Plate VII.
ENTRANCE TO SOUTERRAIN AT KNOCKDHU.
From the foregoing traditions it will be seen that Pechts, Danes, and fairies are all associated with the remains of primitive man. I may add that the small pipes sometimes turned up by the plough are called in different localities Danes', Pechts', or fairies' pipes.
The peasantry regard the Pechts and the Danes as thoroughly human; with the fairies it is otherwise. They are unearthly beings, fallen angels with supernatural powers; but, while quick to revenge an injury or a slight, on the whole friendly to mankind. "It was better for the country before they went away," was the remark made to me by an old woman from Garvagh, Co. Derry, and I have heard the same sentiment expressed by others. They are always spoken of with much respect, and are often called the "gentry" or the "gentle folk."
We hear of fairy men, fairy women, and fairy children. They may intermarry with mortals, and an old woman told me she had seen a fairy's funeral. Now, do these stories give us only a materialistic view of the spirit world held by early man, or can we also trace in them a reminiscence of a pre-Celtic race of small stature? The respect paid to the fairy thorn is no doubt a survival of tree-worship, and in the banshee we have a weird being who has little in common with mortal woman. On the other hand, the fairies are more often connected with the artificial Forts and souterrains than with natural hills and caves. These forts and souterrains, as we have seen, are also the habitations of Danes and Pechts. They are sacred spots—to injure them is to court misfortune; but I have not heard them spoken of as sepulchres.
I have already mentioned that I have rarely, if ever, found among the peasantry any tradition of fairies a few inches in height. In one of the tales in "Silva Gadelica" (xiv.) we read, however, of the lupracan being so small that the close-cropped grass of the green reached to the thigh of their poet, and the prize feat of their great champion was the hewing down of a thistle at a single stroke. Such a race could not have built the souterrains, and probably owe their origin to the imagination of the medieval story-teller. The lupracan were not, however, always of such diminutive size. In a note to this story Mr. Standish H. O'Grady quotes an old Irish manuscript[18] in which a distinctly human origin is ascribed to these luchorpan or wee-bodies. "Ham, therefore, was the first that was cursed after the Deluge, and from him sprang the wee-bodies (pygmies), fomores, 'goatheads' (satyrs), and every other deformed shape that human beings wear." The old writer goes on to tell us that this was the origin of these monstrosities, "which are not, as the Gael relate, of Cain's seed, for of his seed nothing survived the Flood."[19]
It is true that in this passage the lupracan or wee-bodies are associated with goatheads; but whether these are purely fabulous beings, or point to an early race whose features were supposed to resemble those of goats, or who perhaps stood in totem relationship to goats, it would be difficult to say. What we have here are two medieval traditions, the one stating that the pygmies are descendants of Cain, the other classing them among the descendants of Ham. Does the latter contain a germ of truth, and is it possible that at one time a people resembling the pygmies of Central Africa inhabited these islands?
Those who have visited the African dwarfs in their own haunts have been struck by the resemblance between their habits and those ascribed to the northern fairies, elves, and trolls.
Sir Harry Johnston states that anyone who has seen much of the merry, impish ways of the Central African pygmies "cannot but be struck by their singular resemblance in character to the elves and gnomes and sprites of our nursery stories." He warns us, however, against reckless theorizing, and says: "It may be too much to assume that the negro species ever inhabited Europe," but adds that undoubtedly to his thinking "most fairy myths arose from the contemplation of the mysterious habits of dwarf troglodyte races lingering on still in the crannies, caverns, forests, and mountains of Europe after the invasion of neolithic man."[20] Captain Burroughs refers to the stories of these mannikins to be found in all countries, and adds that "it was of the highest interest to find some of them in their primitive and aboriginal state."[21] He speaks of the red and black Akka, and Sir Harry Johnston also describes the two types of pygmy, one being of a reddish-yellow colour, the other as black as the ordinary negro. In the yellow-skinned type there is a tendency on the part of the head hair to be reddish, more especially over the frontal part of the head. The hair is never absolutely black—it varies in colour between greyish-greenish-brown, and reddish.[22] We have seen how Irish fairies and Danes have red hair, but I should infer of a brighter hue than these African dwarfs. The average height of the pygmy man is four feet nine inches, of the pygmy woman four feet six inches,[23] and although we cannot measure fairies, I think the Ulster expression, "a lump of a boy or girl," would correspond with this height. I do not know the size of the fairy's foot, but, as we have seen, both Danes and Pechts have large feet, and so has the African pygmy.[24] One of the great marks of the fairies is their vanishing and leaving no trace behind, and Sir Harry Johnston speaks of the baboon-like adroitness of the African dwarfs in making themselves invisible in squatting immobility.[25]
Dr. Robertson Smith has shown that "primitive man has to contend not only with material difficulties, but with the superstitious terror of the unknown, paralyzing his energies and forbidding him freely to put forth his strength to subdue nature to his use."[26] In speaking of the Arabian "jinn," he states "that even in modern accounts jinn and various kinds of animals are closely associated, while in the older legends they are practically identified,"[27] and he adds that the stories point distinctly "to haunted spots being the places where evil beasts walk by night."[28] He also shows that totems or friendly demoniac beings rapidly develop into gods when men rise above pure savagery,[29] and he cites the ancestral god of Baalbek, who was worshipped under the form of a lion.[30]