Of which the historical interpretation, as applied to Scotland, apparently is, that these popular traditions relate to the time when the Pechts, conquered by the Scots, who subsequently were reinforced by various later immigrant races, still retained a certain amount of independence, with special rights in certain districts, reserved to them as "Pecht lands." Their dwarfish stature is seen from the very word by which they are known, as well as from the dwellings they inhabited. Their small horses are spoken of in the earliest accounts of them,[162] and indeed still survive, though no doubt in blended forms, as the small breeds of Galloway, Shetland, and various parts of England. Their favourite colour gave them, in their earliest days, the title of Green Men or Virides; although then the colouring was applied in a more primitive fashion.
Apart from all the resemblances specially referred to, there is a general association in the popular mind between Pechts and Fairies. Both are regarded as extinct races, and the date of their disappearance, though vague, points to the one period; and localities known as the abodes of Pechts are also known as the abodes of Fairies. For example, an antiquary of that neighbourhood (Sir Herbert Maxwell) states that "the fortified promontory of the Mull [of Galloway] is locally believed to have been the last stronghold to which the Picts of Galloway retired before an overwhelming force of Scotic (?) invaders." In the same paper,[163] and referring to the same promontory, the writer specifies "a small fortification called the 'Dunnan,' credited with having been a favourite haunt of the fairies." Again, the famous Pictish hill-fort in Forfarshire, known as the "White Cater Thun," is equally famous as a fairy stronghold. This celebrated fortress has been described on a previous page. It crowns a hill in the neighbourhood of the ancient city of Brechin, the centre of a district which was indisputably a territory of the Pechts. Even yet one may discern in the ruins of this fort the traces of the dwellings which so closely characterize the architecture of the Pechts, the chambers made within the thickness of the wall. Within the long elliptical enclosure of the White Cater Thun there are, indeed, faint traces of other buildings; but the great majority of its garrison must have been housed, after the fashion of the race, in the chambers that are traceable all along the actual rampart itself. And of this chambered fortress local tradition states that it was "the abode of fairies, and that a brawny witch carried the whole [of the stones] one morning from the channel of the West Water where it fell, and is pointed out to this day on the north-east slope of the mountain! This tradition, it may be remarked," continues our authority,[164] "however outré, is curious from its analogy to that concerning the castles of Mulgrave and Pickering in Yorkshire, the extensive causeways of which are said to have been paved by genii named Wada and his wife Bell, the latter, like the Amazonian builder of Caterthun, having carried the stones from a great distance in her apron!" Among all the exaggeration and confusion of these statements two things are quite discernible—the identity of Pechts with fairies or other "supernaturals" in general—and (in particular) the identity of the descriptions given of people so denominated, in the region of Caterthun and of Yorkshire, and the descriptions of the Northumbrian Pechts as quoted on a previous page.[165] Indeed, the accounts given of the Pechts in the locality last-named, as well as some features of the traditional builders of Abernethy Round Tower, render it impossible to distinguish, in these two cases, between "Pechts" and "Fairies," or "Witches." And this, indeed, as we have seen, was the popular belief.
The conclusion, therefore, to be drawn from what has been said upon this subject is that, although the term Pict or Pecht has been chosen by History as that by which a certain race of people, once found in Scotland, ought to be remembered, yet that term indicates nothing more[166] than Trow or Dwarf, either of which names might as reasonably have been chosen as their synonym Pecht. And that when one speaks of Pechts, Trows, or Dwarfs, one is speaking of the same kind of people—the mound-dwellers, or "underground" races of the past. Further, that the people traditionally remembered in Shetland as Finns belonged to that group; as also those whom Gaelic folk-lore styles the Feinne. And that, along with many other popular terms not here enumerated, one of the names by which such people have been widely known is that of "the Fairies."
CHAPTER XIII.
