Ulster Folklore Part 4

[41] See "Memoirs of Anne, Lady Fanshawe," edited by Herbert C.

Fanshawe, pp. 57-59.

[42] Translated by Mr. S. H. O'Grady in "Silva Gadelica,"

volume with translation and notes. (For Cnu and Blathnait, see pp.

115-117.)

[43] _Ibid._, pp. 187, 188.

[44] P. 38, Edinburgh, 1883; edited by John Small, M.A., F.S.A.Scot.

Traditions of Dwarf Races in Ireland and in Switzerland[45]

In the traditions alike of Switzerland and of Ireland we hear of a dwarfish people, dwellers in mountain caves or in artificial souterrains, who are gifted with magical powers. The quaint figure of the Swiss dwarf with his peaked cap has been made familiar to us by the carvings of the peasantry, and in Antrim and Donegal the Irish fairy is said to wear a peaked cap of plaited rushes. With rushes he also makes a covering for his feet.[46]

Closely allied to the fairy is the Grogach, with his large head and soft body, who appears to have no bones as he comes tumbling down the hills. These Grogachs I heard of in North-East Antrim, and in them, as in the fairies, the supernatural characteristics preponderate. I was told that both were full of magic, and had come from Egypt.

We have, however, two other small races who are usually regarded by the peasantry as strictly human, the Pechts and the Danes.[47] Two traditions regarding Danes exist: sometimes we hear of tall Danes, doubtless the medieval sea-rovers; sometimes of small Danes, the builders of many of the raths and souterrains.

While the Danes are the great builders throughout Ireland, some of the raths and souterrains, especially those in North-East Antrim, are said to have been made by the Pechts. Last summer I visited one of these, the cave of Finn McCoul. It is a souterrain situated in Glenshesk, about three miles from Ballycastle. The ground above it is perfectly flat, no fort or any inequality to mark the spot; indeed, the farmer who kindly opened it for me had at first a difficulty in knowing in what part of the field to dig, as the entrance had been covered. On my second visit, however, I found he had discovered the spot. Entering a narrow pa.s.sage, I crept through an opening from one and a half to two feet high, and found myself in a narrow chamber eight or nine feet long and little over four feet in height. The roof was formed of large flat slabs, which I was told were whinstone (basalt). At the opposite end of this chamber there was another narrow opening, leading, I presume, to a pa.s.sage. I did not, however, venture farther; but I understand this artificial cave extends for about twenty perches underground, and has several chambers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IX. [_R. Welch, Photo._ GREY MAN'S PATH, FAIR HEAD.]

I was told that this cave was the hiding-place of Finn McCoul. His garden was pointed out to me on rising ground at some little distance, and I was also informed that about fifty years ago his castle stood on the hill; but nothing now remains of it, the stones having been used when roads were made.

The following story was related to me on the spot: A Scotch giant came over to fight Finn McCoul, but was conquered and slain. To celebrate this victory Finn invited the Grey Man of the Path to a feast; but as hares and rabbits would have been too small to furnish a repast for this giant, Finn took his dog and went out to hunt red deer. They were unsuccessful, and in anger he slew his dog Brown,[48] which afterwards caused him much sorrow.

In the Grey Man of the Path we have, doubtless, a purely mythical character, an impersonation of the mists which gather round Benmore,[49]

while Finn McCoul, or Macc.u.maill, is one of Ireland's greatest traditional heroes. According to a well-known legend, he was a giant, and united Scotland and Ireland by a stupendous mole, of which the cave at Staffa and the Giant's Causeway are the two remaining fragments. In Glenshesk he is only a tall man, between seven and eight feet in height.

Sometimes he is said to have been chief of the Pechts; sometimes he is spoken of as their master, and it is said they worked as slaves to him and the Fians.

According to tradition, the Pechts were very numerous, and must have carried the heavy slabs for the roof of Finn McCoul's cave a distance of several miles. Although usually looked on as strictly human, supernatural characteristics are sometimes attributed to them. Like the Swiss "Servan," both they and the Grogachs have been known to thresh corn or do other work for the farmers.

I was told at Ballycastle of one man who always laid out at night the bundles of corn he expected the Grogach to thresh, and each morning the appointed task was accomplished. One night he forgot to lay the corn on the floor of the barn, and threw his flail on the top of the stack. The poor Grogach imagined that he was to thresh the whole, and set to work manfully; but the task was beyond his strength, and in the morning he was found dead. The farmer and his wife buried him, and mourned deeply the loss of their small friend.

