THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITONS: a Retrospect.
2 vols., demy 8vo, 24s.ACCOUNTS OF THE GYPSIES OF INDIA. Collected
and Edited. With Map and 2 Illustrations.
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
THE BRUGH OF THE BOYNE, NEW GRANGE, COUNTY MEATH.
(From the South.)
TESTIMONY OF TRADITION
BY
DAVID MacRITCHIE
AUTHOR OF "ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITONS"
WITH TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., Limited
1890
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,
70 TO 76, LONG ACRE, W.C.
PREFACE.
A large portion of this work has already appeared in the form of a series of articles contributed to the Archæological Review (Aug.-Oct., 1889, and Jan., 1890), but these have here undergone some alteration and have been supplemented to a considerable extent.
With regard to the correctness of the deductions drawn in the following pages from the facts and traditions there stated, there may easily be a difference of opinion. And indeed one writer, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in the course of a very learned dissertation on the Development of the Fenian or Ossianic Saga,[1] has expressed his dissent from the theories advanced in the articles referred to. It would be out of place to enter here into a consideration of the grounds of Mr. Nutt's objections, even if that did not demand an undue amount of space; but it may be pointed out that the articles upon which his criticism is based only state very partially the case which even the following more enlarged version is far from presenting fully. But what is of much greater importance is, that the theory which I have here endeavoured to set forth has the peculiar advantage of possessing a tangible test of its worth. What that test is will be readily seen by every reader. If the result of future archæological excavations should be to confirm tradition (as it is needless to say the writer of these pages believes will be the case), the question then will be one, not of interpreting tradition so that it may square with current beliefs, but of modifying or altering these beliefs, where they are distinctly in disagreement with tradition.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Shetland Finns—Orkney Finnmen—Finn Localities—Kayaks and Kayak-men—An Orkney Kayak of 1696[1]-[11]
"Zee-Woners"—Piratical Mer-folk—Landsmen and Mermen— Iberian Skin-boats—Boats made by Norway Finns—"Marine People" of the Hebrides—Probable Finns in Galloway[12]-[25]
"Inhabitants of the Isles of this Kingdom"—The Isles in the Seventeenth Century—"Barbarous Men"[26]-[32]
Homes of the Finns—Norwegian Suzerainty[33]-[38]
Finnish Influence in Norway[39]-[42]
The Feinne—The Battle of Gawra—The Feenic Confederacy[43]-[50]
Feens or Cruithné—Fin in the Kingdom of the Big Men— Dwarfish Tyrants[51]-[57]
Pechts or Dwarfs—Pechts' Houses—Earth-Houses in Greenland—"Interlude of the Droichs"[58]-[65]
How the Pechts Built—Pecht-lands—The Builders of Corstorphine Church—"Unco wee bodies, but terrible strang"[66]-[74]
Strongholds of the Feens—The Broch and the Sith-Bhrog[75]-[79]
Fians and Fairies—Tenth-Century Fairies—Continental Fians and Fairies—Finn and his Dwarf in Sylt[80]-[88]
Witchcraft of the Trollmen—The King of the Sidhtir of Munster—The "Great-Beamed Deer" of the Feens—Reindeer in Scotland in the Twelfth Century—Pechts and Fairies[89]-[100]
Hollow Hillocks—The Settler and the Mound-Dwellers— "Hog-Boys"—Maes-How—Interior of the Chambered Mound—A Dwarf's House in Sylt—The Little People in Scotland—Fairy Mounds[101]-[118]
The Brugh of the Boyne—The Brugh as Described in 1724—Gaels versus Dananns—Dananns, Fir Sidhe, or Fairies—Cruithne=Feinne—Inmates of the Brugh— Plunder of the Boyne Hillocks in 861—Sith Eamhna— Tales of Adventures in "Weems"—The Dowth Mound[119]-[140]
Goblin Halls—The Castle Hill of Clunie—Tomnahurich, Inverness—The Palace of the King of the Pechts—Pecht Localities—The Fairy Knowe of Aberfoyle—Chambered Mounds[141]-[155]
Scott's "Rob Roy"—Shaggy Men—Red Fairies of Wales— Brownies and Forest-Men—The Ainos—A Hairy Race—Modern "Pechts"—Cave-Men—Dwarf-Tribes and Reindeer—Pÿgmei Vulgo Screlinger Dicti[156]-[175]
Platycnemic Men—Ur-uisg=Mailleachan[176]-[180]
[Appendix A.]—The Brugh of the Boyne[181]-[189]
[Appendix B.]—The Skrælings[190]-[193]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
[THE BRUGH OF THE BOYNE, NEW GRANGE, COUNTY MEATH] [Frontispiece.]
[KAYAKKER IN HIGH SEA] To face page [12]
[WIGWAMS OF THE JURA ISLANDERS IN 1772] " [24]
[SECTIONAL VIEW AND GROUND PLAN OF MAES-HOW] " [108]
[THE INTERIOR OF THE "HOW"] " [109]
[SECTIONAL VIEW OF THE BRUGH OF THE BOYNE] "" [120]
[DOORWAY OF THE BRUGH] " [121]
[ENLARGED SECTIONAL VIEW OF PASSAGE AND CHAMBER, BRUGH OF THE BOYNE] " " [122]
[GROUND PLANS OF PASSAGE AND CHAMBER, BRUGH OF THE BOYNE (From Drawings of 1724 and 1889)] " " [124]
[EASTERN RECESS OF CENTRAL CHAMBER, BRUGH OF THE BOYNE] " " [126]
[DOWTH (Uaimh Feirt Bodan os Dubath), COUNTY MEATH] " " [136]
[PLAN OF PASSAGE AND CHAMBER AT DOWTH] " [138]
[BEE-HIVE CHAMBER, DOWTH] " [139]
[KNOWTH (Uaimh Cnoghbhai), COUNTY MEATH] " " [140]
[THE DWARFS OF GERMAN FOLK-LORE] " " [164]
[A "GOOD FAIRY" OF TRADITION] " [173]
THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER I.
In one of an interesting series of papers on "Scottish, Shetlandic, and Germanic Water Tales,"[2] Dr. Karl Blind remarks as follows:—
It is in the Shetland Tales that we hear a great deal of creatures partly more than human, partly less so, which appear in the interchangeable shape of men and seals. They are said to have often married ordinary mortals, so that there are, even now, some alleged descendants of them, who look upon themselves as superior to common people.
In Shetland, and elsewhere in the North, the sometimes animal-shaped creatures of this myth, but who in reality are human in a higher sense, are called Finns. Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea. At the same time they are held to be deeply versed in magic spells and in the healing art, as well as in soothsaying. By means of a "skin" which they possess, the men and the women among them are able to change themselves into seals. But on shore, after having taken off their wrappage, they are, and behave like, real human beings. Anyone who gets hold of their protecting garment has the Finns in his power. Only by means of the skin can they go back to the water. Many a Finn woman has got into the power of a Shetlander and borne children to him; but if a Finn woman succeeded in reobtaining her sea-skin, or seal-skin, she escaped across the water. Among the older generation in the Northern isles persons are still sometimes heard of who boast of hailing from Finns; and they attribute to themselves a peculiar luckiness on account of that higher descent.
Tales of the descent of certain families from water beings of a magic character are very frequent in the ... North. In Ireland such myths also occur sporadically. In Wales ... the origin from mermen or mermaids is often charged as a reproach upon unhappy people; and rows originate from such assertions. In Shetland the reverse is, or was, the case. There the descendants of Finns have been wont to boast of their origin; regarding themselves as favourites of Fortune....
But who are the Finns of the Shetlandic story? Are they simply a poetical transfiguration of finny forms of the flood? Or can the Ugrian race of the Finns, which dwells in Finland, in the high north of Norway, and in parts of Russia, have something to do with those tales in which a Viking-like character is unmistakable?
Repeated investigations have gradually brought me to the conviction that the Finn or Seal stories contain a combination of the mermaid myth with a strong historical element—that the Finns are nothing else than a fabulous transmogrification of those Norse "sea-dogs," who from eld have penetrated into the islands round Scotland, into Scotland itself, as well as into Ireland. "Old sea-dog" is even now a favourite expression for a weather-beaten, storm-tossed skipper—a perfect seal among the wild waves.
The assertion of a "higher" origin of still living persons from Finns ... would thus explain itself as a wildly legendary remembrance of the descent from the blood of Germanic conquerors. The "skin" wherewith the Finns change themselves magically into sea-beings I hold to be their armour, or coat of mail. Perhaps that coat itself was often made of seal-skin, and then covered with metal rings, or scales, as we see it in Norman pictures; for instance, on the Bayeux tapestry. The designation of Norwegian and Danish conquerors, in Old Irish history, as "scaly monsters," certainly fits in with this hypothesis.
But however the Finn name may be explained etymologically, at all events Norway appears in the Shetland tales, and in the recollection of the people there, as the home of the "Finns." And this home—as I see from an interesting bit of folk-lore before me—is evidently in the south of Norway....
"Before coming to this important point, I may mention a Shetlandic spell-song ... [which] refers to the cure of the toothache; the Finn appearing therein as a magic medicine-man:—
A Finn came ow'r fa Norraway,
Fir ta pit töth-ache away—
Oot o' da flesh an' oot o' da bane;
Oot o' da sinew an' oot o' da skane;
Oot o' da skane an' into da stane;
An dare may do remain!
An dare may do remain!
An dare may do remain!In this, though not strictly and correctly, alliterative song, the Finn is not an animal-shaped creature of the deep, but a man, a charm-working doctor from Norway.... Presently we will, however, see that the Finns of the Shetlandic stories are martial pursuers of ships, to whom ransom must be paid in order to get free from them. This cannot apply ... to a mere marine animal or sea monster: for what should such a creature do with ransom money?... As to their animal form, Mr. George Sinclair writes:—
"Sea monsters are for most part called 'Finns' in Shetland. They have the power to take any shape of any marine animal, as also that of human beings. They were wont to pursue boats at sea, and it was dangerous in the extreme to say anything against them. I have heard that silver money was thrown overboard to them to prevent their doing any damage to the boat. In the seal-form they came ashore every ninth night to dance on the sands. They would then cast off their skins, and act just like men and women. They could not, however, return to the sea without their skins—they were simply human beings, as an old song says:
"'I am a man upo' da land;
I am a selkie i' da sea.
An' whin I'm far fa every strand,
My dwelling is in Shöol Skerry.'"
There are many such folk-tales in the northern Thule. A man, we learn, always gets possession of the Finn woman by seizing the skin she has put off. One of these stories says that the captured Finn woman would often leave her husband to enjoy his slumber alone, and go down amongst the rocks to converse with her Finn one: but the inquisitive people who listened could not understand a single word of the conversation. She would, it is said, return after such interviews with briny and swollen eyes.
The human family of this Finn were human in all points except in hands, which resembled web feet. Had the foolish man who was her husband burnt or destroyed the skin, the Finn woman could never have escaped. But the man had the skin hidden, and it was found by one of the bairns, who gave it to his mother. Thereupon she fled; and it is said that she cried at parting with her family very bitterly. The little ones were the only human beings she cared for. When the father came home, he found the children in tears, and on learning what had happened, bounded through the standing corn to the shore, where he only arrived in time to see, to his grief, his good wife shaking flippers and embracing an ugly brute of a seal. She cried:—
"Blissins' be wi' de,
Baith de and da bairns!
Bit do kens, da first love
Is aye da best!"whereupon she disappeared with her Finn husband and lover.
... I here give what Mr. Robert Sinclair says of the capture of Finn brides by Shetlanders:
"Each district, almost, has its own version of a case where a young Shetlander had married a female Finn. They were generally caught at their toilet in the tide-mark, having doffed the charmed covering, and being engaged in dressing their flowing locks while the enamoured youth, by some lucky stroke, secured the skin, rendering the owner a captive victim of his passion. Thus it was that whole families of a mongrel race sprang up, according to tradition. The Finn women were said to make good housewives. Yet there was generally a longing after some previous attachment; if ever a chance occurred of recovering the essential dress, no newly formed ties of kindred could prevent escape and return to former pleasures. This was assiduously guarded against on the one side, and watched on the other; but, as the story goes, female curiosity and cunning were always more than a match for male care and caution; and the Finn woman always got the slip. One or two of these female Finns were said to have the power to conjure up from the deep a superior breed of horned cattle; and these always throve well. I have seen some pointed out to me as the offspring of these 'sea-kye.'"
