends of diverse countries, has recently been formulated by Mr. MacRitchie in a number of most interesting and suggestive books and papers. An early statement of this theory is to be found in a paper by Mr. J.F. Campbell, in which he stated, "It is somewhat remarkable that traditions still survive in the Highlands of Scotland which seem to be derived from the habits of Scotch tribes like the Lapps in our day. Stories are told in Sutherlandshire about a 'witch' who milked deer; a 'ghost' once became acquainted with a forester, and at his suggestion packed all her plenishing on a herd of deer, when forced to flit by another and a bigger 'ghost;' the green mounds in which 'fairies' are supposed to dwell closely resemble the outside of Lapp huts. The fairies themselves are not represented as airy creatures in gauze wings and spangles, but they appear in tradition as small cunning people, eating and drinking, living close at hand in their green mound, stealing children and cattle, milk and food, from their bigger neighbours. They are uncanny, but so are the Lapps. My own opinion is that these Scotch traditions relate to the tribes who made kitchen-middens and lake-dwellings in Scotland, and that they were allied to Lapps."[A] Such in essence is Mr. MacRitchie's theory, which has been so admirably summarised by Mr. Jacobs in the first of that series of fairy-tale books which has added a new joy to life, that I shall do myself the pleasure of quoting his statement in this place. He says: "Briefly put, Mr. MacRitchie's view is that the elves, trolls, and fairies represented in popular tradition are really the mound-dwellers, whose remains have been discovered in some abundance in the form of green hillocks, which have been artificially raised over a long and low pa.s.sage leading to a central chamber open to the sky. Mr. MacRitchie shows that in several instances traditions about trolls or 'good people' have attached themselves to mounds which long afterwards, on investigation, turned out to be evidently the former residence of men of smaller build than the mortals of to-day. He goes on further to identify these with the Picts-- fairies are called 'Pechs' in Scotland--and other early races, but with these ethnological equations we need not much concern ourselves. It is otherwise with the mound traditions and their relation, if not to fairy tales in general, to tales about fairies, trolls, elves, &c. These are very few in number, and generally bear the character of anecdotes. The fairies, &c., steal a child; they help a wanderer to a drink and then disappear into a green hill; they help cottagers with their work at night, but disappear if their presence is noticed; human midwives are asked to help fairy mothers; fairy maidens marry ordinary men, or girls marry and live with fairy husbands. All such things may have happened and bear no such _a priori_ marks of impossibility as speaking animals, flying through the air, and similar incidents of the folk-tale pure and simple. If, as archaeologists tell us, there was once a race of men in Northern Europe very short and hairy, that dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green hillocks, it does not seem unlikely that odd survivors of the race should have lived on after they had been conquered and nearly exterminated by Aryan invaders, and should occasionally have performed something like the pranks told of fairies and trolls."[B] In the same place, and also in another article,[C] the writer just quoted has applied this theory to the explanation of the story of "Childe Rowland."

[Footnote A: _Journ. Ethnol. Soc._, 1869-70, p. 325.]

[Footnote B: _English Fairy Tales_, p. 241.]

[Footnote C: _Folk Lore_, ii. 126.]

Mr. MacRitchie has, in another paper,[A] collected a number of instances of the use of the word _Sith_ in connection with hillocks and tumuli, which are the resort of the fairies. Here also he discusses the possible connection of that word with that of _Tshud_, the t.i.tle of the vanished supernatural inhabitants of the land amongst the Finns and other "Altaic"

Turanian tribes of Russia, as in other places he has endeavoured to trace a connection between the Finns and the Feinne. Into these etymological questions I have no intention to enter, since I am not qualified to do so, nor is it necessary, as they have been fully dealt with by Mr. Nutt, whose opinion on this point is worthy of all attention.[B] But it may be permitted to me to inquire how far Mr. MacRitchie's views tally with the facts mentioned in the foregoing section. I shall therefore allude to a few points which appear to me to show that the origin of the belief in fairies cannot be settled in so simple a manner as has been suggested, but is a question of much greater complexity--one in which, as Mr. Tylor says, more than one mythic element combines to make up the whole.

[Footnote A: _Journ. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland_, iii. 367.]

