Two or three solutions of this question may be offered. One that, as the Icelander Gudmund said of these people, they were "subject to poverty and wealth," like the members of any modern nation, which contains in itself the most violent contrasts. Or, again, that the fairy tales belong to various epochs, during a long stretch of time, in the course of which those tribes, like any others, underwent marked modifications. But what is probably the best solution is that the dwarf races of the past, like those of the present, were of various types. That as the South African Bushmen, the dwarfs of the Congo region, and the Ainos of Japan, though all included among the dwarf races, are really different from each other in many respects, so the dwarf races of the past were not one but many. That then, as now, there were black, yellow and white dwarfs; dissimilar in their history and characteristics; but all alike in one important respect. This last explanation, although the two others deserve consideration, is the one that to the present writer seems the most important.
To state even a few of the inferences to be drawn from the acceptance of these explanations, is more than can be attempted here. It is enough to continue as far as possible to confine these remarks within the limits already observed; and to keep specially in view that race which is known to British history as that of the "Picts." What, then, is the traditional idea of the outward appearance of these people, apart from their stature?
Scott's "Rob Roy," as he is described in the Glasgow prison, is said to have greatly resembled the Picts, as they are remembered in Northumbrian tradition. And when his appearance is again referred to in a later chapter (ch. xxxii.), one point of this resemblance is brought out; where it is stated that his legs were "covered with a fell of thick, short, red hair, especially around his knees, which resembled in this respect, as well as from their sinewy appearance of extreme strength, the limbs of a red-coloured Highland bull."
It matters little whether the historical "Robert MacGregor or Campbell," really answered to Scott's various descriptions of him. Rob Ruadh, or "Red Rob," may no doubt have been fitly applied to many a native of the British Islands, descended from the race of the Picts.[271] But this excessive hairiness of skin was one of the most marked characteristics of the Pechts, and forms indeed one of the most distinct clues to their ethnological position.
Whatever the man was like himself, however, "Rob Roy's country" contains, among its other features, that "shoulder of Ben Venue" which we have seen a former Earl of Menteith is said to have assigned to the dwarfs, and which is remembered in local tradition as a great resort of theirs. And a spot specially known as their gathering-place is called the Coire-nan-Uruisgean, which is rendered "the Corri, or Den, of the Wild or Shaggy men."[272] Now the same word here held to represent a "shaggy" man is also a synonym for a "brownie,"[273] and when we regard such a specimen of that class as the particular "brownie" that was an attendant of the chief of the Grants, we find her (for this was a ban-sithe, or fairy-woman) known as "May Mollach," which signifies "hairy May"; it being asserted by tradition that this May was distinguished for the hairiness of her arms.[274] The adjective molach signifies "hairy,"[275] and, among other uses, it is appropriately given, as a name, to many a shaggy little "Scotch terrier." But in that part of Armstrong's "Dictionary" where this adjective is spelt maildheach and mailgheach (of which the pronunciation is still mâl'yach), its meaning is defined as "having large shaggy eyebrows." And this, it will be seen, is specially a characteristic not only of the traditional dwarfs, but of a race known to ethnology. But it is probable that the general meaning of "hirsute" is signified when the derivative noun mailleachan is used as an equivalent of brownie or uruisg;[276] and that a mailleachan was a "hairy one." Similarly, a special brownie, known as Pcallaidh an spùit, or "Peallaidh of the waterfall," once well known "at those congresses" "in a certain district of the Highlands,"[277] may be Englished into "The Shaggy One of the waterfall." Thus, although uruisg does not literally mean "a shaggy man" (as Scott says), yet there is nothing wrong in saying that Coir-nan-Uruisgean, on Loch Katrine, was "the Den of the Wild or Shaggy Men"; because various terms and descriptions applying to those uruisgean show that they were actually "shaggy men."[278]