In answer to my question, the Shetland friend lays great stress on the fact of the Finn woman being wholly distinct from the Mermaid....
Of the Finn man my informant says:—
"Stories of the Norway Finns were rife in my younger days. These were said to be a race of creatures of human origin no doubt, but possessed of some power of enchantment by which they could, with the use of a charmed seal-skin, become in every way, to all appearance, a veritable seal; only retaining their human intelligence. It seems that any seal-skin could not do; each must have their specially prepared skin before they could assume the aquatic life. But then they could live for years in the sea. Yet they were not reckoned as belonging to the natural class of 'amphibia.' As man or seal they were simply Finns, and could play their part well in either element. Their feats were marvellous. It was told me as sheer truth that they could pull across to Bergen—nearly 300 miles—in a few hours, and that, while ordinary mortals were asleep, they could make the return voyage. Nine miles for every warp (stroke of the oar) was the traditional speed...."
Here, then, the Finns are men of human origin; remaining intelligent men in their sea-dog raiment; coming from Norway; not swimming like marine animals, but rowing between Shetland and Norway—namely, to the town of Bergen, which lies in the southern ... part of Norway. As strong men at sea, they row with magic quickness.... Each one of them ... must have his specially prepared skin.... There is nothing here of the swimming and dipping down of a seal.
We have followed Dr. Karl Blind so far. But, while recognizing the value of his statements and comments up to this point, it is necessary to give only a modified assent to some of his subsequent deductions, and to flatly deny the correctness of others; because his researches in "Shetlandic folk-lore" have clearly been too limited in their extent, or rather, he has omitted to check those traditions by any possible contemporary records. Some of those tales were received from a Shetland woman "who strongly believed in the Finns, and declared herself to be a descendant of them.... She was, she said, the 'fifth from the Finns,' and she attributed great luckiness to herself, although she was as poor as poor could be." One of her stories is of her father's great-grandfather; and as this ancestor of the woman's is not spoken of as a "Finn," it would seem that she was "fifth from the Finns" through another branch of her lineage. But, at any rate, this progenitor in the fourth degree cannot have belonged to a much later period than the middle of the eighteenth century. However, we shall see these Shetland Finns more plainly described if we turn to the latter part of the seventeenth century.
In "A Description of the Isles of Orkney," written by the Rev. James Wallace, A.M., Minister of Kirkwall, about the year 1688, one reads as follows:—
Sometime about this Country [Orkney] are seen these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682 one was seen sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the Isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a Boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently fled away most swiftly: And in the Year 1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a while after they got few or no Fishes, for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to which they come.
Again, in Brand's "Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, etc." (1701), it is stated:—
There are frequently Fin-men seen here upon the Coasts, as one about a year ago on Stronsa, and another within these few Months on Westra, a gentleman with many others in the Isle looking on him nigh to the shore, but when any endeavour to apprehend them they flee away most swiftly; Which is very strange, that one man sitting in his little Boat, should come some hundred of Leagues, from their own Coasts, as they reckon Finland to be from Orkney; It may be thought wonderfull how they live all that time, and are able to keep the Sea so long. His Boat is made of Seal-skins, or some kind of leather, he also hath a Coat of Leather upon him, and he sitteth in the middle of his Boat, with a little Oar in his hand, Fishing with his Lines: And when in a storm he seeth the high surge of a wave approaching, he hath a way of sinking his Boat, till the wave pass over, lest thereby he should be overturned. The Fishers here observe that these Finmen or Finland-men, by their coming drive away the Fishes from the Coasts. One of their Boats is kept as a Rarity in the Physicians Hall at Edinburgh.
This last fact was first stated by Wallace (1688; previously quoted), who remarks:
One of their Boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physitians hall with the Oar and the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish, [and it is stated by Mr. John Small, M.A., &c., in his edition[3] of this book that the boat spoken of was "afterwards presented to the University Museum, now incorporated with the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh"; and a note appended to the second edition also states that "there is another of their boats in the Church of Burra in Orkney.">[
Wallace's book has also a note ascribed to the author's son, to the following effect:
I must acknowledge it seems a little unaccountable how these Finn-men should come on this coast, but they must probably be driven by storms from home, and cannot tell, when they are any way at sea, how to make their way home again; they have this advantage, that be the Seas never so boisterous, their boats being made of Fish Skins, are so contrived that he can never sink, but is like a Sea-gull swimming on the top of the watter. His shirt he has is so fastned to the Boat, that no water can come into his Boat to do him damage, except when he pleases to untye it....
There is, it will be seen, some difference of opinion as to the place whence these Finn-men came. The Shetlandic folk-lore indicates Bergen, on the south-western coast of Norway; Brand regards Finland as their home; while Wallace takes a still wider range. This last writer (who is the first in point of time) says this of them:—"These Finn-men seem to be some of these people that dwell about the Fretum Davis [Davis Straits], a full account of whom may be seen in the natural and moral History of the Antilles, Chap. 18." At first sight, and according to modern nomenclature, the connection between the Antilles and Davis Straits seems very remote. But it must be remembered that the traditional country of "Antilla," or the "Antilles," probably included the modern Atlantic seaboard of North America; and that, when that territory was invaded by the Norsemen of the tenth century, it was found to contain a population of exactly the same description as those "Finn" races—people of dwarfish stature, who traversed their bays and seas in skin-covered skiffs.[4] However, Wallace's theory is obviously untenable. It is most improbable that any Eskimo of Davis Straits would attempt the trans-Atlantic passage in his tiny kayak, supporting life on the voyage by eating raw such fish as he might catch. Indeed, the feat is almost an impossibility. Moreover, it is quite clear that those Finn-men were voluntary and frequent visitors to the Orkneys, and (more especially) to the Shetlands; and the "Fin-land" from which they came is stated by the Shetlanders to have been no further off than Bergen, on the Norwegian coast.[5]
It is quite evident that "the Finns of the Shetlandic story" formed a branch of the "Ugrian race of the Finns"; and that some of them "came ow'r fa Norraway"—whether as "wizards," or as fishermen, or as pirates (for they figure in all these characters). The description of their skin-covered canoes is of itself quite sufficient to show that those "Finns" of Orkney and Shetland were of the Eskimo races. So that those "sea-skins," without which the captive Finn women could not make their escape, were simply their canoes. And the exaggerated stories of the speed with which the Finns could cross from Shetland to Bergen have their foundation in the fact that those little skiffs can be propelled through the water at such a rate that the hunted Finn was enabled to "flee away most swiftly" from the clumsier boats of his pursuers. The speed of the kayak is very clearly illustrated in an account of the doings of one of "these people that dwell about the Fretum Davis," who was brought to this country in 1816, and who, in that year, showed the great superiority of his skiff in a contest with a six-oared whale-boat at Leith. "He paddled his canoe from the inner harbour," says the Scots Magazine of that year (p. 656), "round the Martello Tower and back in sixteen minutes, against a whale-boat with six stout rowers, and evidently shewed his ability to outsail his opponents by the advantages he frequently gave them, and which he redeemed as often as he chose." This, it will be seen, was simply a repetition of the scenes described a hundred and twenty years earlier, in the Orkney and Shetland groups; the chief difference being that those earlier Eskimos had their home in Europe, and not in any part of the western hemisphere. Of course, the Shetland belief that the Finns could "pull across to Bergen in a few hours," and that "nine miles for every warp (stroke of the oar) was the traditional speed," is obviously an exaggeration. But the distance (which is nearer 200 than "300" miles) might almost be traversed in the course of the long midsummer day of those northern latitudes—by such seafarers, and in such craft.[6]
But, while the "seal-skin" of the traditional Finn was primarily his skin kayak, it is likely enough that he is also remembered as the wearer of a seal-skin garment; and that from this has arisen the confusion of ideas regarding this magic "skin." "His boat is made of seal-skins, or some kind of leather," says Brand, in describing the Finn-man; but he adds that "he also hath a coat of leather upon him." And Dr. Wallace tells us that the Finns "have this advantage, that be the seas never so boisterous, their boats being made of fish skins, are so contrived that he can never sink, but is like a sea-gull swimming on the top of the water." And he continues: "His shirt he has is so fastened to the boat that no water can come into his boat to do him damage, except when he pleases to untie it." Dr. Rink, in referring to the kayaks of those "Finn-men" who inhabit the regions surrounding the Fretum Davis, uses similar terms: "The deck alone was not sufficient; the sea washing over it would soon fill the kayak through the hole, in which its occupant is sitting, if his clothing did not at the same time close the opening around him. This adaptation of the clothing is tried by degrees in various ways throughout the Eskimo countries, but it does not attain its perfection except in Greenland, where it forms in connection with the kayak itself a water-tight cover for the whole body excepting the face."[7] But, in making this last statement, Dr. Rink is speaking of the nineteenth-century representatives of this race; and in ignorance of the fact that the "Eskimos" of the North Sea had long ago realized the necessity for this waterproof covering.[8]
This waterproof "shirt" is also specially mentioned in connection with the Finn kayak that the two Scotch writers of the seventeenth century refer to. Wallace, it will be remembered, says of the Orkney Finn-men that "one of their boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physicians' Hall, with the oar and the dart he makes use of for killing fish." At the time when Wallace wrote, in or about the year 1688, there is no doubt that the boat was so deposited. But, although the second writer, Brand, makes the same statement, it is evident that he only did so on the authority of his predecessor. Because, four or five years before Brand's book appeared, the Finnman's kayak had been presented by the Royal College of Physicians to the University of Edinburgh. The way in which the Physicians' College had obtained the boat was through the president of the college, Sir Andrew Balfour, eminent as a physician, botanist and naturalist, and a great collector of all sorts of curiosities. At his death in 1694, his collection passed to the University of Edinburgh, by bequest. But, for one reason or another, the Finnman's boat still remained in the Physicians' College. This will be seen from the following extract from the Minute Book of that College, which records the transfer of the boat to the University of Edinburgh, two years after Sir Andrew Balfour's death. The date of the Minute is 24th September, 1696.[9] "The qlk [whilk] day ye colledge considering yt dr Balfour's curiositys are all in ye Colledge of Edr & amongst them ye oars of ye boat & ye Shirt of ye barbarous man yt was in ye boat belonging to ye Colledge of physitians & yt the same boat is likly to be lost they having noe convenient place to keep it in doe give the sd boat to ye colledge of Edr ther to be preserved & yt it be insert there yt its gifted by ye royall Colledge."
From this extract we gain the additional information that the "Shirt" or "Coat of Leather" of the "barbarous man" himself had also found its way to the University Museum of Edinburgh; presumably through Sir Andrew Balfour also, or perhaps through his friend and colleague, Sir Robert Sibbald (known as the author,[10] inter alia, of a "Description" of the Orkney and Shetland Isles).[11]
CHAPTER II.
Anyone familiar with the shape of the long, narrow, skin-covered skiff of the Eskimo (which, as has just been pointed out, is completely "decked," with the exception of the round aperture in the middle, where the rower sits—his legs being thrust in front of him, underneath the "deck,") will see that when the Finn had fastened his seal-skin garment to the sides of the aperture, he and his boat were one. Thus not only could "no water come into his Boat to do him damage," but he appeared (to people unacquainted with his anatomy) as some amphibious seal-man—"a selkie i' da sea," as the Shetland rhyme goes. This resemblance is even further borne out by the ability of the kayaker to overset himself and his kayak, and then to re-appear on the surface of the water, without either himself or his skiff suffering any injury, as both were impervious to water. This feat is evidently a delight to the kayaker, and the Eskimo already referred to as having displayed his skill at Leith in the year 1816, performed this manœuvre many times, to the great astonishment of the onlookers. Thus the Finnman of the North Sea, who presumably indulged in this amusement, like his representatives in Greenland to-day, was thereby rendered still more like a creature of the deep, "a perfect seal among the wild waves," as Dr. Karl Blind remarks.[12]
KAYAKKER IN HIGH SEA.
It is to the apparently amphibious nature of this peculiar people, that one may trace much—if not all—that has been recorded of mermen and mermaids; who, in other words, were seamen and seamaids. The conventional mer-man is portrayed as visible above water from the waist upward. And that the kayaker presents a similar appearance may be seen from a description given of an Eskimo flotilla by one who has had personal experience of the Hudson's Bay regions,[13] wherein it is stated that, at some distance from the land, "the low kayaks" of the Eskimos, being almost quite flush with the water, "it seemed as if their occupants were actually seated on the water." The accompanying spirited sketch by Mr. A. R. Carstensen of a modern Eskimo, as he appears "when the waves come upon him with all their fury," helps much to make one realize the appearance of the Orkney Finnman, whether in storm or in calm.[14] It is easy to see how a race of "zee-woners" such as these could gradually become remembered as an actually amphibious people.