[Footnote A: _Folk and Hero Tales from Argyleshire_, p. 420.]

(1.) In the first place, then, it seems clear, so far as our present knowledge teaches us, that there never was a really Pigmy race inhabiting the northern parts of Scotland.

The scanty evidence which we have on this point, so far as it goes, proves the truth of this a.s.sertion. Mr. Carter Blake found in the Muckle Heog of the Island of Unst, one of the Shetlands, together with stone vessels, human interments of persons of considerable stature and of great muscular strength. Speaking of the Keiss skeletons, Professor Huxley says that the males are, the one somewhat above, and the other probably about the average stature; while the females are short, none exceeding five feet two inches or three inches in height.[A] And Dr. Garson, treating of the osteology of the ancient inhabitants of the Orkneys, says that the female skeleton which he examined was about five feet two inches in height, i.e., about the mean height of the existing races of England.[B] There is no evidence that Lapps and Eskimo ever visited these parts of the world; and if they did, as we have seen, their stature, though stunted, cannot fairly be described as pigmy. Even if we grant that the stature of the early races did not average more than five feet two inches, which, by the way, was the height of the great Napoleon, it is more than doubtful whether it fell so far short of that of succeeding races as to cause us to imagine that it gave rise to tales about a race of dwarfs.

[Footnote A: Laing, _Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, p. 101.]

[Footnote B: _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xiii. 60.]

(2.) The mounds with which the tales of little people are a.s.sociated have not, in many cases, been habitations, but were natural or sepulchral in their nature. It may, of course, be argued that the story having once arisen in connection with one kind of mound, may, by a process easy to understand, have been transferred to other hillocks similar in appearance, though diverse in nature. It is difficult to see, however, how this could have occurred in Yorkshire and other parts of England, where it is not argued that the stunted inhabitants of the North ever penetrated. It is still more difficult to explain how similar legends can have originated in America in connection with mounds, since there never were Pigmy races in that continent.

(3.) The rude and simple arrangements of the interior of these mound dwellings might have, in the process of time, become altered into the gorgeous halls, decked with gold and silver and precious stones, as we find them in the stories; they might even, though this is much more difficult to understand, have become possessed of the capacity for being raised upon red pillars. But there is one pitch to which, I think, they could never have attained, and that is the importance which they a.s.sume when they become the external covering of a large and extensive tract of underground country. Here we are brought face to face with a totally different explanation, to which I shall recur in due course.

(4.) The little people are not by any means a.s.sociated entirely with mounds, as the foregoing section is largely intended to show. Their habitations may be in or amongst stones, in caves, under the water, in trees, or amongst the glades of a forest; they may dwell on mountains, on moors, or even under the altars of churches. We may freely grant that some of these habitations fall into line with Mr. MacRitchie's theory, but they are not all susceptible of such an explanation.

(5.) The a.s.sociation of giants and dwarfs in certain places, even the confusion of the two races, seems somewhat difficult of explanation by this theory. In Ireland the distinction between the two cla.s.ses is sharper than in other places, since, as Sir William Wilde pointed out, whilst every green rath in that island is consecrated to the fairies or "good people," the remains attributed to the giants are of a different character and probably of a later date. In some places, however, a mound similar to those often connected with fairies is a.s.sociated with a giant, as is the case at Sessay parish, near Thirsk,[A] and at Fyfield in Wiltshire. The chambered tumulus at Luckington is spoken of as the Giant's Caves, and that at Nempnet in Somersetshire as the Fairy's Toot. In Denmark, tumuli seem to be described indifferently as Zettestuer (Giants' Chambers) or Troldestuer (Fairies' Chambers).[B] In "Beowulf" a chambered tumulus is described, in the recesses of which were treasures watched over for three hundred years by a dragon. This barrow was of stone, and the work of giants.

Seah on enta geweorc, Looked on the giant's work, hu a stan-bogan, how the stone arches, stapulinn-faeste, on pillars fast, ece eor-reced the eternal earth-house innan healde. held within.

[Footnote A: _Folk Lore_, i. 130.]

[Footnote B: _Flint Chips_, p. 412.]