Clough-na-murry Fort is said to be a "gentle"[50] place, yet an old man living near it told me he did not believe in the Grogachs; he thought it was the Danes who had worked for the farmers. He said these Danes were a persevering people, and that when they were in distress they would thresh corn for the farmers, if food were left out for them. Others say that the Danes were too proud to work.

One does not hear much of Brownies in Ulster; but I have been told they were hairy people who did not require clothes, but would thresh or cut down a field of corn for a farmer. On one occasion, out of grat.i.tude for the work done, some porridge was left for them on plates round the fire.

They ate it, but went away crying sadly:

"I got my mate an' my wages, An' they want nae mair o' me."

Although, according to some, the Grogachs gladly accept food, others say that they and the Pechts are offended if it is offered to them, and leave to return no more.

I have not often heard of clothes being offered to the Pechts or Grogachs, but the Rev. John G. Campbell relates a story of a Brownie in Shetland who ground grain in a hand-quern at night. He was rewarded for his labours by a cloak and hood left for him at the mill. These disappeared in the morning, and with them the Brownie, who never came back.[51]

A similar tale is told of a Swiss dwarf. At Ems, in Canton Valais, a miller engaged the services of a "Gottwerg," and the little man worked early and late, sometimes rising in the night to see that all was in order. The mill produced twice as much as formerly, and at the end of the year the dwarf was rewarded by a garment made of the best wool. He put it on, jumped for joy, and crying out, "Now I am a handsome man, I have no more need to grind rye," he disappeared, and was not seen again.[52]

In these tales from Ireland, Scotland, and Switzerland, may there not be a reminiscence of a conquered race of small stature, but considerable strength, who worked either as slaves or for some small gift? No doubt they were badly fed, and their clothing would be of the scantiest.

Like the Danes and the Pechts, the fairies live underground. There is a widespread story of a fairy woman who begs a cottager not to throw water out at the doorstep, as it falls down her chimney. The request is invariably granted.

Some of these "wee folk" dwell in palaces under the sea. I heard a story at Ballyliffan, in Co. Donegal, of men being out in a boat which was nearly capsized by a heavy sea raised by a fairy. At last one sailor cried out to throw a nail against the advancing wave; this was done, and the nail hit the fairy. That night a woman, skilled in healing, received a message calling upon her to go to the courts below the sea. She consented, extracted the nail, and cured the fairy woman, but was careful not to eat any food offered to her. This fairy is said to have promised a man a pot of gold if he would marry her, but he refused.

An old man at Culdaff told me another tale of the sea. A fishing-boat was nearly overwhelmed, when a fairy-boat was seen riding on the top of a great wave, and a voice from it cried: "Do not harm that boat; an old friend of mine is in it." The voice belonged to a man who was supposed to be dead; but he had been carried off by the fairies, and would not allow them to injure his old friend.

If the Irish fairy has power over the waves, the Swiss dwarf can divert the course of the devastating landslip. I was told by an elderly man in the Bernese Oberland of the destruction of Burglauenen, a village near Grindelwald. All the cottages were overwhelmed by a landslip except one poor hut, which had given shelter to a dwarf, who was seen, seated on a stone, directing the moving ma.s.s away from the abode of his friends. A similar story is told of the destruction of Niederdorf, in the Simmenthal.[53] One Sunday evening a feeble little man clad in rags came to the village; he knocked at several houses, praying the inmates to give him, for the love of G.o.d, a night's shelter. Everywhere he was refused--one hard-hearted woman telling him to go and break stones--until he came to a poor basket-maker and his wife, who gave him the best they had, and when he left he promised that G.o.d would reward them. A week later the village was destroyed by a terrible landslip, but here also the dwarf saved the dwelling of those who had befriended him.

In this story and in many others the Swiss dwarf appears as a good Christian, but sometimes a rude and terrible form of paganism is attributed to him. In the tale of the "Gotwergini im Lotschental"[54]

these dwarfs are accused of devouring children, and are said to have buried an old woman alive. She was apparently one of themselves. When they were laying her in the pit she wept bitterly, and begged that she might go free, saying she could still cook. But the dwarfs showed no pity: placing some bread and wine beside her, they covered in the grave.