Those legendary mermaids who are described as using combs and mirrors were plainly allied to these Finn-women. It is manifest that no amphibious woman (the possibility of whose existence is not here denied) would carry a mirror and a comb about with her; or that she—whose chief element was the water—would be for ever engaged in the mad task of arranging hair which every plunge in the sea would disarrange most effectually. But those female Finns, whom the amorous Shetlanders captured before they could regain their skin-canoes are described as "engaged in dressing their flowing locks" at the eventful moment: a most natural proceeding on the part of any woman who has just landed from a sea-voyage (whether these particular women had come all the way from Bergen, or which is likely—from some outlying island of the Northern groups). The reality of those merwomen of Shetland is manifest throughout the tales relating to them. They bear children to their Shetland lovers; they "were said to make good housewives;" and their descendants in the Shetland Islands to-day are, presumably, as "real" and human as any of Her Majesty's subjects. That most of those unwillingly-wedded Finn-women tried to regain their liberty at the first opportunity is seen from the repeated statement that the Shetland husband was always careful to hide the "sea-skin" of his Finn wife. But, in many cases the Finn-woman appears to have decided to throw in her lot with her Shetland husband and people.
Although Bergen was latterly the home of those Finns who came to Shetland, it is most probable that many of the stories regarding them related to a time when they still retained possession of certain districts in the Shetland islands. When they were "frequently" seen off the Orkney coast, quietly fishing, it is most improbable that their homes were among the Fiords of Norway—more than two hundred miles away. It seems clear that they retained their hold upon Shetland longer than Orkney; but even in some parts of the latter archipelago they were apparently pretty much at home in the year 1700. This was the date of the Rev. Mr. Brand's tour, and a remark of his leads one to such a conclusion. It must be remembered that those Finns were regarded as wizards and witches by the more ignorant classes: "the belief that witches and wizards came from the coast of Norway disguised as seals was entertained by many of the Shetland peasantry even so late as the beginning of the present century." And they were regarded as, in some sense, supernatural beings. Now Dr. Blind, in suggesting that the "skins" of the Finns may have been (as in one aspect they actually were) their outward garments, "made of seal-skins, and then covered with metal rings or scales"—in assuming this, Dr. Blind is quite in agreement with a statement made by Brand in 1700; which is to this effect, that "supernatural" beings were, at the date of his visit, "frequently seen in several of the Isles (the Orkneys) dancing and making merry and sometimes seen in Armour." It ought not to be forgotten that although the Finn fisherman "fled away most swiftly," when chased by a considerable party of his foes, yet "it is worthy of note that the supposed object of [the Finn invaders] ... was plunder;"[15] that "they were wont to pursue boats at sea;" that "silver money was thrown to them to prevent their doing any damage to the boat;" and that "it was dangerous in the extreme to say anything against them."[16] Whether such attacks were made in their small skin-canoes, or whether they used larger vessels, it is evident that they were formidable marauders; and that, as Dr. Blind suggests, and as the Rev. Mr. Brand records, those Finn pirates were "sometimes seen in Armour."
But neither the belief in Mer-men, nor the existence of traditionary pedigrees deduced from such people, forms a distinctive characteristic of the Shetland Islands. Just as there are Shetlanders who trace their lineage to one or more ancestors of Finn blood, so are there similiar family traditions in many parts of the British Islands. "It is believed that there are several old Welsh families who are the descendants" of Mer-folk; and similar examples are found "in the traditions of the O'Flaherty, O'Sullivan, and Macnamara families."[17] "The inhabitants of the Isle of Man have a number of such stories, which may be found in Waldron;"[18] and the tale of Macphail of Colonsay and "The Mermaid of Corryvreckan" is not the only Hebridean illustration of this feature. The references that are made to mermaids in the prefatory remarks to Leyden's version of the Corryvreckan story are quite in keeping with the Shetland traditions. That is, there are certain attributes ascribed to those mer-women which, on the surface, are incredible; but which the knowledge that is given to us by Brand and Wallace renders quite intelligible. The "train" or "tail" of the mermaid has only to be translated "canoe" or "kayak," and what was formerly nonsense becomes sense. For example, the statement that "the mermaid of Corrivrekin possessed the power of occasionally resigning her scaly train," is only a jumbled reminiscence of the fact referred to by Dr. Wallace who, when speaking of the mer-men, says: "His [seal-skin] shirt has been so fastened to the Boat, that no water can come into his Boat to do him damage, except when he pleases to untye it, which he does ... when he comes ashore." In the other phraseology, he "possessed the power of occasionally resigning his scaly train."
In the remarks prefacing Leyden's "Mermaid" (in The Minstrelsy) it is stated that "mermaids were sometimes supposed to be possessed of supernatural power." The Shetland peasantry, also, believe (or did believe) that "witches ... came from the coast of Norway disguised as seals." And "Ranulph Higden says 'that the witches in the Isle of Man anciently sold winds to mariners, and delivered them in knots, tied upon a thread, exactly as the Laplanders did.'"[19] At one time—if not now, Lapland was regarded as a stronghold of "magic." Butler in referring to one of the things "in which the Lapland Magi deal" makes selection of this practice of "selling winds" to sailors;[20] the "Magi" being (in this detail) feminine. But the British Islanders have practised many "Lapp" mysteries: and there is a distinct "Ugrian" element among the British people; neither of which facts are at all at variance with the traditions that derive the descent of many modern Britons from sea-faring tribes of "Finns" and other Mer-folk.
One account[21] states, with regard to the mer-woman, that "the sailors pretend to guess what chance they had of saving their lives in the tempests, which always followed her appearance." Apparently, this refers more particularly to Norway. In the Channel Islands a similar belief exists regarding the mer-man, who is styled "the King of the Auxcriniers." "Il est le baladin lugubre de la tempête," says M. Victor Hugo, in describing this mer-man of the Channel.[22] The probable explanation of this belief is that, when a tempest was threatening, those solitary rovers—knowing that their fragile "sea-skins" could never outride a heavy storm—made hastily for the nearest coast. Indeed, when one looks at those delicate little vessels, wholly dependent upon the thoroughness of the stitching that unites the various pieces of skin together, one can only wonder at the daring of the people who ventured in them a hundred miles and more from any land. "Nothing but a plank between one and Eternity" is not so dangerous as it sounds; for planks can float one when the worst happens. But what is to be made of half-a-dozen bits of whalebone or wood, with one thin covering of seal-skin stretched over them? The giving of a stitch, or the smallest fracture in the skin—and both skiff and skiff-man are under the water.
To point out the various characteristics of the traditional mer-men and mer-women, and to suggest an explanation of each, is more than need be attempted here. But it is enough to remark that the mere fact that marriages between "men" and the mer-folk were possible and frequent, is quite sufficient to prove that there was no radical difference between the two races. When one reads of mer-women bearing children to land-men, and "making good house-wives" to them; or, when one learns that the mer-men were given to "deceiving women," then one may feel pretty certain of their humanity.
It has been noticed that one of their skin-boats, or kayaks, was "kept as a Rarity" in the Museum at Edinburgh, and that another was preserved "in the Church of Burra in Orkney."[23] There are many British traditions of such boats in connection with such people; although the names by which those skiffs are popularly remembered are as unreasonable as the "scaly train" of the Finn-woman of Corryvreckan. In Sutherland it is said that those people used to cross the Dornoch Firth in "cockle-shells;"[24] while one man records having seen them quitting the coasts of the Isle of Man "in empty rum puncheons," in which vessels he "saw them scudding away as far as the eye could reach."[25] It is very likely that those traditional "witches" who went to sea in "sieves" were also identical with those who came from the coast of Norway "disguised as seals;" and that the sieve was nothing else than the kayak.
That the Finns of Orkney and Shetland used the long, narrow kayaks of the modern Esquimaux and Samoyeds is unmistakable: and the same shape of skiff has probably been employed by British and other European "mer-men" for an immemorial period. But other varieties of this kind of boat have been used. For example, the natives of those islands and promontories which form "the Rosses" of Donegal are described (in the years 1753 and 1754) as using seal-skin boats; but their shape does not seem to have been identical with that of the kayak. "Their boats" (says a visitor to the "Rosses" at that date[26]), "called curraghs, were oval baskets, covered with seal-skins; and in such weak and tottering vessels they ventured so far out as was necessary to get fish enough for their families."
These curraghs, it would seem, were nearer those still used in Wales (and also by the Mandans of the Upper Missouri) than the long, covered-in skiff of the Arctic tribes. Or, perhaps, they resemble those curraghs now used in Ireland, which differ chiefly from ordinary "boats" in their frames being covered with skins in place of planks. In his Gaelic dictionary, Armstrong states that "the curach, or boat of leather and wicker," was "much in use in the Western Isles (Hebrides), even long after the art of building boats of wood was introduced." As he says that Islemen "fearlessly committed themselves, in these slight pinnaces, to the mercy of the most violent weather," it seems most likely that the "decked" kayak is the kind of which he is speaking, and when he gives a diminutive form of curach (curachan), and defines it "a little skiff; a canoe," it is almost certain that he has in view the "kayak" of the Finn-man.
Whichever of these two terms may be assumed to indicate the kayak, it is scarcely conceivable that the Hebrideans would "fearlessly commit themselves to the mercy of the most violent weather," in an open skin-boat. But this is what the kayakers do. "They do not fear venturing out to sea in these boats in the greatest storms," says Hans Egede, referring to the Eskimos of the eighteenth century, "because they can swim as light upon the largest waves as a bird can fly; and when the waves come upon them with all their fury, they only turn the side of the boat towards them to let them pass, without the least danger of being sunk."[27] Referring to the same usage of the Orkney Finnman, Brand says that he does this, "when in a storm he seeth the high surge of a wave approaching." And Wallace's annotator has the same remark: "They [the Finnmen] have this advantage, that be the Seas never so boisterous, their boats being made of Fish Skins, are so contrived that he can never sink, but is like a Sea-gull swimming on the top of the watter."
It appears impossible to ascertain a time when skin-boats were not used in Europe. In speaking of the Oestrymnic Isles and their inhabitants, Dr. Skene quotes the following account of their vessels, as given by Rufus Festus Avienus, a writer of the fourth century:—
"They know not to fit with pine
Their keels, nor with fir, as use is,
They shape their boats; but, strange to say,
They fit their vessels with united skins,
And often traverse the deep in a hide."
As Dr. Skene points out, these Oestrymnic Isles were identical with the Cassiterides, (i.e., "Tin Islands,") and, under either name, were famous for their tin mines. But, in identifying them with the Scilly Isles, Dr. Skene is manifestly in error; as all evidence on this point tends to show that the Oestrymnides, or Cassiterides, formed a group of islands lying off the Spanish coast, which, at some period during the Christian era, became submerged. The fourth-century writer quoted "says that the northern promontory of Spain was called Oestrymnis, and adds, 'Below the summit of this promontory the Oestrymnic bay spreads out before the inhabitants, in which the Oestrymnic Isles show themselves.'" The testimony of Diodorus is to the same effect: "Above the country of the Lusitanians, there are many mines of tin in the little islands called Cassiterides from this circumstance, lying off Iberia, in the ocean." So also Strabo, who states that "the Cassiterides are ten in number, and lie near each other in the ocean, towards the north from the haven of the Artabri."[28] All this is consistently borne out by the map of Spain ("from the Latin Ptolemy, 1478") which Mr. Elton, who calls Dr. Skene's deduction in question, appends to his "Origins of English History."[29] In that map, it will be seen that, according to Ptolemy, the Cassiterides—ten in number—lay off the Spanish coast, north-west of Cape Finisterre, and that that portion of the mainland was inhabited by the Artabri. Among all these writers and geographers, therefore, there is entire agreement; and none of their statements have any reference to the neighbourhood of the English coast.[30] That these islanders did not know the art of building vessels of wood, and were accustomed to cross the sea in skin-boats, is regarded by Dr. Skene as corroborative of his belief that they were British and not Iberian islanders. "But the Iberian coracles were as well known as those of the Britons," says Mr. Elton;[31] and of this we ought perhaps to see a survival in the "curo, a small boat used on the Garonne," which Armstrong compares with the Gaelic curach.