The mounds have sometimes been made by giants and afterwards inhabited by dwarfs, as in the case of the Nine-hills, already alluded to. In others, they are at the same time inhabited by giants, dwarfs, and others, as in the story of the Dwarf's Banquet,[A] and still more markedly in the Wunderberg. "The celebrated Wunderberg, or Underberg, on the great moor near Salzburg, is the chief haunt of the Wild-women. The Wunderberg is said to be quite hollow, and supplied with stately palaces, churches, monasteries, gardens, and springs of gold and silver. Its inhabitants, beside the Wild-women, are little men, who have charge of the treasures it contains, and who at midnight repair to Salzburg to perform their devotions in the cathedral; giants, who used to come to the church of Grodich and exhort the people to lead a G.o.dly and pious life; and the great Emperor Charles V., with golden crown and sceptre, attended by knights and lords. His grey beard has twice encompa.s.sed the table at which he sits, and when it has the third time grown round it, the end of the world and the appearance of the Antichrist will take place."[B]

[Footnote A: Grimm ap. Keightley, 130.]

[Footnote B: Grimm ap. Keightley, 234.]

In the folk-tales of the Magyars we meet with a still more remarkable confusion between these two cla.s.ses of beings. Some of the castles described in these stories are inhabited by giants, others by fairies.

Again, the giants marry; their wives are fairies, so are their daughters.

They had no male issue, as their race was doomed to extermination. They fall in love, and are fond of courting. Near Bikkfalva, in Haromszek, the people still point out the "Lover's Bench" on a rock where the amorous giant of Csigavar used to meet his sweetheart, the "fairy of Veczelteto."[A]

[Footnote A: _Folk Tales of the Magyars_, p. xxix.]

(6.) Tales of little people are to be found in countries where there never were any Pigmy races. Not to deal with other, and perhaps more debatable districts, we find an excellent example of this in North America. Besides the instances mentioned in the foregoing section, the following may be mentioned. Mr. Leland, speaking of the Un-a-games-suk, or Indian spirits of the rocks and streams, says that these beings enter far more largely, deeply, and socially into the life and faith of the Indians than elves or fairies ever did into those of the Aryan race.[A] In his Algonquin Legends the same author also alludes to small people.

[Footnote A: _Memoirs_, i. 34.]

Dr. Brinton tells me that the Micmacs have tales of similar Pigmies, whom they call Wig[)u]l[)a]d[)u]mooch, who tie people with cords during their sleep, &c. Mr. L.L. Frost, of Susanville, La.s.sen County, California, tells us how, when he requested an Indian to gather and bring in all the arrow-points he could find, the Indian declared them to be "no good," that they had been made by the lizards. Whereupon Mr. Frost drew from him the following lizard-story. "There was a time when the lizards were little men, and the arrow-points which are now found were shot by them at the grizzly bear. The bears could talk then, and would eat the little men whenever they could catch them. The arrows of the little men were so small that they would not kill the bears when shot into them, and only served to enrage them." The Indian could not tell how the little men became transformed into lizards.[A] Again, the Shoshones of California dread their infants being changed by Ninumbees or dwarfs.[B]

[Footnote A: _Folk Lore Journal_, vii. 24.]

[Footnote B: Hartland, _ut supra_, p. 351.]

Finally, every one has read about the Pukwudjies, "the envious little people, the fairies, the pigmies," in the pages of Longfellow's "Hiawatha."[A] It ought to be mentioned that Mr. Leland states that the red-capped, scanty-shirted elf of the Algonquins was obtained from the Nors.e.m.e.n; but if, as he says, the idea of little people has sunk so deeply into the Indian mind, it cannot in any large measure have been derived from this source.[B]

[Footnote A: xviii.]

[Footnote B: _Etrusco Roman Remains_, p. 162.]

(7.) The stunted races whom Mr. MacRitchie considers to have formed the subjects of the fairy legend have themselves tales of little people. This is true especially of the Eskimo, as will have been already noticed, a fact to which my attention was called by Mr. Hartland.

For the reasons just enumerated, I am unable to accept Mr. MacRitchie's theory as a complete explanation of the fairy question, but I am far from desirous of under-estimating the value and significance of his work. Mr.