No one had a better opportunity of imbibing the traditional idea of a brownie than the late Mr. J. F. Campbell; whose birth and upbringing, combined with his great studies in later life, gave him every chance of learning the various Highland traditions regarding the appearance of those people. And when, during his stay in Lapland, he saw a certain Lapp "of the old school," he speaks of him thus:—"He was an old fellow with long, tangled elf-locks and a scanty beard, dressed in a deerskin shirt full of holes, and exceedingly mangy, for the hair had been worn off in patches all over. He realized my idea of a seedy Brownie, a grua-gach [another synonym] with long hair on his head; an old wrinkled face, and his body covered with hair."[279] Of course, it is not to be understood that the Lapp's body was "covered with hair." But the deerskin shirt, worn with the hair outwards, was one of the things that helped out the "brownie" appearance of the man; for Mr. Campbell's traditional brownie had his body covered with hair, like the other "shaggy men" we have just been speaking of. Again, the traditional brollachan or fuath of Sutherland is described as "rough and hairy."[280] Mr. Campbell also points out that the glashan of the Isle of Man[281] was the same as those "shaggy men" of the Scotch Highlands. "He wore no clothes, and was hairy; and, according to Train's history, Phynoddepee, which means something hairy, was frightened away by a gift of clothes,—exactly as the Skipness long-haired Grua-gach was frightened away by the offer of a coat and a cap. The Manks brownie and the Argyllshire one each repeated a rhyme over the clothes; but the rhymes are not the same, though they amount to the same thing."[282] In a certain story of South-Western Scotland, a brownie is described as a naked, hairy man; and in a Scotch "chap-book" of the eighteenth century, an old woman is made to state that the brownies are "a' rough but the mouth," and that they "seek nae claes" (do not wish any clothes).[283] The dwarfs of Northumbrian tradition, whether spoken of by that name or as "Picts," are hairy; and, as just mentioned, the Isle of Man contains similar evidence. The same thing is recorded in Wales. In his "British Goblins," Mr. Wirt Sikes not only describes the coblynau as hairy of skin, but he cites the well-known account of a sixteenth-century race of "Red Fairies" who "lived in dens in the ground," and bore several other resemblances to the Picts of Scotland. These "Red Fairies" have also been recently cited by Mr. G. L. Gomme, in the course of an article which points out the survival of savage customs and savage people, within the British Islands, during recent centuries.[284] The "Red Fairies" inhabited a certain part of Merionethshire, where it is said that people inheriting some of their blood are still pointed out. They are remembered as a race of much-dreaded marauders, their depredations being carried on in the night time, "and scythes were fixed in the chimneys of the nearest houses, to prevent the nocturnal descent of these plundering ruffians." The writer whose words have just been quoted, contributed an account of these people to the Scots Magazine of 1823,[285] and he states in this connection, that "scythes were to be seen in the chimney of a neighbouring farm-house about thirty years ago, but they have been since removed." After referring to their various characteristics, the same writer goes on:—"It appears that the enormities of the Gwylliaid Cochion Mowddwy [the Red Fairies, or Banditti,[286] of Mowddwy] had arrived at such a pitch as to render necessary the interposition of the most prompt and vigorous measures. To this end, a commission was granted to John Wynne ab Meredith, of Gwedir, and Lewis Owen, one of the Barons of the Welsh Exchequer, and Vice-Chamberlain of North Wales. These gentlemen raised a body of men, and, on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in securing, after considerable resistance, nearly a hundred of the robbers, on whom they inflicted chastisement the most summary and effectual, hanging them on the spot, and, as their commission authorized, without any previous trial."[287]
A similar race to these "fairies" of Merionethshire seems to be suggested by the "gubbings" or "gubbins" of Dartmoor. Those people are described by Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," published in 1662. Readers of Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" will remember "how Salvation Yeo slew the King of the Gubbings," and the description given at that place. Mr. R. D. Blackmore seems also to have had the same race in view in his "Maid of Sker"; although that novel is placed in the eighteenth century. "Cannibal Jack," or "Jack Wildman," the most civilized of those Devon savages, is made to state:—"I was one of a race of naked people, living in holes of the earth at a place we did not know the name of. I now know that it was Nympton in Devonshire." As to the origin of the term "gubbing," Fuller confesses himself ignorant.[288] But those Devonshire gubbings were, like the Red Fairies of Wales and the Picts of Scotland, underground people, or earth-dwellers. It does not seem to be stated anywhere that the "gubbings" were hairy of skin; but both in Devon and in Cornwall the underground people otherwise designated are so described.[289] Altogether the savage "gubbins" of Dartmoor, as described by Kingsley and others, seem to be practically the same people as the cave-dwelling "pixies" of Dartmoor, whose occasional raids into the town of Tavistock are still remembered in local folk-lore.