Is this an instance of the primitive barbarism of killing those no longer able to work, which is said still to exist among the Todas of India, and of which traces have been found in the customs of Scandinavia and other countries?[55]

The Irish fairy never appears as a Christian.[56] He is regarded by the peasant as a fallen angel, and no Church holds out to him the hope of salvation. I was told in Inishowen that a priest walking between Clonmany and Ballyliffan was surrounded by the "wee folk," who asked anxiously if they could be saved. He threw his book towards them, bade them catch it, and he would give them an answer; but at the sight of the breviary they scattered and fled.[57]

The Protestant Bible and hymn-book are equally dreaded by them, and are used as a spell against their influence. I was told in the North of Antrim of a woman who was nearly carried off by the fairies because her friends had omitted to leave these books beside her. Luckily her husband, who was sleeping by the fire, awoke in time to save her. A pair of scissors, a darning-needle, or any piece of iron, would have been efficacious as a charm, so would the husband's trousers, if thrown across the bed.

While, as we have seen, the fairies are endowed with many supernatural qualities, they have much in common with ordinary mortals; there are fairy men, fairy women, and fairy children. I have more than once heard of a fairy's funeral; they intermarry with mortals, and I have been told that those who bear the name of Ferris are descended from fairies. I presume Ferris is a corruption of Fir Sidhe. Fairies are never a.s.sociated with churchyards, nor are they usually looked on as the spirits of the departed. The banshee may, indeed, partake to some extent of a ghostly character. Lady Wilde speaks of her as the "spirit of death--the most weird and awful of all the fairy powers," and adds, "but only certain families of historic lineage or persons gifted with music and song are attended by this spirit."[58]

It has often been stated that the banshee is an appanage of the great, but this is not the belief of the peasantry of Ulster: many families in humble life have a banshee attached to them. When in a curragh on Lough Sessiagh, in Co. Donegal, the neighbouring hill of Ben Olla was pointed out to me, and I was also shown a small cottage in which a girl named Olla had lived. She was carried off by the fairies, and her wailing was heard before the death of her mother, and again before the death of several members of her family. A farmer, or even a labourer, may have a banshee attached to his family--a little white creature was the description given to me by a woman who said she had seen one; others say that banshees are like birds.

To leave these weird apparitions, it will be seen that the ordinary fairy, the Grogach, the Pecht, and the Dane, all inhabit underground dwellings, although the fairy and Grogach are regarded more in the light of supernatural beings. To cut down a fairy or a "Skiough" bush is to court misfortune, sometimes to attempt an impossible task. In Glenshesk some men tried to cut down a Skiough bush, but the hatchet broke; after several failures they gave up, and the bush still flourishes. Another bush was transplanted, but returned during the night.

To the Danes and Pechts the building of all the raths and souterrains is ascribed, and in North-East Antrim the Pechts are said to have been so numerous that, when making a fort, they could stand in a long line, and hand the earth from one to another, no one moving a step. A similar story is told of the Scotch Pechts by the Rev. Andrew Small in his "Antiquities of Fife" (1823).[59] Speaking of the Round Tower of Abernethy, "The story goes," he says, "that it was built by the Pechts ... and that while the work was going on they stood in a row all the way from the Lomond Hill to the building, handing the stones from one to another.... That it has been built of freestone from the Lomond Hill is clear to a demonstration, as the grist or nature of the stone points out the very spot where it has been taken from--namely, a little west, and up from the ancient wood of Drumdriell, about a mile straight south from Meralsford." According to popular tradition in Scotland, these Pechts or Picts were great builders, and many of the edifices ascribed to them belong to a comparatively late period. Mr.

MacRitchie suggests that in the erection of some of these the Picts may have been employed as serfs or slaves.[60] He believes the Pechts to be the Picts of history. Mr. W. C. Mackenzie, on the other hand, has suggested that they are an earlier dwarf race, the Pets or Peti, who have been confused by the peasantry with the Picts.[61] This is a matter I must leave to others to decide; but I may remark in pa.s.sing that in an ancient poem on the Cruithnians, preserved in the book of Lecan, we have a suggestion that these Cruithnians or Picts were a smaller race than their enemies, the Tuath Fidga. We are told how

"G.o.d vouchsafed unto them, in munificence, For their faithfulness--for their reward-- To protect them from the poisoned arms Of the repulsive horrid giants."[62]

Then follows an account of the cure discovered by the Cruithnian Druid--how he milked thrice fifty cows into one pit, and bathing in this pit appears to have healed the warriors and preserved them from harm.

In an article on "The Fairy Mythology of Europe in its Relation to Early History,"[63] Mr. A. S. Herbert identifies the early dwarf race with Palaeolithic man, and states that from such skeletons as have been unearthed "it is believed that they were a people of Mongolian or Turanian origin, short, squat, yellow-skinned, and swarthy."