Of the presence of the skin-boat in British waters there is ample evidence, and it would be superfluous to enlarge upon this. There is, moreover, evidence that certain "trans-marine nations" came to Britain in such craft, in early times. And, half-way between the opening centuries of the Christian era and the period of the Orkney Finnmen, there is a reference which suggests the skin-boat among the Finns of Norway, although it does nothing more than suggest. In the Heimskringla (Saga xiv) it is stated that Sigurd Slembe and his followers passed the winter of 1139 in a cave at Tialdasund, the sound which separates the Lofoten Isles from the Norwegian mainland, and that on that occasion the Finns (or Lapps, as they are indifferently called) constructed two large boats for them. These boats were of fir, but the peculiarity about them was that not a nail was used in their construction. Like the framework of the modern kayak, the various parts of these boats were fastened together by sinews,[32] a method which, as the saga shows, was certainly not that of Sigurd and his people, who remark upon the absence of nails. Thus, although this incident shows that those Finns of the twelfth century were able to build boats of wood, yet their method of joining the timbers suggests the affinity which they otherwise bear to the Eskimos. But, while their own boats may have differed from those they built for their visitors, there is nothing in the passage to support this assumption.[33]
That the round curach or coracle, covered with skin, and similar to that still seen in Wales, was in use in the north of Scotland in the early part of the last century, is testified to by a letter quoted in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1880-81, p. 179-80, from which it will be seen that the tradition already referred to—that the dwellers on the shores of the Dornoch Firth used to employ "cockle-shells" as ferry-boats—is nothing but a fanciful and imperfect resemblance of this particular kind of curach. The curachs, however, in which the Western Islanders "fearlessly committed themselves ... to the mercy of the most violent weather" cannot have been of this shape. But either variety of skin-boat was undoubtedly the property of the one race of people. Among the Eskimos, also, there is considerable variety. We are told, for example, in a description of the Aleutian Islanders during last century, that "their vessels consist of two sorts," of which one is the kayak, propelled by the double-bladed paddle, while the other is large enough to hold thirty or forty people, and has "oars on both sides." But both kinds are skin-covered. The Eskimo tribes have also the smaller open skin-boat, capable of holding eight or ten people. And this, like the similar skin-boat of the British Isles, has sometimes sails. These facts are therefore quite consistent with the belief that the European tribes using this variety of Eskimo boat used also the slender, decked canoe or "kayak."
Enough, then, has been said to indicate the presence of those skiff-people in various parts of the British Islands, and in various parts of Europe. It may be that the latest authentic records of British Esquimaux are those given by Brand and Wallace, in the end of the seventeenth century.[34] True, the Shetlandic (and perhaps other) traditions bring us down to later dates. But traditions are necessarily uncertain. However, we do know that the waters surrounding the Orcadian and Shetland groups were fished in by Esquimaux tribes so recently as the year 1700[35]; and we also know from tradition, that these same "Finns" or "Finn-men" "were wont to pursue boats at sea," and to demand a money-tribute from the fishermen whom they chased. (In turn, they themselves were pursued by the islanders, when they made their appearance singly, near their coasts.) That they were feared by the islanders is evident from the Shetlandic legends; and it will be noticed that those Shetlanders who are understood to have Finn blood in their veins "look upon themselves as superior to common people." All this suggests that those straggling "Finn-men" of the year 1700 were really the representatives of a decayed caste of conquerors. The fact that they are remembered as wearing armour places them before us as a distinctly military race; and "the Darts they make use of for killing Fish" were probably the least important of their weapons.
The non-Finnish Shetlanders who overheard the captive woman talking with her friends "could not understand a single word of the conversation." It is not necessary to assume that this denoted more than a mere dialectic difference; accent being a wonderfully important consideration in cases of this sort. That Finn settlements were often conterminous with districts occupied by those who regarded the Finns as enemies is suggested by the existence of a "Finns' Town" in Orkney, and a "Finn Town" in Donegal.[36]
Of course, those Finns must have one or many historical names. It is probable that they constituted a large proportion of the population of the Outer Hebrides. One of the stories relating to such people is of a mer-woman who "fell in love with a young shepherd, who kept his flocks beside a creek much frequented by these marine people"—the locality being somewhere on the Manx coast. "She frequently caressed him" (the account continues—somewhat superfluously), "and brought him presents of coral, fine pearls, and every valuable production of the ocean."[37] Now, this woman may easily have been one of those "marine people" who inhabited various parts of the Hebrides, and who used the skin-skiff of the Esquimaux "even long after the art of building boats of wood was introduced." The coral and "fine pearls" which this mer-woman brought to her Manx lover may have come from no greater distance than the Island of Skye: since Martin tells us that the people of that island used to adorn their garments with "fine stones" and "pieces of red coral"—the latter article being found in "great quantity" on the shores of the Lewis. At that time the islanders of Jura dwelt in turf-covered wigwams identical with those used by modern Lapps; as may be seen from the illustration here copied from Pennant's second "Tour." And the people of Harris were described in the following terms, in the early part of this century[38]:—"In general the natives are of small stature,... Scarcely any attain the height of 6 feet, and many of the males are not higher than 5 feet 3 or 4 inches." "The Harrisian physiognomy" is thus detailed: "The cheek bones are rather prominent, and the nose is invariably short, the space between it and the chin being disproportionately long. The complexion is of all tints. Many individuals are as dark as mulattoes...." The population thus described was greatly mingled at the period when these latter observations were made; but there is nevertheless strong evidence of the possession of Ugrian blood in the people thus portrayed. And their boats and dwellings do nothing to contradict this theoretical connection with the races we now know by such names as Lapp, Finn, Samoyed, and Eskimo.
WIGWAMS OF THE JURA ISLANDERS IN 1772.
(From Pennant's Second Tour.)
The author of the "Gallovidian Encyclopædia" gives also a hint of the existence of such a population in Galloway: when (under the name "cutty glies") he refers to "a class of females," whom he describes as "little" and "squat-made," and to whom he assigns (without exception) the amorous nature of the Manx mer-woman just spoken of. And, as the Gallovidian chronicler lived near the inlet known as "the Manxman's Lake," it is not improbable that this also was "a creek much frequented by these marine people"; and that, in short, Mactaggart's "little, squat-made females" were of the same stock as the Mer-women of the Isle of Man and the Hebrides, and the Finn-women of the Northern Isles.
Note.—For additional information on the subject of skin-boats, and the races connected with them, see pp. [174], [178]-[9], post, and [Appendix B].
CHAPTER III.
It is clear that those popular traditions and records, as well as the indisputable statements of Brand and Wallace, indicate two very different kinds of people, who, sometimes fighting, sometimes inter-marrying, occupied territories that were, in many cases, conterminous. That they were often enemies is evident. The Finn-man, when alone, was hunted from the non-Finnish islands by the natives: and, on the other hand, he was "wont to pursue boats at sea," and to demand tribute from the fishermen—when his superior arms, or the number of his comrades, warranted him to do so.
Now, there is documentary evidence of this state of things during the seventeenth century; though the localities therein referred to are the Northern Hebrides, rather than the Orkney and Shetland Isles. But the description corresponds, in everything else, with that given by the Islesmen of the North-East. We are told[39] that, in the year 1635, certain sections of the Hebridean Islanders "comes in troupes and companeis out of the Yles where they dwell to the Yles and Loches where the fishes ar tane and there violentlie spoyles his Majesteis subjects of their fisches and sometimes of their victualls and other furniture and persewes thame of their lyffes, breakes the schooles of thair herring and comitts manie moe insolenceis upoun thame to the great hinder and disappointing of the fishing, hurt of his Majesteis subjects, to the contempt of his Majesteis auctoritte and lawes," etc. This—even to the detail that they "by their coming drive away the Fishes from the Coasts"—is an exactly similar account to that given, in the same century, to Brand and Wallace, and in the present century (but relating to about the same period) to Dr. Karl Blind. In the one case, the scene is the North-Western coasts of Scotland: in the other it is the North-Eastern. But the kind of people described are pretty evidently alike.
In either case, too, the Mer-folk or Finn-men are not spoken of as subjects of the Modern-British kingdom. The Proclamation of 1635, quoted above, does not regard "some of the inhabitants of the Yles of this kingdome," as being "his Majesteis subjects." The phrase, "Yles of this kingdome" does, indeed, imply something of a common nationality; but, as a matter of fact, certain portions of North-Western Scotland were not strictly under the rule of Charles the First, at that period. That this was so may be seen (if nowhere else) in the papers relating to those territories, of dates ranging from 1574 to 1635, which are quoted in the Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis (pp. 100-121). One of these is a letter written by Charles I. "to the Privy Council of Scotland directing an inquiry into the exactions by the Heritors of the [Hebridean] Isles from those engaged in the Fisheries; and the bringing in of Foreigners by the Heritors." And this letter runs as follows: "Whereas it is not unknown to you with what care we have intendit the good of the Association of the Fischings within thess our Kingdomes for the use of our subjects[40] and that we will be provident to protect them from the exaction of the heritours in the Yles, who as we are informed without warrant exact sundrie dewteis from them to their great prejudice, bringing in strangers and loading the vessells with fisches and other native commoditeis contrair to our lawis," etc. The letter then commands the Scotch Privy Council to learn "upon what warrant they ["the landislordis of the Yles wher the fisching is">[ tak thess dewteis." In the Report made, six months later, by the Commissioners appointed by the Privy Council, regarding "the duteis exacted be the Ylanders frome his Majesteis subjects of the associatioun resorting in these parts," it is stated: "that it was the ancient custome[2] ... to everie ane of thame in whose boundis the herring fishing fell oute, to exact of[41] everie barke and ship resorting thereto" such-and-such a tribute, in money and in kind: "Being demandit by what warrand they uplift the saids exactions and dewteis foresaids, they answer that they ar heretours of the ground and so may lawfully take up satisfactioun for ground leave and ankerage; it being ane ancient custome and in use to be done past memorie of man."
Through all these documents of this period there runs a feeling (not distinctly formulated) that "his Majesteis subjects"—"his Majesteis frie liegis"—"the haill inhabitantis of The Burrowis of this Realme"—were terms that did not strictly apply to "the heritours in the Yles." And that these latter—though nominally the subjects of the British monarch—still exercised a kind of semi-sovereignty in their own territories; enforcing tribute from "his Majesty's free lieges," and carrying on commercial relations with "foreigners," contrary to the wishes of Charles himself. That these independent rights were to some extent recognized by Charles may be gathered from his own expressions in the documents referred to. And the existence of this antagonism to British law was quite distinctly acknowledged by Charles' father (James) when, in the year 1608, he issued his instructions to a Commission "appointed for the Improvement of the Isles;" wherein he states his "desire to remove all suche scandalous reproches aganis that state, in suffering a pairt of it to be possessed with suche wild savageis voide of Godis feare and our obedience."[42]
Nor was this independence confined to the mere exacting of a tribute, according to "ancient custom," from those fishermen who, themselves coming under the denomination of "his Majesty's subjects," resorted occasionally to the coasts of the North-Western Isles. The Report of 1634 showed that this tax was rigorously levied by those Island kings when the alien fishermen arrived within the "bounds" of certain islands. But they did not content themselves with this. The Proclamation of the Scotch Privy Council of the following year (1635) begins by stating that "the Lords of Privy Council ar informed that of lait ther hes been manie great insolenceis committit be some of the inhabitants of the Yles of this kingdome not onlie upoun his Majesteis subjects hanting the trade of fisching in the Yles but upon the Lords and others of the Association[43] of the Royall Fishing of Great Britane and Ireland; whiche Ylanders comes in troupes and companeis out of the Yles where they dwell to the Yles and Loches where the fishes ar tane and there violentlie spoyles his Majesteis subjects of their fisches and sometimes of their victualls and other furniture and persewes thame of their lyffes," etc. This statement reveals quite plainly a condition of enmity between "his Majesty's subjects," and certain sections of the Hebridean population. And the traveller, Pennant, furnishes additional proof of this state of things, in describing the condition of society in the Island of Skye (or its vicinity) at about the period under consideration. "Each chieftain (he tells us—and the "chieftains" of whom he speaks were presumably "his Majesty's subjects")—each chieftain had his armour-bearer, who preceded his master in time of war, and, by my author's account in time of peace; for they went armed even to church, in the manner the North-Americans [the colonists] do at present in the frontier settlement, and for the same reason, the dread of savages." Of which "savages" there are many traditions still extant in the legendary lore of the West Highlands.