There is one variety of the underground dwellings which, in the northern counties of Scotland if not elsewhere, is more specially indicated by the term "Earth House," or "Eirde House." With regard to this class of structure, an experienced archæologist[167] makes the following remarks:—
"The whole of these have been formed after one idea, viz. to secure an unobserved entrance, and to preserve a curved shape. From the entrance the first part of these structures is generally a low and narrow passage, growing in width and height from the point where the direction is changed, and terminating in a rounded extremity.
"The part of them last referred to is generally from five to nine feet in width, with a height barely sufficient to permit a man to stand erect. In some cases, however, they have been found to be of much more contracted dimensions throughout. The Eirde House at Migvie, in Cromar, only admits a single person to pass along; while that at Torrich, in Strathdonan, Sutherlandshire, is barely three feet in width.
"Dr. Mitchell has described another at Erribol, in that county, which is more like a large drain than anything else.
"These underground houses have occasionally smaller chambers, as offshoots from the main one, which are entered by openings of small size.
"They occur at times singly, and at others in groups. On a moor near Kildrummy, in Aberdeenshire, a group of nearly fifty were discovered.
"It has been doubted if these houses were ever really used as places of abode, a purpose for which they seem in no degree to be suited.
"But as to this there can be no real doubt. The substances found in many of them have been the accumulated débris of food used by man, and indicate his presence as surely as the kindred kitchen-middens which have recently attracted so much attention, while their occurrence in groups marks the gregarious habits of the early people. The bones of the ox, deer, and other like creatures have been found, as well as the shells of fish, mixed with fatty earth and charred wood. Ornaments of bronze have been found in a few of them, and beads of streaked glass. In some cases the articles found would indicate that the occupation of these houses had come down to comparatively recent times, as in the case of the Irish crannogs, where objects of the rudest times are found alongside of those of the seventeenth century."
These underground passages or galleries are also known as Pechts' or Picts' houses; and they unquestionably belong to the same family as the other structures so denominated. But they are the rudest and most primitive of all. Between them and a chambered mound such as Maes-how, in Orkney, the difference is great; and still greater is the difference between them and a non-subterranean "broch," such as that of Mousa, in Shetland. Yet all these are so united by intermediate forms that it is difficult to say exactly where the one passes into the other. The nature of the difference may be expressed etymologically by saying that they are burrows, barrows, and brochs, or burgs; the "drain"-like Eirde House belonging to the first class, the chambered mound to the second, and the above-ground structure, such as that of Mousa, to the third. The three terms just used are radically one, as the buildings themselves are. But they represent different phases of one idea; and the last phase is very much in advance of the first. Whether the superiority of the one class of building over the other has been caused by the gradual advancement of one homogeneous race, during a long stretch of time, or by the blending of a higher race with a lower, within a limited period, must be regarded as an open question.[168]
But, although that crude form of earth-house which we have described as a burrow, is included among the Pechts' houses of Scotland, it differs in several respects from that variety which has been regarded as the typical "Pecht's house," namely, the chambered mound, or "hollow hillock." One of the salient features of the burrow, the "unobserved entrance," is equally a feature of the hollow mound; and the latter has also the same narrow, low, subterranean passage of approach, formed of huge stone slabs. In each, too, as in the more advanced and elaborate "broch," it is seen that the builders knew of no other kind of arch than that formed by the gradual convergence of the walls, by means of each course overlapping the course immediately below it, until only a single slab was required to crown the whole by way of "keystone." The better kind of "burrow," with its "smaller chambers, as offshoots from the main one," is also closely akin, in that respect, to the so-called "hollow hill." But, while having all these points of resemblance, the latter differs from the former in that its passage dispenses altogether with the curve which distinguishes the "burrow;" and, greater difference still, in that it is not merely an underground dwelling, but that the earth over it is heaped so high above the level of the adjoining ground that it presents exactly the appearance of a conical or rounded green hillock, when looked at from the outside. Moreover, it is only rendered an "underground" dwelling by the earth-heap imposed upon the original structure, which itself was built upon what was then the surface of the ground. Whereas the long, curved gallery, which has more specially been styled an "earth-house," is below the surface of the surrounding land, and is generally discovered by some ploughman whose plough happens to break or disarrange the stone slabs forming its roof.