Professor J. Kollmann, of Basle, speaking of dwarf races, describes "the flat, broad face, with a flat, broad, low nose and large nose roots."[64]

Compare these statements with the description given by Harris in the eighteenth century of the native inhabitants of the northern and eastern coasts of Ireland. "They are," he says, "of a squat sett Stature, have short, broad Faces, thick Lips, hollow Eyes, and Noses c.o.c.ked up, and seem to be a distinct people from the Western Irish, by whom they are called Clan-galls--_i.e._, the offspring of the Galls. The curious may carry these observations further. Doubtless a long intercourse and various mixtures of the natives have much worn out these distinctions, of which I think there are yet visible remains."[65]

We have, indeed, had in Ireland from very early times a mingling of various races, but in the North we are in the home of the Irish Picts or Cruithnians, and possibly this description of Harris may indicate that some of the inhabitants in his day bore marks of a dwarfish ancestry. I have already drawn attention to a statement in an old Irish ma.n.u.script[66] that the Luchorpan or wee-bodies, the Fomores and others, were of the race of Ham. Keating also speaks of the Fomorians being sea-rovers of the race of Cam (Ham), who fared from Africa,[67] and states that among the articles of tribute exacted by them from the race of Neimhidh were two-thirds of the children. Unless these were all slaughtered, we have here an intermingling of races, and in the same way it would be quite possible that Finn McCoul might be a tall man, and yet the leader of the small Pechts. The capture of women and children has been a common practice among savage races, and this I believe to be the origin of many fairy-tales, rather than any reference to the abode of the dead. Throughout the "Colloquy of the Ancients," Finn and the Fianna frequently enter the green sidh--the mound where the Tuatha de Danann dwell, and from which the fairies derive their name "fir-sidh."

Sometimes they fight as allies of the inmates; frequently they intermarry with them.[68] Throughout this colloquy the dwellers in the sidh possess many magical powers, but they hardly appear as G.o.ds of the ancient Irish, and the verse in Fiacc's hymn referring to the worship of the Sidis is not among the stanzas regarded as genuine by Professor Bury.[69]

We see that both in Ireland and Switzerland there are many legends of dwarf races who inhabit underground dwellings. In Switzerland their skeletons have been found. Those discovered by Dr. Nuesch at Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen, have been minutely described by Dr.

J. Kollmann, Professor of Anatomy at Basle.[70] This burial-place dates from the early Neolithic period; in it are found skeletons belonging to men of ordinary height, and in close proximity the graves of dwarfs.

The neighbourhood of Schaffhausen appears to be rich in the remains of early man; several skeletons have been found in the cave of Dachsenbuel, two of them of small men, "such as in Africa would be accounted pygmies."[71] Professor Kollmann mentions several other places in Switzerland where skeletons of dwarfs have been found, as also in the Grotte des Enfants on the Bay of Genoa. He also speaks of dwarf races existing at the present day in Sicily, Sardinia, Sumatra, the Philippine Islands, besides the well-known Veddas of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders, and the African pygmies. He believes that these small people represent the oldest form of human beings, and that from them the taller races have been evolved.

How long did these primitive people continue to exist in Ireland and in Switzerland? It would be difficult to say. Tradition ascribes to them a strong physique, but even if they could hold their own with the taller races in the Neolithic period, it must have been hard for them to contend with those who used weapons of bronze or iron, and, as we have seen, iron is specially obnoxious to the fairies. The people, however, who built the large number of souterrains dotted over Antrim and Down could not be easily exterminated. Many of them may have been enslaved or gradually absorbed in the rest of the population; others would take refuge in retired spots, such as are still spoken of as "gentle" or haunted by fairies. If I might hazard a conjecture, I should say that both in Ireland and in Switzerland dwarf races had survived far into Christian times, perhaps to a comparatively recent period. The Irish fairy may possibly represent those who refused to accept the teaching of St. Patrick and St. Columbkill, while St. Gall and other Irish monks may have numbered Swiss dwarfs among their converts. Be this as it may, we have certainly in Ulster the tradition of two dwarf races, the small Danes and the Pechts, who are undoubtedly human. We are shown their handiwork, and, primitive as are their underground dwellings, the builders of the souterrains had advanced far beyond the stage when man could only find shelter in the caves provided for him by Nature. How many centuries did he take to learn the lesson? It is a far-reaching question, but here fairy-tales and popular legends are silent. They keep no count of time, although they may bring to us whispers from long-past ages.