Of more historical nature is the evidence of Buchanan, who, in describing the Inner Hebrides, during the seventeenth century, states that the island of Pabbay, close to the Skye coast, was then "infamous for robberies, where the thieves, from their lurking-places in the woods, with which it is covered, intercept the unwary travellers." Of the island of Rona, lying a little to the northward of Pabbay, and, at that time, "covered with wood and heath," he says: "In a deep bay it has a harbour, dangerous for voyagers, as it affords a covert for pirates, whence to surprise the passengers." To the west of Skye, and in the Outer Hebrides, there was the island of Uist, containing "numerous caves covered with heath, the lurking-places of robbers." Off the mainland coast to the north-east of Skye, lay "the island Eu, almost wholly covered with wood, and of service only to the robbers, who lurk there to surprise travellers;" while "more to the north lies Gruinort (says the same writer), also darkened with wood, and infested with robbers." That is to say, all of these districts belonged to certain races who waged war against other populations in that archipelago; and who, in all probability, were the "savages" referred to by the traveller Pennant.
It is not only this latter writer and James VI. of Scotland who refer to certain North British populations in the seventeenth century as "savages." Nor are such people only visible in the Hebrides at that date. "In a curious old book called 'Northern Memoirs; calculated for the Meridian of Scotland,' written in the year 1658,"[44] the following short description occurs with reference to the district of Strath Navar, in the north of the county of Sutherland:—
"The next curiosity to entertain you with, is the county of Southerland, which we enter by crossing a small arm of the ocean from Tain to Dornoch. So from thence we travel into Cathness and the county of Stranavar, where a rude sort of inhabitants dwell (almost as barbarous as Cannibals), who, when they kill a beast, boil him in his hide, make a caldron of his skin, browis of his bowels, drink of his blood, and bread and meat of his carcase. Since few or none amongst them hitherto have as yet understood any better rules or methods of eating."
Here, then, is a community of people, "almost as barbarous as Cannibals," in the estimation of a civilized writer of 1658. But none of the expressions of this kind, used by writers of the seventeenth century, will strike modern men more strongly than that applied to the Finn-men of Orkney in the Minute Book of the Edinburgh College of Physicians. To the civilized Scotch of two centuries ago those Finn-men were simply savages,—"barbarous men." The term "savage" is always a relative one; and what one civilization regards as savagery is really the fag-end of an earlier civilization. Nevertheless, the seventeenth-century Finn-man represented what must necessarily appear to us as a "savage" state of society, if that word is to have any meaning at all. And the predominant castes of Orkney and Shetland and the mainland of Scotland were quite in unison upon this point. The Edinburgh physicians, as a matter of course, regarded those kayakers as "barbarous men," just as we regard their Arctic kindred to-day. The same view was taken by the predominant castes in the Inner Hebrides, at the same period, and apparently with regard to the same race of people. At that period, therefore, the seventeenth century, we see the higher castes of Scotland asserting themselves against an "Eskimo" race that threatened the safety of the more civilized populations all along the northern and western fringe of the country.
Even last century, something that modern nomenclature calls "savage" was visible in these north-western localities. On one occasion, when Dr. Johnson and his irrepressible biographer were exploring those north-western islands, the natives who rowed their boat seemed, to Boswell, "so like wild Indians that a very little imagination was necessary to give one an impression of being upon an American river." One of them, he tells us, was "a robust, black-haired fellow, half-naked, and bare-headed, something between a wild Indian and an English tar" (of the eighteenth century). And some of the McRaas of the mainland he describes as being "as black and wild in their appearance as any American savages whatever."[45]
Other tokens of "savage" customs might easily be adduced. For example, decaying specimens of the rude "dug-out," the most primitive of all canoes—a mere hollowed log—are now and then found in the depths of some Highland loch, or peat-bog; and are rashly pronounced to be "pre-historic;" whereas these very canoes were in common use in the north and west of Scotland less than two centuries ago.[46] However, neither this species of canoe, nor the vague references of Boswell, point unmistakably to the Ugrian or Mongoloid castes whom we are here considering; although it is not unlikely that these latter were one and the same as the "wild Indians" and the owners of the "dug-outs."
What is certain is that, when, in the October of 1599, one of the ships belonging to the Fifeshire colonists of the Lewis was about to start on its homeward trip, it was surrounded by "a fleet of small vessels peculiar to those islands," and the natives, swarming on board, put to death all except the captain.[47] Now (although the act was simply a legitimate incident in the warfare of the time and locality), these islanders were the people whom King James spoke of as "wild savages." And it is tolerably certain that their "small vessels" were those "slight pinnaces" of skin that Armstrong says were "much in use in the Western Isles"—in other words, the kayaks of the Eskimos or Finn-men. It is not unlikely that the resemblance to the modern Eskimo was very close in many details. For example, the West Highland traditions tell of "savages" who played the game of chess; which fact in itself argues decidedly a form of civilization. Now, although the art of carving chessmen is extinct among modern Hebrideans, the traditional accounts were quite borne out by the discovery, in this century, of the now famous Lewis chessmen, "in all fifty-eight pieces, ingeniously and elaborately carved from the walrus tooth."[48] Consequently, it would appear that the Finn-man occasionally hunted the walrus, in which pursuit he no doubt employed "the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish:" exactly like a modern Eskimo.
CHAPTER IV.
But, admitting the existence, at so recent a date, of a visibly "Eskimo" caste in some parts of the Hebrides, what evidence is there that any of these people found their way to Shetland? One writer, we have seen, brings the Shetland Finns all the way from Davis Straits, another draws them from Finland, and the Shetlanders themselves say that they "came ow'r fa Norraway," especially from the neighbourhood of Bergen. The correctness of this last belief need not be questioned, as regards some of that caste. But it has been suggested in the foregoing pages that many of those "Finns" who persecuted the Shetland fishermen were those kayak-using Hebrideans who avowed their ancient right to despoil and to exact tribute from others, not only when fishing among "the Isles where they dwell," but in other waters.
We read[49] of raids made in the Orkneys and Shetland, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, by "bands of Islemen" (i.e., Hebrideans), "Irish, and Scots, from the woods"; which last term strongly suggests the "robber" denizens of the thickly-wooded islands spoken of by Buchanan two centuries later. The raiders were, no doubt, heterogeneous. But the piratical kayak-men were surely among them. There are many traditions extant in some parts of the north-eastern archipelagos regarding these raids—in the island of Westray, in Orkney, for instance, where, at a certain "Fitty Hill," there was once a great fight between the Westray people and the invading Lewismen, all of whom were slain. Now, this Fitty Hill is associated strongly with the people recognizable as "Finns," or at least was so in the year 1701, according to a writer previously quoted (Brand, p. 57), and both he and Wallace (who wrote in 1688) mention the frequent visits of Finn-men to the Westray fishing-grounds. Indeed, the kayak preserved in Edinburgh seems, according to the latter writer, to have been one of those secured by the Orkneymen; who probably made sure that the Finn himself should have no further use for it.
Thus, it is a simple historical fact that certain castes of the Hebrideans, whose practice of despoiling and exacting tribute from others was a thing beyond question, were very frequent visitors to the Orkney and Shetland groups, whose natives they did their utmost to overawe. And, as the skin skiffs of the Hebrideans were of such a description that the skiffmen "fearlessly committed themselves in these slight pinnaces to the mercy of the most violent weather," they were well qualified to sing the song of the Finn-man:
I am a man upo' da land,
I am a selkie i da sea.
Indeed, the concluding lines of that verse are peculiarly appropriate to the Hebridean. For the "shöol skerry," which is the rocky islet of Sule or Sula, lying about forty miles N.N.E. of Cape Wrath, formed a very convenient refuge for him when "far from every strand," during his voyages between Shetland or Orkney and the Hebrides.[50]
And it is in this aspect, as tyrannical sea-rovers, that the "Finns" are often remembered in Shetlandic tradition. It was their custom to pursue the boats of the Shetland fishermen, and to exact from them a tribute in "silver money." So much were they dreaded that "it was dangerous in the extreme to say anything against them." The original feeling of respect must have been very strong, since it has survived into the present century.
This, of course, relates to the Finns considered as men and as fighters. The other side of the question shows us the Finn-women, and also the Finn-men in peaceful guise. And here, too, it is evident that those people were by no means regarded as an inferior race by the non-Finnish section of the Shetlanders (whatever that non-Finnish element may have been composed of), for those who claim a "Finn descent" at the present day regard this line of their ancestry as wholly superior to that which, for want of a better word, may be called "Shetlandic."
The Finn-women, we are told, very frequently became the wives of the islanders: and, consequently, they became the mothers of "half-breed" families—that is, in those cases where the husband himself was of a wholly different stock. In some instances, owing to a Finn connection in the previous generation, such children may have been more Finnish than anything else. Many of the Finn wives seem to have cast in their lot altogether with their Shetland husbands, to whom they brought dowries of cattle which—according to the peasant tradition—they "conjured up from the deep," of which the probable interpretation is that they caused them to be sent across from Bergen. Peaceful memories of the Finn-men may also be traced in such things as the rhyme of the medicine-man who "came ow'r fa Norraway" to conjure the toothache out of some unhappy Shetlander.
But these references, and apparently all the more recent of the Shetlandic traditions, point to Norway, and not to the Hebrides, as the home of the Finns; and it seems quite clear that the Bergen neighbourhood was a stronghold of this Mongoloid people within recent times.
Mr. H. Howorth,[51] in discussing these Mongoloid, or Ugrian people, remarks: "The Finns and Laps have been pushed back in Scandinavia to a very small portion of their ancient holding. In Livonia, in Esthonia, and in three-fourths of European Russia the Ugrians were, even in the eleventh century, the preponderating population"; that is, Esthonia and Livonia then formed a part of "Finland," and the Gulf of Riga was a Finnish sea. We are not given a date as to their "preponderance" in Scandinavia; but, if they were so numerous in the east Baltic districts during the eleventh century, it may be assumed that they were also of considerable importance in the Scandinavian peninsula at the same time, and even much later.
There is, at any rate, a very interesting reference to Finns of Swedish nationality, made in connection with these Finns of Orkney. A last-century reader of Wallace's "Description of Orkney" (whose occasional comments upon that book are included in the reprint of 1883) gives, as his opinion, that the "Finnmen" of Orkney, in the years 1682-4, belonged to "the Finns, or inhabitants of Finland, part of the kingdom of Sweden." Whether this writer meant the Finns of Esthonia and Livonia, or of Finland proper—for all these provinces were under Swedish rule in the seventeenth century—it is evident that he went too far afield for his "Finnmen." But what really is important is the statement which he goes on to make, incidentally, with regard to the Finns of Sweden. "They had," he says, "a settlement in Pennsylvania, near the freshes of the river Delaware, in the neighbourhood of the Dutch, who were the first planters here" (and he gives as his authority "The British Empire in America," vol. i. p. 309).
Now, this colony of Swedish Finns is clearly that which is otherwise spoken of as a colony of Swedes. When William Penn took possession, in the year 1682, of the territory which has ever since been associated with his memory, those "Swedes" were already settled there. "'He was hailed there with acclamation by the Swedes and Dutch,' says one authority, who informs us that the Swedes were living in log cabins and clay huts. The men dressed in 'leather breeches, jerkins, and match coats,' the women in 'skin jackets and linsey petticoats.'"[52] Those Swedes, then, of 1682, are identified by an eighteenth-century writer with the Swedish Finns of that period, and at the same time with the contemporary Finns of Orkney: who, also, according to Brand, wore "coats of leather." And their "log cabins and clay huts" were probably very much like the sod-covered dwellings of modern Lapps.
It is an interesting picture. Because this is plainly an infusion of unadulterated "Eskimo" blood, among the Pennsylvanians of that date, which is quite independent of the representatives of that family at present occupying Greenland and the northern parts of British North America. It is "Eskimo" blood that was "European" only two or three centuries ago. And it is quite likely that many modern Americans whose descent is drawn from those seventeenth-century colonists of Pennsylvania, referred to as "Swedes," have some of this blood in their veins. That they may have inherited a further share of it through other channels—"British," and perhaps also "Dutch"—is quite probable.
