Professor J. Kollmann, of Basle, speaking of dwarf races, describes "the flat, broad face, with a flat, broad, low nose and large nose roots."[64]
Compare these statements with the description given by Harris in the eighteenth century of the native inhabitants of the northern and eastern coasts of Ireland. "They are," he says, "of a squat sett Stature, have short, broad Faces, thick Lips, hollow Eyes, and Noses cocked up, and seem to be a distinct people from the Western Irish, by whom they are called Clan-galls—i.e., the offspring of the Galls. The curious may carry these observations further. Doubtless a long intercourse and various mixtures of the natives have much worn out these distinctions, of which I think there are yet visible remains."[65]
We have, indeed, had in Ireland from very early times a mingling of various races, but in the North we are in the home of the Irish Picts or Cruithnians, and possibly this description of Harris may indicate that some of the inhabitants in his day bore marks of a dwarfish ancestry. I have already drawn attention to a statement in an old Irish manuscript[66] that the Luchorpan or wee-bodies, the Fomores and others, were of the race of Ham. Keating also speaks of the Fomorians being sea-rovers of the race of Cam (Ham), who fared from Africa,[67] and states that among the articles of tribute exacted by them from the race of Neimhidh were two-thirds of the children. Unless these were all slaughtered, we have here an intermingling of races, and in the same way it would be quite possible that Finn McCoul might be a tall man, and yet the leader of the small Pechts. The capture of women and children has been a common practice among savage races, and this I believe to be the origin of many fairy-tales, rather than any reference to the abode of the dead. Throughout the "Colloquy of the Ancients," Finn and the Fianna frequently enter the green sidh—the mound where the Tuatha de Danann dwell, and from which the fairies derive their name "fir-sidh." Sometimes they fight as allies of the inmates; frequently they intermarry with them.[68] Throughout this colloquy the dwellers in the sidh possess many magical powers, but they hardly appear as gods of the ancient Irish, and the verse in Fiacc's hymn referring to the worship of the Sidis is not among the stanzas regarded as genuine by Professor Bury.[69]
We see that both in Ireland and Switzerland there are many legends of dwarf races who inhabit underground dwellings. In Switzerland their skeletons have been found. Those discovered by Dr. Nuesch at Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen, have been minutely described by Dr. J. Kollmann, Professor of Anatomy at Basle.[70] This burial-place dates from the early Neolithic period; in it are found skeletons belonging to men of ordinary height, and in close proximity the graves of dwarfs.
The neighbourhood of Schaffhausen appears to be rich in the remains of early man; several skeletons have been found in the cave of Dachsenbüel, two of them of small men, "such as in Africa would be accounted pygmies."[71] Professor Kollmann mentions several other places in Switzerland where skeletons of dwarfs have been found, as also in the Grotte des Enfants on the Bay of Genoa. He also speaks of dwarf races existing at the present day in Sicily, Sardinia, Sumatra, the Philippine Islands, besides the well-known Veddas of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders, and the African pygmies. He believes that these small people represent the oldest form of human beings, and that from them the taller races have been evolved.
How long did these primitive people continue to exist in Ireland and in Switzerland? It would be difficult to say. Tradition ascribes to them a strong physique, but even if they could hold their own with the taller races in the Neolithic period, it must have been hard for them to contend with those who used weapons of bronze or iron, and, as we have seen, iron is specially obnoxious to the fairies. The people, however, who built the large number of souterrains dotted over Antrim and Down could not be easily exterminated. Many of them may have been enslaved or gradually absorbed in the rest of the population; others would take refuge in retired spots, such as are still spoken of as "gentle" or haunted by fairies. If I might hazard a conjecture, I should say that both in Ireland and in Switzerland dwarf races had survived far into Christian times, perhaps to a comparatively recent period. The Irish fairy may possibly represent those who refused to accept the teaching of St. Patrick and St. Columbkill, while St. Gall and other Irish monks may have numbered Swiss dwarfs among their converts. Be this as it may, we have certainly in Ulster the tradition of two dwarf races, the small Danes and the Pechts, who are undoubtedly human. We are shown their handiwork, and, primitive as are their underground dwellings, the builders of the souterrains had advanced far beyond the stage when man could only find shelter in the caves provided for him by Nature. How many centuries did he take to learn the lesson? It is a far-reaching question, but here fairy-tales and popular legends are silent. They keep no count of time, although they may bring to us whispers from long-past ages.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] Reprinted from the Antiquary, October, 1909.
[46] May it not be that Cinderella's glass shoe was really green and derived its name from the Irish word glas, denoting that colour, which is familiar to us in place-names? I make this conjecture with diffidence. I know the usual explanation is that the shoe was made of a kind of fur called in Old French vair, and that a transcriber changed this word into verre. Miss Cox, in her "Cinderella," mentions that she had only found six instances of a glass shoe. As Littré says in the article on vair in his Dictionary, a soulier de verre is absurd. A fur slipper, however, does not appear very suitable for a ball.
[47] See Ulster Fairies, Danes and Pechts, p. 27 et seq.