[181] Mrs. Jessie E. Saxby, "Folklore from Unst, Shetland" (Leisure Hour, 1880).
[182] Dr. Joseph Anderson, in his Introduction to the "Orkneyinga Saga," p. ci.
[183] In an article ("From the Heart of the Wolds") contributed to the Cornhill Magazine of August 1882, the following is stated with regard to the traditions of this part of Lincolnshire:—"Ghosts, bogies, and the supernatural generally have utterly vanished from this commonplace district before schools and newspapers. Even an old lady more than ninety years old said to us, 'Fairies and shag-boys! lasses are often skeart at them, but I never saw none, though I have passed many a time after dark a most terrible spot for them on the road at Thorpe.'" The identity of "shag-boy" with "hog-boy" (as used in Orkney) is asserted by the writer of the Cornhill article; who also states:—"In an adjoining field [near Beelsby] lingers one of the few legends of this prosaic district. A treasure is supposed to be hidden in it, and at times two little men, wearing red caps, something like the Irish leprechauns, may be seen intently digging for it." These little "red-caps" are not identified with the "shag-boys," but popular tradition generally would pronounce them to be the same people.
[184] One is apt to talk of this introductory passage as though it had actually penetrated a previously existing mound. But the construction of all those chambered mounds shows plainly that the original stone structure, not only the central building but the long passage of approach, was originally reared upon the surface of the level ground, in the open air. And that the "fairy hillock" had no existence at all until the builders of the stone structure had heaped above it all—chamber and gallery—the mass of earth and stones that afterwards transformed the whole exterior into a "green hillock," and thus completely disguised its real nature from all but the initiated.
[185] For these details see Colonel Forbes Leslie's "Early Races of Scotland," vol. ii. pp. 338-40.
[186] Even with this roof-light the interior of the dwelling can only have received a limited supply of daylight. And this explains the statement made by a Scotch peasant who was taken by a "fairy" woman into her abode. "Being asked by the judge [before whom he was tried for 'witchcraft'] whether the place within the hill, which he called a hall, were light or dark, he said 'Indifferent, as it is with us in the twilight.'"
At night, when the abode of the "hillmen" was lit up with the glow of the fire, the cavity above the building, and the atmosphere overhead, must have also received some share of the firelight. This would account for the statement made by Wallace (who wrote at the period when "Evil Spirits also called Fairies" were "frequently seen in several of the [Orkney] Isles dancing and making merry,") to the effect that, "in the Parish of Evie, near the Sea, are some small Hillocks, which frequently, in the Night time, appear all in a fire." And when Mrs. Ewing, in her "Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales," says that shian is "a Gaelic name for fairy towers, which by day are not to be told from mountain crags," she evidently alludes to the same feature.
[187] See the description in an Appendix to Pennant's Tour, written by the then minister of the parish of Reay, Sutherlandshire.
[188] "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," vol. ii. pp. 97-101. In the Book of Clanranald, a portion of which is translated by Dr. Skene, a certain "Huisdinn," whose paternal grandfather was Donald of the Isles, is stated to have been also the grandson (through his mother) of "Giolla Phadraig." This "Huisdinn" appears to have lived in the fifteenth century. (See Celtic Scotland, III., 408-409.)
[189] "Heligoland," 1888, pp. 84-85.