There is something very suggestive in the Shetland accounts that, several generations ago, Shetland fishermen were frequently terrorized into paying "silver money" as tribute to people who are said to have come across from Bergen. Many portions of the north-eastern corner of Scotland appear to have been within the diocese of Bergen, and to have owned the authority of that province up to very modern times. Of this there is ample evidence in title-deeds and other documents. This, of course, was a survival of the Scandinavian suzerainty over the extreme north and west of Scotland, which in the fifteenth century was actual sovereignty, as regards Orkney and Shetland; while, for the Hebrides, the Scottish monarchs had to pay a yearly tribute known as "The Annual of Norway." And at an earlier period still, the Sudereys, or South Hebrides, and the Isle of Man, were included in this tributary kingdom. It is certainly worth considering whether the withdrawal of the legendary "marine people" from the Isle of Man, and their gradual disappearance (as "marine people") from the whole western and northern extremities of Scotland, which seems to coincide very closely, in time, with the decay of Scandinavian authority in these localities, ought not to be regarded as signifying that that authority was rooted in Mongoloid supremacy.
However, our present purpose is not to guess at the name or names by which these people must be known to history, but to emphasize their existence as a Mongoloid race. That the present British people show traces of such a line of ancestry is the opinion of many modern ethnologists. In his "Origins of English History" Mr. Elton recognizes a type "not unlike the modern Eskimo," as existent in certain parts of England. Mr. J. F. Campbell, in his "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," contends strongly for the past existence in that locality of a race akin to modern Lapps. And the Iberian theorists discern a similar type in "the small, swarthy Welshman," "the small, dark Highlander," and the "Black Celts to the west of the Shannon." The question of complexion is, of course, but of minor importance, since it is anatomical structure that determines affinity. The modern Eskimo races themselves show this, for they include all shades, from dark or olive to actual red and white; although plainly of one general stock.
They exhibited an American-Eskimo chief, "as a Rarity," at some of the eastern seaports of Scotland, a few years ago. But it is probable that a considerable number of the spectators were looking at a man who almost exactly resembled one or more of their own ancestors, not many generations back; not only in the style of his dress and in his general appearance, as he shot his slender kayak across their waters, but also, to a very great extent, in his physical features. And it is much the same with many millions of Europeans (and their offshoots), who, chiefly through intermixture, and partly on account of altered conditions of life, are no longer recognizable, to a superficial observer, as in any degree connected with this "Eskimo" stock.
CHAPTER V.
When the twelfth-century Norseman, Sigurd Slembe, with his twenty followers, spent a whole winter with the Lapps or Finns, as stated in the "Heimskringla" (Saga XIV), it is evident that the two sets of men were in intimate association. Their life at that time is thus described in Sigurd's song:
"In the Lapland tent
Brave days we spent,
Under the grey birch tree;
In bed or on bank
We knew no rank,
And a merry crew were we.
"Good ale went round
As we sat on the ground,
Under the grey birch tree;
And up with the smoke
Flew laugh and joke,
And a merry crew were we."
It was at that time, also, that the Lapps made for Sigurd those "sinew-fastened boats," in which he and his party voyaged southward in spring. In these accounts there is no mention made of the Lapp or Finn women, but their presence there must certainly be taken for granted. And there is no reason for supposing that they were less friendly to their guests than the Finn men were. There are evidences, indeed, that the Ugrians and the non-Ugrians of Scandinavia, of either sex, were on a friendly footing two centuries before Sigurd Slembe's day. When Eric, the son of Harald Haarfager, was in Lapland on one occasion, he there found his future wife, Gunhild, living in a hut with "two of the most knowing Laplanders in all Finmark." She had come there, she said, "to learn Lapland-art," in which these two Lapps were deeply versed. The way in which she entrapped her hosts, and went off with Eric, is described in the Saga (Harald Haarfager's, chap. xxxiv), and it argues something for Eric's magnanimity or indifference that he chose this lady to be his bride. However, the point is that in Gunhild we have a presumably non-Ugrian woman, living in the most friendly way with a couple of Lapp "magicians."
Again, we find Harald Haarfager himself actually marrying a Finn woman. We are told (chap. xxv of his Saga) how, one winter, when Harald was moving about Upland "in guest-quarters," he was induced by "the Fin Svase," who announced himself to the king's followers as "the Fin[53] whose hut the King had promised to visit," to not only fulfil the said promise, but then and there to marry Snaefrid, the daughter of the Finn. Whether he took this step by reason of the beauty of the Finn girl, or of the strength of the mead which she poured out to him, or of the "magic" which she and her father exercised upon him, is a matter of little moment. The fact remains that she became his queen, and in course of time bore to him four sons: Sigurd Hrise, Halfdan Haleg, Gudrod Liome, and Rognvald Rettilbeine: who, consequently, were half-bred Finns—that is, assuming that Harald himself was of pure non-Ugrian blood.
These four sons of Harald's Finn wife are subsequently to be met with in this Saga; which tells how "they grew up to be very clever men, very expert in all exercises." When Harald was fifty years of age, he gave to three of them, as to his other sons, "the kingly title and dignity," assigning to them, as their portion of his kingdom, the territories of "Ringerike, Hadeland, Thoten, and the lands thereto belonging." But one of the four, Halfdan, did not live to attain this dignity. Several years before, he, like Harald's many other sons, had resented his exclusion from place and dignity, and the advancement of mere "earls" instead; "for they [Harald's sons] thought earls were of inferior birth to them." Consequently, Halfdan and his brother Gudrod "set off one spring with a great force, and came suddenly upon Earl Rognvald, Earl of Möre, and surrounded the house in which he was, and burnt him and sixty men in it." Then, leaving his brother in temporary possession of that earldom, "Halfdan took three long-ships, and fitted them out, and sailed into the West Sea." The Earl of Orkney at that time was Einar ("Turf" Einar), and on Halfdan's unexpected appearance he fled. For six months the Finn woman's son ruled over Orkney. But in the autumn, Einar returned, and "after a short battle," totally defeated and put to flight Halfdan and his followers. "Einar and his men lay all night without tents, and when it was light in the morning they searched the whole island, and killed every man they could lay hold of. Then Einar said: 'What is that I see upon the Isle of Ronaldsha?[54] Is it a man or a bird? Sometimes it raises itself up, and sometimes lies down again.' They went to it, and found it was Halfdan Haaleg, and took him prisoner." Einar thereupon killed Halfdan, and he and his men raised a mound of stones and gravel over the corpse; which mound, if not yet opened, will no doubt disclose to some modern craniologist the exact ethnological status of this semi-Finn.[55]
With regard to another brother of Halfdan's, Rognvald Rettilbeine, it is stated that he ruled over Hadeland, and became famous for his skill in witchcraft, in which he was no doubt instructed by his Lapp relatives. This, indeed, was the cause of his death. For, at the instigation of their common father, his half-brother Eric (Bloody-axe) "burned his brother Rognvald in a house along with eighty other warlocks," on account of these same alleged malpractices.
These are only a few recorded instances, which reveal the Finns and the non-Finns as sometimes closely allied not only by association, but by blood. But from them it may be inferred that many other intermarriages between the two races took place, and that the Finns, although eventually conquered as a distinct people, were frequently men of rank and importance among the Scandinavians of eight or nine centuries ago. As an instance of a Finn occupying an official position (certainly much inferior to that of the semi-Finnish kings of Ringerike, Hadeland, and Thoten), we have the "Finn Sauda-Ulfsson," who appears as "engaged in drawing in King Inge's rents and duties" at Viken, Norway, in the twelfth century ("Heimskringla," Saga XIV, chap. vii). And a certain notable Ketill flat-nose,[56] or Ketill Finn, whose memory is doubtless embalmed in Ketill's-sæter (now Kettlester), in the island of Yell, Shetland, was clearly of Finn blood. When he, and such as he—the semi-Ugrian sons of Harald, for example—held sway in Shetland and Orkney, and when men and women of either race occasionally, perhaps frequently, lived together, a state of things existed that closely resembled that described in Mr. Karl Blind's Shetlandic traditions—when "Finns came ow'r fa Norraway" and practised magic and witchcraft, and domineered over the people of the northern islands.
Of course, it is impossible to say what proportion the Finn blood bore to the other. Yet it is quite evident that the Finns, while often at war with the race that overcame them, were also frequently their allies, and that the two peoples became to some extent blended in blood. Consequently, when one discovers among modern British people physical traces of a race "not unlike the modern Eskimo," in localities famed as the scene of many a Scandinavian raid, these traces may reasonably be attributed to those very inroads.
CHAPTER VI.
The references made in the two preceding chapters bear specially upon those Finns who "came ow'r fa Norraway" to the islands of Shetland and Orkney. But if the assumption be correct that many of the Finns who landed in Shetland and fished in Shetlandic waters came thither direct from the Hebrides, it is to be presumed that Gaelic as well as English tradition has something to say regarding them. And as there are several words in use in Shetland which are also in use among West Highlanders,[57] it is not unlikely that these people may be known in the West Highlands by the same name as in Shetland.
It is quite clear that Highland tradition does bear testimony to the former existence of a special race or caste of people known by a name which resembles that of the Finns so closely that it may reasonably be regarded as only a variant of "Finn." In a certain charter of Alexander II. of Scotland (A.D. 1214-49, reference is made to a well which is known in Gaelic as Tuber na Feinn, Feinne or Feyne; and an old gloss (date unknown) explains that this term signifies "the Well of the grett or kempis men callit Fenis."[58] Or, in more modern English, "The Well of the great men or champions called Feens, Fenns, Feenies, or Fennies."[59] Here, then, we have record of a certain race of "kempies" or fighters, who were known in English as Feens, etc., and in Gaelic as the Feinne. One does not require to know much of Gaelic tradition—one need not know anything of it—to be well aware of the fact that that legendary lore is fairly alive with stories of the "Feinne," whatever may have been the ethnological position of the caste thus named. And, just as in modern Shetland we have people proclaiming with pride their descent from the Finns, so have we West Highlanders and Hebrideans boasting that the Feinne were among their forefathers. Just as Mr. Karl Blind met with a modern Shetland woman who asserted that she was "fifth from da Finns," so did the late Mr. J. F. Campbell, in 1871, converse with a Skyeman, "Donald MacDonald, styled Na Feinne"[60]—that is, "of the Feens." If the "Feinne" of Gaelic story are really the same people as the "Finns" of Shetlandic tradition, it will not be for lack of statements made regarding them if we do not learn a great deal more about these people through Gaelic channels.
Without either hastily accepting or condemning this hypothetical identification, let us look a little further into the circumstances of the Gaelic Feinne. And it may be as well first to decide upon an English equivalent of this Gaelic plural. Mr. J. F. Campbell states that the singular is Fiann; but, even when writing in English, he prefers to adhere to the Gaelic form of the plural—thus, "the Feinn" or "the Feinne." However, both Dr. Skene and another writer (the late Rev. J. G. Campbell, Tiree), have Englished this into "the Fians." This approaches so closely to the marginal "Fenis" of the old charter of Alexander II., that we may take "the Feens" as a good enough modern English equivalent for the Gaelic plural. (For the vowels in Fians and Feinne receive the old or Continental pronunciation, these words having the sound of "Feeans" and "Fane," or "Fayny," according to modern English spelling.) In order, therefore, to avoid the confusion that might arise from Englishing "the Feinne" into "the Finns" (although we are tacitly assuming, in the meantime, that the latter really expresses the ethnological position of the former), let us refer to "the Feinne" of Gaelic story as "the Feens."[61]
So lately as the latter part of the seventeenth century, certain districts of Scotland were recognized as specially "the land of the Feinne." Dr. Skene, on the page which tells us of the Tobar na Feinne, or Well of the Feens, states that Kirke (the Rev. Robert Kirke, minister of Balquhidder, in Perthshire), in his Psalter, which was published in 1684, refers to the territory stretching from Loch Linnhe north-west to, and inclusive of, the Outer Hebrides[62] as "the generous land of the Feinne."
"The land of the Feens," therefore, according to this Scotch writer of the seventeenth century, embraced the Outer Hebrides and a certain portion of the opposite mainland, known in the Highlands as "the rough bounds." It is thus evident at the outset that we do not obviously make a false start in assuming that the Feens of Gaelic tradition ought to be regarded as forming a section of the Finns who visited Shetland in the seventeenth century. In 1684 Kirke regarded the Hebrides as the land of the Feens; in 1688 Wallace records the occasional arrival of Finns or Finnmen on the coasts of Orkney and Shetland. And we have already seen that skin kayaks, such as those which bore the Finn visitors to the islands of the north-east were employed at about the same period by inhabitants of the Hebrides. Certain sections of the Hebrideans are recorded in history as making warlike descents upon the fisheries of Orkney and Shetland. And these Hebrideans dwelt in "the land of the Feens."
