MAES-HOW, ORKNEY.
(The Orka-haug of the Norsemen.)
In this instance the aperture is two feet four inches in height, and of exactly the same breadth; and its dimensions continue the same for the first twenty-two and a half feet into the hill (for it will be seen that the mound of stone and earth that surrounded and covered the actual building gave the habitation a fictitious base, which had to be penetrated by this passage until the walls of the main building were reached—in the centre of the "hill.")[184]
THE INTERIOR OF THE "HOW."
In Maes-how the passage of approach is fully fifty-three feet long. Its height, as already stated, is only two feet four inches, during the first twenty-two feet of length; so that no one, unless an actual dwarf, could walk erect along this portion. After this the roof of the passage rises to four feet four inches; and it retains this height during the next twenty-eight feet of length. The remaining distance—scarcely three feet—is four inches higher; and then the passage "enters the middle of one of the four sides of a chamber which is fifteen feet square, and has, when complete, been about twenty feet high in the centre. The walls of this chamber are perpendicular for about six feet, after which the slabs, which generally extend the whole length of a side, project beyond the courses on which they rest, until in this way the roof has been completed in the shape of an inverted pyramid formed of successive steps."[185] In the three sides of this central hall (excluding the side at which the long passage emerges) there are respective entrances into three small chambers. The largest of these is less than seven feet long, less than five feet broad, and its roof is only three and a half feet from the floor.
In assuming that the roof of this building, now open to the sky, was "completed in the shape of an inverted pyramid formed of successive steps," Colonel Leslie is at variance with the description given by an eighteenth-century writer (in connection with similar buildings), and at variance also with tradition. The difference is a slight one, but it ought to be referred to. The roof was not precisely completed in such buildings, according to the writer referred to; it "was carried on round about with long stones [each successive course projecting, and thus gradually narrowing the orifice], till it ended in an opening at the top, which served both for light and a vent to carry off the smoke of their fire." Without this opening the dwelling had very little light or air; for little of either could have straggled in from the mouth of the narrow, underground passage, which reached the open air at a distance of fifty-three feet from the dwelling, and whose entrance (besides) was nearly always closed during the day.[186]
While tradition seems clearly to indicate that the roof of the dwelling communicated with the open air above, there is necessarily some uncertainty on this point. The writer who speaks of the roof of such a building being "carried on round about with long stones, till it ended in an opening at the top," may have had in view a structure more resembling the open air "broch" than the sith-bhrog; although he mentions that the kind of building he describes often "looks outwardly like a heap without any design."[187] It is undoubted that many such mounds, for example, those of New Grange and Dowth, in the Boyne district, have their rude, "Pelasgian arch," crowned with one large stone as keystone; and that, therefore, any upward exit from the chamber must have led off in a slant from some portion of the wall. On the other hand, there are several indications that when one ascended the outside of a sheean, in the days when it was inhabited, one found oneself at the edge of a hollow or crater, at the foot of which was the narrow orifice that gave light and air to the chamber below. More than one fairy-hill of the present day, not yet explored, has a small hole on its summit, and when a stone is dropped therein, it is heard to rumble and fall into some unknown cavern below. And the existence of such "craters" was well known (we are told by Scott, in his Introduction to the Tale of Tamlane) to the people of Scotland. "Wells, or pits, on the top of hills were supposed to lead to the subterranean habitations of the Fairies." Legendary stories in connection with these there are many—of men descending such "pits," sometimes well knowing what to expect, and of having hand-to-hand fights with the natives of these abodes. At other times the attack was made by those "hillmen" themselves; who seem to have emerged by this entrance as often as by the other. "A savage issuing from a mount" was once a well-known bearing in Scottish heraldry. Mr. J. F. Campbell records a Ross-shire tradition of a dwarf who inhabited Tombuidhe Ghearrloch, "The Tawny Hillock of Gairloch," and who was the terror of the neighbourhood (whose chief inhabitants, in his day, belonged to another race). Before he was himself slain, this formidable dwarf had killed many of the latter race; none of whom (with one exception) dared to venture near his "hillock" after dusk. He was at length killed by a local champion, still remembered as "Big Hugh" (Uistean Mor, MacGhille Phadrig;) who was celebrated as a slayer of dwarfs; and who appears to have devoted himself to their extermination in that particular district. And in the story of the killing of this noted dwarf, it is stated that Uistean climbed to the top of the hillock (Tom-buidhe) and attacked its inhabitant, who emerged from the foot of its "crater" or "pit"; in other words, from the roof of his dwelling.[188]