Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/202

194 to reproduce this in my English Fairy Tales, page 243. This is a green mound some 100 feet in length and 35 in breadth at its broadest part. Tradition had long located a goblin in its centre, but it was not till 1861 that it was discovered to be pierced by a long passage 53 feet in length, and only two feet four inches high, for half of its length. This led into a central chamber 15 feet square and open to the sky.

Now it is remarkable how accurately all this corresponds to the Dark Tower of "Childe Rowland", allowing for a little idealisation on the part of the narrator. We have the long dark passage leading into the well-lit central chamber, and all enclosed in a green hill or mound. Mr. MacRitchie in a private communication points out that the brilliant decorations of the interior may have some connection with the brightly decorated mats hung on the walls of Esquimaux huts. This is perhaps going a little too much into minutiæ.

VII. Even such a minute touch as the terraces on the hill in our story have their bearing, I believe, on Mr. MacRitchie's "realistic" views of Faerie. For in quite another connection Mr. G. L. Gomme, in his recent Village Community (W. Scott), pp. 75-98, has given reasons and examples for believing that terrace cultivation along the sides of hills was a practice of the non-Aryan and pre-Aryan inhabitants of these isles. Here, then, from a quarter quite unexpected by Mr. MacRitchie, we have evidence of the association of the King of Elfland with a non-Aryan mode of cultivation of the soil. By Mr. Gomme's kindness I was enabled to give an illustration of this in my English Fairy Tales, p. 244.

If there is anything in these points, our story may have a certain amount of historic basis, and give a record which history fails to give of the very earliest conflict of races in these isles. I do not wish to press the point unduly, but it certainly seems to me that it would be worth while