But the seventeenth century is much too recent a date for studying the Gaelic accounts of the Feens. These accounts go back to the period when Gaelic was peculiarly associated with what seems to have been its earliest home in the British Islands—Ireland. That they also relate to the more recent period of the Irish or Gaelic settlements in Scotland is manifest. But they are substantially Gaelic (i.e., Irish), and they deal with events which cannot be limited to the time of the Irish invasions of Scotland; and they relate to localities which are not merely British, but European.
"Who were the Feens of tradition, and to what country and period are they to be assigned?" is the question asked by one of the most learned of the authorities from whom these statements are obtained.[63] And his answer, after due consideration, is, that "we may fairly infer that they were of the population who immediately preceded the Scots [Gaels] in Erin [Ireland] and in Alban [Scotland, north of the Forth and Clyde], and that they belong to that period in the history of both countries before a political separation had taken place between them, when they were viewed as parts of one territory, though physically separated, and when a free and unrestrained intercourse took place between them; when race, and not territory, was the great bond of association, and the movements of their respective populations from one country to the other were not restrained by any feeling of national separation."[64]
Distinct and important as this announcement is, it requires still further consideration. Our guide in this question has shown us that in such modern times as the seventeenth century, the Feens of Scotland were restricted to a small corner of the West Highlands and to the Hebrides; which territory was so far associated with them that an intelligent writer of that century spoke of it as the land of the Feens. But Dr. Skene points also to a much earlier period, when the Feens inhabited, if they did not possess and exclusively occupy, the whole of Ireland and Irish-Scotland. And he indicates further that they had dwelt in these districts before the advent of the Milesians (or Gaels). More than that, he shows us that the lands in which they lived included a portion of the continent of Europe.
In opposition to the theory manufactured by the Irish historians, that the Feens were "a standing body of Milesian militia, having peculiar privileges and strange customs," Dr. Skene holds the conviction that, "when looked at a little more closely," they "assume the features of a distinct race."[65] As a proof of this, he quotes three verses from an old poem on the Battle of Gabhra (or Gawra, as the more softened pronunciation has it). This battle of Gawra is said to have been fought in Ireland, on the border of the counties of Meath and Dublin, and it is placed by some in the third century A.D. It appears to have been the outcome of the resolution made by the High King of Ireland, Cormac Mac Art, to renounce for ever the tributary position which he and other kings occupied towards their over-lords, the Feens. The Irish monarch is said to have aimed at the complete extermination of the race in one district at least; to have "Great Alvin [apparently the modern Allen, near Dublin] cleared of the Feens."[66] At any rate, whatever its position in time and place, this battle clearly marks a crisis in the history of that latter race. For to them the battle of Gawra was a complete and crushing defeat; and thereafter their suzerainty was ended. "The kings did all own our sway till the battle of Gaura was fought," sings the bard of the Feens, "but since that horrid slaughter no tribute nor tax we've raised." The chroniclers state that the leader and an immense number of his warriors were killed, and only two thousand of the Feens of Ireland were left alive when the battle was over. And their bard sings thus:
"Fiercely and bravely we fought,
That fight, the fight of Gaura;
Then did fall our noble Feinn,
Sole to sole with Ireland's kings."[67]
But the Feenian army here engaged did not only consist of the Feens of Ireland; and this, indeed, is the reason why attention is now drawn to this battle. It is in regarding the battle of Gawra that we recognize the force of Dr. Skene's contention, that however the Feens may in later times have become restricted to this or that locality, they at one time formed a very widely spread race, the various divisions of which were ready to hasten to the aid of any portion of this great confederacy in time of danger. Whether Dr. Skene is precisely correct in stating that "race, and not territory, was the great bond of association," is a mere question of words. Because the Gaelic traditions emphatically show that although Ireland and other neighbouring lands were occupied by people of non-Feenic race, who were governed by their own kings, yet, as these kings were themselves subject to the Feens, who drew tribute from them, the real owners of these various territories were the powerful though scattered overlords, and not the races that were under their sway.[68] Mr. J. F. Campbell also states that the Feenic king was not distinguished by any territorial title: "always 'Rìgh na Fînne or Fēinne'" ("West Highland Tales," I, xiii). And in the pedigree which he gives on page 34 of his "Leabhar na Feinne," and which was compiled by a good archæologist, the title given to three successive generations of the "royal family" of the Irish Feens is "General of the Feens" of Ireland; not "King of Ireland" itself.
This battle of Gawra, then, which seems to mark the period when the great Feenic confederacy was on the point of breaking up, was brought about by the evident resolve of the non-Feenic population of Ireland to throw off for ever this intolerable yoke. And the three verses which Dr. Skene extracts from the poem descriptive of the battle disclose to us that other sections of the Feenic confederacy had come to the help of that division which was resident in Ireland. The poem is supposed to be sung by a Feen of Ireland; and he states that
"The bands of the Feens of Alban,
And the supreme King of Britain,
Belonging to the order of the Feens of Alban,
Joined us in that battle.
"The Feens of Lochlin were powerful,
From the chief to the leader of nine men,
They mustered along with us
To share in the struggle.
* * * * * *
"There was thus in this battle," says Dr. Skene, "besides Feens of Ireland, Feens of Alban, Britain, and Lochlan."[69] Alban, he explains, denoted the whole of Scotland lying to the north of the Forth and Clyde. Britain, he states in this place, was South-Western Scotland. But elsewhere[70] he tells us that "Britain" signified "either Wales, or England and Wales together"; and again,[71] that that term included "England, Scotland, and Wales." At the very least, then, it denoted a part of Great Britain, then inhabited—not necessarily to the exclusion of other races—by Feens.
These two names, "Alban" and "Britain," do not, however, take us outside of the British Isles. But the third term, "Lochlan," does. "Lochlan," says our guide, "was the north of Germany, extending from the Rhine to the Elbe." And the Feens of that territory, the poem tells us, "from the chief to the leader of nine men," "mustered along with us [the Feens of Ireland] to share in the struggle," on this fateful day of Gawra.
Why Dr. Skene should limit "Lochlan" to these dimensions is not made quite clear. For Norway, Sweden, and Denmark constituted the "Lochlan" chiefly known to Gaelic writers. However, he seems to be of opinion that the term was "transferred" to Scandinavia in the ninth century, and that previously (as, for example, when the battle of Gawra was fought) it peculiarly denoted the more southern territory. If he is right in this, we cannot assume the Lochlan contingent as including the Feens of Norway. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any strong reason for believing that, at the date of Gawra, "Lochlan" did not take in the whole of Scandinavia, as in the ninth century and afterwards. It is at least noteworthy, in this connection, that in the pedigree previously referred to,[72] the ruler of the Feens of Ireland, when the battle of Gawra was fought, is stated to have been the grandson of a Finland woman. Quite apart from the assumed identity of Feen and Finn, this indicates a kinship that was not limited even by the river Elbe.[73]
But really the identity of Feen and Finn seems tolerably clear. Indeed, a contemporary writer,[74] who has studied ancient Ireland and its "Feinne" from his own point of view, appears to regard this identity as a thing perfectly manifest. And when, as tending to confirm this opinion, he embellishes his pages with several illustrations from scientific authorities in modern Finland, in which the ancient forms of art and dress are seen, it is plain that these designs are the same as those which are strongly associated with those portions of Scotland which were once known as The Land of the Feens.
Therefore, it appears probable that the "Feinne" of Lochlan, that is, of the country lying between the Rhine and the Elbe, who assisted their kindred in Ireland at the battle of Gawra, were simply the Finns of that territory. And that, consequently, that battle belongs to a period when the Mongoloid people, instead of being cut up, as now, into small detachments here and there, or amalgamated with other races, held a very distinct and important position throughout a considerable area of Europe.
However, this identity of "Feen" with "Finn" may not appear to some people as even a probability, without a fuller investigation into the circumstances of the people known to Gaelic tradition as the Feinne. It may therefore be desirable to continue to refer to the "Finns" of Gaelic folk-lore by the name of "Feens."
CHAPTER VII.
"The Feens, then, belonged to the pre-Milesian races, and were connected, not only with Ireland, but likewise with Northern and Central Scotland, England and Wales, and the territory lying between the Rhine and the Elbe.[75] Now, there are just two people mentioned in the Irish records who had settlements in Ireland, and who yet were connected with Great Britain and the region between the Rhine and the Elbe. These were the people termed the Tuatha De Danann, and the Cruithné." So says the learned annotator of "The Dean of Lismore's Book."[76]
These two last-named races, we are told, are both traditionally brought from the Elbe and Rhine districts to Ireland and Scotland, and both are eventually subdued by the later-arriving Milesian Scots. The period given for the Milesian conquest of the Cruithné of Scotland, is the ninth century of the Christian era.
Leaving the "Tuatha De Danann" out of the question in the meantime, let us look at the contemporary and probably kindred "Cruithné." The Cruithné, Cruithneach, or Cruithnigh, are unquestionably deserving of study, for Dr. Skene has shown us[77] that this is merely another name for those people whom history chiefly knows as "the Picts." The traditional "Feens," therefore, are to be identified with the historical "Picts."
Now, although these people are, as we have just seen, believed to have come from the Continental country of "Lochlan" (Scandinavia, in the largest acceptation of that term, or, in its most restricted sense, the region lying between the Rhine and the Elbe), and although there is every reason to believe that they spread themselves all over the British Isles, yet they seem—regarded as "Picts"—to be chiefly associated with North Britain. Their memory is still preserved, topographically, by the name of Pentland (formerly Petland or Pehtland, and Pictland), which is borne by the stormy firth separating the Orkneys from Caithness, and also by the range of hills lying to the south of Edinburgh. Both of these names are unquestionably derived from the time when there was a "land of the Picts" in either of these neighbourhoods. But the Picts, as such, are remembered all over Scotland, in history and in tradition. It is chiefly in connection with Ireland that they are spoken of as Cruithné.
If the "Feens" of tradition were Cruithné, or Picts, it is evident that whatever is known with regard to the history, customs, appearance, and language of the Picts will help us to decide as to whether the Feens were really one with the Finns of history, ethnology, and tradition. This, as already remarked, on general grounds, seems very probable. But, when a very able historian assures us that the historical Cruithné or Picts must certainly be at least classed with the Feens of tradition, if these three terms do not actually include one people, we are enabled, by proceeding upon this assumption, to obtain further proofs in corroboration of this belief.
Whether regarded as Feens or as Picts, these people, we are informed, had settlements throughout the British Isles during the earlier centuries of the Christian era, and the country of their origin was Northern Germany (or, more vaguely, Scandinavia); in which country large sections of their kindred continued to dwell, and to maintain a system of confederacy with the Western or British section long after the latter had settled in their new home. This, at any rate, when viewed as Feens.
On the other hand, such a writer as Mr. H. Howorth demonstrates that, during the same period, the Mongoloid races formed a most important, and in some places a preponderating, portion of the inhabitants of the countries of Northern Europe. But, during that period, these Mongolian races have—he points out—been subjected to an unceasing process of expulsion from their neighbours on the south and south-east. If any race, therefore, arrived in the British Islands from the neighbourhood of the Baltic in the centuries immediately preceding or following the birth of Christ, the probability is that that race belonged to one division or another of these dispossessed Ugrian people.
If this were so—if the Cruithné or Picts, who came to Britain from the Baltic lands, were one with, or closely akin to, the Finns and Lapps—their characteristics must have been those of such people. For example, their religious beliefs. Now, one cannot read Dr. Skene's references to the heathen religion of the Cruithné without seeing that it strongly resembles that of the Lapps and Finns.[78] Without quoting these references in detail, it may be pointed out that the power of bringing on a snowstorm and darkness, and unfavourable winds, was among the mysteries of the Pictish priests. And this gift of commanding the elements was peculiarly associated with the Finns and Lapps, as it still is with the Eskimo "sorcerers" of Greenland. "In the Middle Ages," says a writer on sorcery,[79] "the name of Finn was equivalent to sorcerer." And as the same writer observes that "the old authors often confounded the Finns with the Lapps, and when they speak of Finns, it is very difficult to know which of these two peoples they refer to" (a confusion of terms which we have already had occasion to remark), we may here use the term Finn to denote both divisions. Tentatively, at any rate. The actual Lapps appear to have been the most powerful magicians of all that caste. "It is proved by numerous documents," continues M. Tuchmann, "that the Finns called the Lapps sorcerers, although they themselves were reputed to be great magicians; but they regarded themselves as inferior to their neighbours, for they habitually said, when speaking of their most famous sorcerers: 'He is a veritable Lapp.'"[80] However, since "Finn" has so frequently been used to denote the whole group, and since the most recent examples of these people in the British Isles, namely, the magic-working Finns of Shetland, have borne that title, we may adhere to the practice of referring to both divisions as "Finns."