This nakedness of the brownie is referred to again and again in the folk-lore of Scotland. The general belief seems to be that when he was offered clothes in return for his labour he left the place where he had been working, in high dudgeon. Other accounts indicate that he accepted the clothes without demur. But the indications that the "shaggy men" were naked men, are numerous. And when Mr. Campbell says that "the Highlanders distinguish between the water and land or dressed fairies,"[290] he clearly infers that one section of the little people was remarkable for the entire absence of dress. Indeed, it was this peculiarity that, as the various stories show, offended the delicacy of the womenfolk at those farms where "brownies" worked, and so led to the offer of clothing, by way of wages. And, of course, the reason why their special hairiness of skin is so well remembered is because their own shaggy coats formed all their clothing; and probably answered the purpose very well.
Outside the British Islands there are plenty of similar traditional accounts. The Scandinavian trolls, or dwarfs, of the Eddas were hairy; and so was the German dwarf. The latter has one name, that of Bilwiz, said to be derived from a word denoting matted hair; and we are told that "the Bilwiz shoots like the elf, and has shaggy or matted hair."[291] And he, there can be little doubt, is the same as the "little forest-man." For the same authority[292] states that "little forest-men, who have long worked in a mill, have been scared away by the miller's men leaving clothes and shoes for them." And if these nude and hairy "little people" were not of the same race as the hirsute brownies of Scotland, they were remarkably like them in several striking characteristics. With them also may be compared the shaggy dwarfs remembered in Brittany under the name of viltansou, who are doubtless the same as the long-bearded barbao of the same province. (See M. Sébillot's list of such names in the "Revue des Traditions Populaires," Feb. 1890, pp. 101-104.)
The German traditional idea of the mound-dwelling, metal-working dwarf people, is nowhere more perfectly given than in the etching which is here reproduced, and which is the work of a German engraver. It forms the base of a title-page, executed about thirty years ago,[293] consecrated to the memory of the great Barbarossa, whose figure occupies the centre of the title-page, and whose achievements are otherwise symbolically indicated. It is understood to be a facsimile of the base of Barbarossa's statue. The little gnomes, then, underneath him, are clearly meant to represent his companions in the "berg" where he and they are popularly believed to be still living—whether that be the Thuringian Kyffhäuser, or the Untersberg, near Salzburg. And the hairiness of skin, so characteristic of the Scottish brownie or pecht, is equally marked in this case. The term "shaggy men" could be applied to them with very great appropriateness. And if the artist has not made them as destitute of clothing as the "brownies" and "forest-men" are said to have been, yet what they do wear only serves to remind one of the red-cap of the traditional Lincolnshire dwarfs, and others of the same class, and of the "apron" so often mentioned in connection with the dwarfish builders of England and Scotland. It is not to be supposed that this picture represents in every detail the dwarfs of German or other traditions, nor is it to be supposed that any single account gives an absolutely correct idea of the appearance of those primitive races, but this will be generally recognized as being, on the whole,[294] a wonderfully good representation of the dwarfs of German folk-lore.