Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/201

Rh green hillocks, which have been artificially raised over a long and low passage leading to a central chamber open to the sky. Mr. MacRitchie shows that in several instances traditions about trolls or "good people" have attached themselves to mounds, which have afterwards on investigation turned out to be evidently the former residence of men of smaller build than the mortals of to-day. He goes on further to identify these with the Picts—fairies are called "Pechs" in Scotland—and other early races, but with these ethnological equations we need not much concern ourselves. It is otherwise with the mound-traditions and their relation, if not to fairy tales in general, to tales about fairies, trolls, elves, etc. These are very few in number, and generally bear the character of anecdotes. The fairies, etc., steal a child, they help a wanderer to a drink, and then disappear into a green hill; they help cottagers with their work at night, but disappear if their presence is noticed; human midwives are asked to help fairy mothers, fairy maidens marry ordinary men, or girls marry and live with fairy husbands. All such things may have happened, and bear no such à priori marks of impossibility as speaking animals, flying through the air, and similar incidents of the folk-tale pure and simple. If, as archæologists tell us, there was once a race of men in Northern Europe, very short and hairy, that dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green hillocks, it does not seem unlikely that odd survivors of the race should have lived on after they had been conquered and nearly exterminated by Aryan invaders, and should occasionally have performed something like the pranks told of fairies and trolls.

VI. Certainly the description of the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland in "Childe Rowland" has a remarkable resemblance to the dwellings of the "good folk" which recent excavations have revealed. Mr. MacRitchie gives illustrations of one of the most interesting of these, the Maes How of Orkney; by his kindness I was enabled