Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/44

 was built, sometimes in a zig-zag direction, intended to mislead the stranger who should attempt to find the submerged path.

The doorways and passages of the brochs were generally so low as not to allow an ordinary person to walk erect in them, and this has probably led to the popular belief that the Picts, or Pechts, as they are commonly called, were a dwarfish race. But it does not necessarily follow that they were such. The low formation was intended to add to the security of their abode. They could easily and instinctively accommodate themselves to the size of their own familiar surroundings, whereas a stranger would be unable to make his way through such contracted openings with anything like speed; and further, a narrow passage could be more easily defended than a wide entrance.

The Picts also constructed earth houses, remains of which have been found both on hillsides and in level fields: on Housifield, at Norwick; at Fyall, near