Tylor, as I have already mentioned, states, in a sentence which may yet serve as a motto for a work on the whole question of the origin of the fairy myth, that "various different facts have given rise to stories of giants and dwarfs, more than one mythic element perhaps combining to form a single legend--a result perplexing in the extreme to the mythological interpreter."[A] And I think it may be granted that Mr. MacRitchie has gone far to show that one of these mythic elements, one strand in the twisted cord of fairy mythology, is the half-forgotten memory of skulking aborigines, or, as Mr. Nutt well puts it, the "distorted recollections of alien and inimical races." But it is not the only one. It is far from being my intention to endeavour to deal exhaustively with the difficult question of the origin of fairy tales. Knowledge and the s.p.a.ce permissible in an introduction such as this would alike fail me in such a task. It may, however, be permissible to mention a few points which seem to impress themselves upon one in making a study of the stories with which I have been dealing. In the first place, one can scarcely fail to notice how much in common there is between the tales of the little people and the accounts of that underground world, which, with so many races, is the habitation of the souls of the departed. Dr. Callaway has already drawn attention to this point in connection with the ancestor-worship of the Amazulu.[B] He says, "It may be worth while to note the curious coincidence of thought among the Amazulu regarding the Amatongo or Abapansi, and that of the Scotch and Irish regarding the fairies or 'good people.' For instance, the 'good people' of the Irish have a.s.signed to them, in many respects the same motives and actions as the Amatongo. They call the living to join them, that is, by death; they cause disease which common doctors cannot understand nor cure; they have their feelings, interests, partialities, and antipathies, and contend with each other about the living. The common people call them their friends or people, which is equivalent to the term _abakubo_ given to the Amatongo. They reveal themselves in the form of the dead, and it appears to be supposed that the dead become 'good people,' as the dead among the Amazulu become Amatongo; and in funeral processions of the 'good people' which some have professed to see, are recognised the forms of those who have just died, as Umkatshana saw his relatives amongst the Abapansi. The power of holding communion with the 'good people' is consequent on an illness, just as the power to divine amongst the natives of this country. So also in the Highland tales, a boy who had been carried away by the fairies, on his return to his own home speaks of them as 'our folks,' which is equivalent to _abakwetu_, applied to the Amatongo, and among the Highlands they are called the 'good people' and 'the folk.' They are also said to 'live underground,' and are therefore Abapansi or subterranean. They are also, like the Abapansi, called ancestors. Thus the Red Book of Clanra.n.a.ld is said not to have been dug up, but to have been found on the moss; it seemed as if the ancestors sent it." There are other points which make in the same direction. The soul is supposed by various races to be a little man, an idea which at once links the manes of the departed with Pigmy people. Thus Dr. Nansen tells us that amongst the Eskimo a man has many souls. The largest dwell in the larynx and in the left side, and are tiny men about the size of a sparrow. The other souls dwell in other parts of the body, and are the size of a finger-joint.[C]

And the Macusi Indians[D] believe that although the body will decay, "the man in our eyes" will not die, but wander about; an idea which is met with even in Europe, and which perhaps gives us a clue to the conception of smallness in size of the shades of the dead. Again, the belief that the soul lives near the resting-place of its body is widespread, and at least comparable with, if not equivalent to, the idea that the little people of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, and India live in the sepulchral mounds or cromlechs of those countries. Closely connected with this is the idea of the underground world, peopled by the souls of the departed like the Abapansi, the widespread nature of which idea is shown by Dr. Tylor. "To take one example, in which the more limited idea seems to have preceded the more extensive, the Finns,[E] who feared the ghost of the departed as unkind, harmful beings, fancied them dwelling with their bodies in the grave, or else, with what Castren thinks a later philosophy, a.s.signed them their dwelling in the subterranean Tuonela. Tuonela was like this upper earth; the sun shone there, there was no lack of land and water, wood and field, tilth and meadow; there were bears and wolves, snakes and pike, but all things were of a hurtful, dismal kind; the woods dark and swarming with wild beasts, the water black, the cornfields bearing seed of snake's teeth; and there stern, pitiless old Tuoni, and his grim wife and son, with the hooked fingers with iron points, kept watch and ward over the dead lest they should escape."

[Footnote A: _Primitive Culture_, i. 388.]