Again, when we look at certain weapons used by the Feens, a similar resemblance is visible. According to a tradition, taken down from the recital of an old Hebridean, the spears or darts of the Feens, which were known in Gaelic as "tunnachan," were of this description: "They were sticks with sharp ends made on them, and these ends burned and hardened in the fire. They [the Feens] used to throw them from them, and they could aim exceedingly with them, and they could drive them through a man. They used to have a bundle with them on their shoulders, and a bundle in their oxters [under their arm-pits]. I myself have seen one of them that was found in a moss, that was as though it had been hardened in the fire."[82] "This, then," justly remarks Mr. Campbell, "gives the popular notion of the heroes [the Feens], and throws them back beyond the iron period."
While the fashion of referring to "periods" of iron, bronze, etc., is very apt to mislead (since contiguous peoples have been, and are, in different "periods" of this nature, at the same moment of time), it is at least clear from the above tradition that the most primitive form of dart was associated with the Feens. But, although this species of weapon is of great antiquity, it does not follow that a tradition which relates to people who employed it, is necessarily of great antiquity also. Or that those javelin-men were at all "prehistoric." We have already seen that a race of people employed darts in exactly the same way when fishing—or, perhaps, more correctly, when seal-hunting—within British waters, only two hundred years ago. And the people who in this respect resembled the Feens of Gaelic folk-lore are themselves remembered as Finns.
But perhaps the readiest and surest way of obtaining something like a true conception of these legendary Feens, is to regard them from the ethnological point of view, as well, that is, as our imperfect information will allow. We shall therefore look at them in this aspect, whether considered as Picts or Cruithné or as Feens.
The great hero of the Feenic legends, and the "King" or "General" of the Feens of Ireland, was the famous "Finn" or "Fionn." If the battle of Gawra was really fought in the third century, as is alleged, and if this "Fionn" was a real man, and not the type or "eponymus" of his race, then he ought to be assigned to the third century. For he is said to have been present at that battle, where his grandson was slain and the supremacy of his race destroyed. At any rate, whether he lived at that date or not, and whether he was an individual or merely a personification of his race, Fionn figures throughout the tales of these people as a very Feen of the Feens.
Now, among the many stories told of him, there is one, entitled "How Fin[83] went to the Kingdom of the Big Men." It is unnecessary to give all the particulars of this tale. But Fin is pictured as starting from Dublin Bay in his little coracle (curachan) on his voyage to the country of the Big Men. Although he is described as "hoisting the spotted, towering sails," they cannot have been very large, or very many, for the coracle was so small that "Fin was guide in her prow, helm in her stern, and tackle in her middle," and when he landed on the coast of the Big Men's country, he drew his tiny vessel, unaided, up into the dry grass, above the tide-mark. It ought to be added, however, that this coracle was an open boat, capable of holding at least four persons; as is shown on the return voyage.
After landing, Fin encountered a "big wayfarer" (tais-dealach mòr), who informed him that his king had long been in want of a dwarf (troich), and that Fin would suit him capitally. "He took with him Fin; but another big man (fear mòr) came, and was going to take Fin from him. The two fought; but when they had torn each other's clothes, they left it to Fin to judge. He chose the first one. He took Fin with him to the palace of the king, whose worthies and high nobles assembled to see the little man (an duine bhig"). And then and there Fin was installed as the royal dwarf.[84]
In this story, then, we have the tacit admission that, not far from Fin's home at the hill of Allen, Kildare, there was a country whose inhabitants were so much taller than the race of Fin, that the latter were mere dwarfs beside them. Now, this is precisely the most striking characteristic of the kayak-using Finns of Shetlandic tradition.
The Finns of Shetland folk-lore are, says Mr. Karl Blind, "reckoned among the Trows." The king of the Feens was hailed in the country of the big men as a Troich. And these are simply two forms of the same word. Troich or droich, among Gaelic-speaking people, is softened into trow or drow among the English-speaking Shetlanders.[85] In both cases it signifies "dwarf."
And, just as the Shetlanders have memories of a race of small men, who, in spite of their mean stature, were a terror to the taller people, whom they oppressed and took tribute from, so have the Gaelic-speaking people a mass of legends which also tell of similar dwarfish but dreaded tyrants. The former designate their dwarfs "Finns": if the Gaelic traditions are not equally definite, they at least suggest that a caste of "Feens," who levied a tax upon the Gaelic-speaking people, were themselves dwarfs in stature. And the Highland tales abound in stories of fierce and tyrannical dwarfs.