"This class of structures deserves a careful study," observes Captain Thomas, referring to the souterrains of the north-west of Scotland;[97] "for the room or accommodation afforded by this mode of building is exceedingly small when compared with the labour expended in procuring it; besides, the doorway or entry is often so contracted that no bulky object, not even a very stout man, could get in ... But what are we to think when the single passage is so small that only a child could crawl through it?"
[94] On the very topmost course of all, the gallery dwindles into such insignificant dimensions that not even a dwarf (as one would naturally understand that term) could creep along it. Scott cannot have meant this very extremity. With regard to it, I should be inclined to say that it was merely the necessary finish of the gallery, not intended to be used any more than the spaces beside the eaves of a house.
[95] The tendency to "idealisation on the part of the narrator" is referred to, in this connection, by Mr. Joseph Jacobs, at p. 242 of his "English Fairy Tales" (London, D. Nutt, 1890).
[96] Jour. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland, 1891 (Third Quarter), p. 517. It is not inappropriate to add that one of these inscriptions reads: "Branan, son of Ochal," and that the decipherer (the Rev. Edmond Barry, M.R.I.A.) identifies this latter name with "the name of a King of the Fairies of Connaught (Ri Síde Connacht)": op. cit., pp. 524-525. The Ardtole souterrain is described in the Journal of the same Society (July-October, 1889, p. 245), by Mr. Seaton F. Milligan, M.R.I.A.; and the one in Sutherlandshire is referred to by Dr. Joseph Anderson (at p. 289 of "Scotland in Pagan Times: The Iron Age," Edinburgh, 1883).
[97] Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. (First Series), vol. vii. pp. 185-6.
