"But the both of the Long Island is only the lodging of the common man or 'Tuathanach,' and is consequently of small dimensions, and not remarkable for comfort. If the modern Highland proprietor or large farmer should ever be induced to lead a pastoral life, and adopt a Pictish architecture in his residence, we might again see a tumulus of twenty feet in height, with its long low passage leading into a large hall with beehive cells on both sides."[69]
But the point of all this is that these dwellings, whether above ground or below, are known as Picts' Houses, Fairy Halls, Elf Hillocks, "the hidden places of Fians and Fairies." Thus, the three titles which I have shown to be associated in other ways are all given to the alleged builders and occupiers of those very archaic and peculiar structures.
It is true that, in their most modern form, some of those dwellings are still inhabited for months at a time. And their inhabitants are neither Fians, Fairies nor Picts. But it is among those people that stories of Fians and Fairies are most rife, and many claim an actual descent from them. And although they are certainly not pigmies, yet they live in a district in which the small type of this heterogeneous nation of ours is still quite discernible; and that part of the island of Lewis (Uig), which has longest retained those places as dwellings, is inhabited by a caste whom other Hebrideans describe as small, and regard as different from themselves.[70] Dr. Beddoe states that the tallest people in the United Kingdom are to be found in a certain village in Galloway, where a six-foot man is perfectly common, and many are above that height. It is quite certain that such men could not "nest like sand-martins" in the holes in the wall described by Captain Thomas. And, in proportion as such Galloway men are to the modern Hebridean mound-dwellers, so are these to the much more archaic race with whom the oldest structures are associated. For a study of the dimensions of these will show that they could not have been conceived, and would not have been built or inhabited by any but a race of actual dwarfs; as tradition says they were.
[18] "La légende des Pygmées et les nains de l'Afrique equatoriale": Rev. Hist. t. 47, I. (Sept.-Oct. 1891), pp. 1-64.
[19] For some of these references see Dr. Hibbert's "Description of the Shetland Islands," Edinburgh, 1822, pp. 444-451. See also Mrs. J.E. Saxby's "Folk-Lore from Unst, Shetland" (in Leisure Hour of 1880); Mr. W.G. Black's "Heligoland", 1888, chap. iv.; and "The Fians," London, 1891, pp. 2-3.
[20] Gwynn the son of Nudd: for whom see Lady C. Guest's "Mabinogion," pp. 223, 263-5, and 501-2.
[21] "The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill," edited by J.H. Todd, D.D., London, 1867, pp. 114-115.
[22] I. cc. 4-6 (this reference and the passage is quoted from Du Chaillu's "Viking Age," vol. ii. p. 516).
[23] "Fianaibh ag Sithcuiraibh"
[24] "Dan an Fhir Shicair"; Leabhar na Feinne, pp. 94-95.