The Picts or Cruithné, therefore, practised the magic of the Finns. That is, the Feens practised the magic of the Finns.[81]
Again, when we look at certain weapons used by the Feens, a similar resemblance is visible. According to a tradition, taken down from the recital of an old Hebridean, the spears or darts of the Feens, which were known in Gaelic as "tunnachan," were of this description: "They were sticks with sharp ends made on them, and these ends burned and hardened in the fire. They [the Feens] used to throw them from them, and they could aim exceedingly with them, and they could drive them through a man. They used to have a bundle with them on their shoulders, and a bundle in their oxters [under their arm-pits]. I myself have seen one of them that was found in a moss, that was as though it had been hardened in the fire."[82] "This, then," justly remarks Mr. Campbell, "gives the popular notion of the heroes [the Feens], and throws them back beyond the iron period."
While the fashion of referring to "periods" of iron, bronze, etc., is very apt to mislead (since contiguous peoples have been, and are, in different "periods" of this nature, at the same moment of time), it is at least clear from the above tradition that the most primitive form of dart was associated with the Feens. But, although this species of weapon is of great antiquity, it does not follow that a tradition which relates to people who employed it, is necessarily of great antiquity also. Or that those javelin-men were at all "prehistoric." We have already seen that a race of people employed darts in exactly the same way when fishing—or, perhaps, more correctly, when seal-hunting—within British waters, only two hundred years ago. And the people who in this respect resembled the Feens of Gaelic folk-lore are themselves remembered as Finns.
But perhaps the readiest and surest way of obtaining something like a true conception of these legendary Feens, is to regard them from the ethnological point of view, as well, that is, as our imperfect information will allow. We shall therefore look at them in this aspect, whether considered as Picts or Cruithné or as Feens.
The great hero of the Feenic legends, and the "King" or "General" of the Feens of Ireland, was the famous "Finn" or "Fionn." If the battle of Gawra was really fought in the third century, as is alleged, and if this "Fionn" was a real man, and not the type or "eponymus" of his race, then he ought to be assigned to the third century. For he is said to have been present at that battle, where his grandson was slain and the supremacy of his race destroyed. At any rate, whether he lived at that date or not, and whether he was an individual or merely a personification of his race, Fionn figures throughout the tales of these people as a very Feen of the Feens.
Now, among the many stories told of him, there is one, entitled "How Fin[83] went to the Kingdom of the Big Men." It is unnecessary to give all the particulars of this tale. But Fin is pictured as starting from Dublin Bay in his little coracle (curachan) on his voyage to the country of the Big Men. Although he is described as "hoisting the spotted, towering sails," they cannot have been very large, or very many, for the coracle was so small that "Fin was guide in her prow, helm in her stern, and tackle in her middle," and when he landed on the coast of the Big Men's country, he drew his tiny vessel, unaided, up into the dry grass, above the tide-mark. It ought to be added, however, that this coracle was an open boat, capable of holding at least four persons; as is shown on the return voyage.
After landing, Fin encountered a "big wayfarer" (tais-dealach mòr), who informed him that his king had long been in want of a dwarf (troich), and that Fin would suit him capitally. "He took with him Fin; but another big man (fear mòr) came, and was going to take Fin from him. The two fought; but when they had torn each other's clothes, they left it to Fin to judge. He chose the first one. He took Fin with him to the palace of the king, whose worthies and high nobles assembled to see the little man (an duine bhig"). And then and there Fin was installed as the royal dwarf.[84]
In this story, then, we have the tacit admission that, not far from Fin's home at the hill of Allen, Kildare, there was a country whose inhabitants were so much taller than the race of Fin, that the latter were mere dwarfs beside them. Now, this is precisely the most striking characteristic of the kayak-using Finns of Shetlandic tradition.
The Finns of Shetland folk-lore are, says Mr. Karl Blind, "reckoned among the Trows." The king of the Feens was hailed in the country of the big men as a Troich. And these are simply two forms of the same word. Troich or droich, among Gaelic-speaking people, is softened into trow or drow among the English-speaking Shetlanders.[85] In both cases it signifies "dwarf."
And, just as the Shetlanders have memories of a race of small men, who, in spite of their mean stature, were a terror to the taller people, whom they oppressed and took tribute from, so have the Gaelic-speaking people a mass of legends which also tell of similar dwarfish but dreaded tyrants. The former designate their dwarfs "Finns": if the Gaelic traditions are not equally definite, they at least suggest that a caste of "Feens," who levied a tax upon the Gaelic-speaking people, were themselves dwarfs in stature. And the Highland tales abound in stories of fierce and tyrannical dwarfs.
CHAPTER VIII.
But, if the legendary "Feens" are identical with, or closely akin to, the Picts of history, then the historical Picts must also belong to this stunted Eskimo-like race. Let us look at the people called "Picts."
And, first of all, since the word "Pict" is admittedly the result of a pun or a misapprehension on the part of Latin-speaking people, it may be as well to discard that special spelling. The forms which the word appears to have most commonly taken in the mouths of the country-people of Scotland are Pik, Pech, Pecht, and Peht (the ch being of course pronounced as in German). Doubtless, other forms might be adduced; but perhaps the best compromise is Pecht. What, then, are the accounts given with regard to the stature of the Pechts?
The question is practically answered at once in considering the nature of the dwellings that the traditions of Scotland unanimously assign to these people.
"The only tradition which I heard current on the subject of the former inhabitants of the country," says a writer on Shetland,[86] "was, that the remains of old dwellings were Pechts' houses, and that those who lived in them were little men." And, in reporting to the Anthropological Society of London the result of an archæological tour in Shetland, Dr. James Hunt[87] remarks of such "old dwellings"—"These remains are called 'Pights' or Picts' houses.' Mr. Umfray pechts."[88] And the present writer, when visiting a "Pict's house" three or four miles north of the place just spoken of, and which had also been inspected by Dr. Hunt, obtained similar testimony. The place is known as Saffester, or Seffister, and its antiquarian features consist of the remains of a chambered tumulus and a separate subterranean gallery. The latter is referred to by one writer as a "Pict's house," although it is only a passage. As, however, local tradition alleges that it leads to the chambered mound, the name may be correct enough. Now, this tumulus was opened fifty or more years ago by the parish minister.[89] And an old man, who was then a boy, informed the writer that the entrance was effected by what he and his boy companions had always called "the trow's door." Another similar experience of the writer's yields a like result. Near Hamna Voe, at the south end of the island of Yell, there is a small loch and islet, with the remains of a "broch," the loch being known as "the loch of Kettlester." The "broch" that once stood there (for the ruins no longer retain their original shape) was built by "the Pechts," said the intelligent lad (a native of the district) who was the writer's guide, and these Pechts he described as very small people.[90]
The popular Shetland notions regarding the Pechts are again repeated by a lady writer, who has the advantage of being herself a Shetlander[91]: "The first folks that ever were in our isles were the Picts.... They had no ships, only small boats.... They were very small [people]." Indeed, so much has their small stature been impressed upon the popular memory, that, as we have seen, "dwarfs, in this locality, are still called pechts." Nor is it only in Shetland that this word has such a meaning. In Aberdeenshire picht denotes a dwarfish person, and Dr. Jamieson, in recording the fact,[92] suggests its connection with "the pichts or pechts, whom the vulgar view as a race of pigmies." In the south of Scotland also, this signification appears to prevail; for the Ettrick Shepherd, in the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," employs "pegh" as an everyday synonym for "dwarf." In point of fact, although it has just been stated that dwarfs "are still called pechts" in Shetland, because of the small size of the race so known to history, it is really a question whether the historical people did not so become historically remembered because a pre-existing word fitly described their dwarfish stature. But this etymological point is of little importance here.
Although Shetland has been chiefly considered in these recent remarks, it will be seen that the popular belief regarding the stature of the Pechts is apparently common to the whole of Scotland. Dr. Jamieson evidently thought so when he referred to "the Pichts, or Pechts, whom the vulgar view as a race of pigmies." And he does not stand alone. "Throughout Scotland," says another writer, "the vulgar account is 'that the Pechs were unco wee bodies, but terrible strang'; that is, that they were of very small stature, but of prodigious strength."[93] "Long ago," quotes the late Robert Chambers,[94] and his quotation also applies to the whole of Scotland, "there were people in this country called the Pechs; short, wee men they were,"—and so on.
Enough has been said to show that the ideas held by the "vulgar" (whose traditions, once contemptuously rejected by scholars, are nowadays being rated at their true value), throughout Scotland, with respect to the Pechts, agree in describing those people as decidedly dwarfish in stature. And this belief is most convincingly borne out by the dwellings which the Pechts are believed to have inhabited; the "Pechts' houses" which we glanced at a few paragraphs back, and which speedily led us to consider the Pechts themselves. No man of the average height of modern British people, who has personally inspected these "Pechts' houses," can arrive at any other conclusion than that they were built and inhabited by people of a stature very much less than his own. This is a point so manifest that it need not be emphasized to those who have stooped, squeezed, and crept among the chambers and passages of a "Pictish broch." A few particulars of measurement would quickly convince others; but such details need not be entered into here. However, something may be said with regard to the appearance of the dwelling which may best be regarded as the typical "Pecht's house."
In a "Notice of the Brochs and the so-called Picts' Houses of Orkney," submitted to the Anthropological Society of London,[95] Mr. George Petrie points out that "the name Pict's house is applied indiscriminately, in the northern counties of Scotland, to every sort of ancient structure." And as there is certainly a great difference, in degree, between the various structures referred to, we may here accept Mr. Petrie's guidance as to what constitutes the typical "Pict's house." "The class of buildings to which I have for many years restricted the appellation of Picts' house have been," says Mr. Petrie, "very different from the brochs,[96] both in external appearance and general structure and arrangements. The Pict's house is generally of a conical form, and externally closely resembles a large bowl-shaped barrow. It consists of a solid mass of masonry, covered with a layer of turf, a foot or more in thickness, and has a central chamber surrounded by several smaller cells. The entrance to the central chamber from the outside is by a long, low, narrow passage; while the cells are connected with the chamber by short passages of similar dimensions to the long one. The walls of the chambers and cells converge towards the top, where they approach so closely that the aperture can be spanned by a stone a couple of feet in length."
Another writer[97] describes a Pict's house—that on Wideford Hill, near Kirkwall—in these terms: "All that meets the eye at first is a green, conical mound, with an indescribable aspect of something eerie and weird about it, resting silently amid the moorland solitude. On closer inspection we discover an entrance passage, about eighteen inches high and two feet broad, leading from the lower side into the interior of the prehistoric dwelling,"—and so on.
The resemblance between this kind of dwelling, or its more modern representative, the "bee-hive" hut of the Hebrides and Western Ireland, to the dwellings of modern Eskimos has long been recognized. But it may be permitted to quote here from the accounts given by two Arctic voyagers of the early part of this century, especially as these accounts, both relating to the most northern tribes of Greenland, appear to describe with peculiar exactness the "Pict's house" of Mr. Petrie.
Captain Scoresby, in the account of his explorations in the year 1822, thus describes the deserted dwellings of some of those northern Eskimos:
"The roofs of all the huts had either been removed or had fallen in; what remained, consisted of an excavation in the ground at the brow of the bank, about 4 feet in depth, 15 in length, and 6 to 9 in width. The sides of each hut were sustained by a wall of rough stones, and the bottom appeared to be gravel, clay, and moss. The access to these huts, after the manner of the Esquimaux, was a horizontal tunnel perforating the ground, about 15 feet in length, opening at one extremity on the side of the bank, into the external air, and, at the other, communicating with the interior of the hut. This tunnel was so low, that a person must creep on his hands and knees to get into the dwelling: it was roofed with slabs of stone and sods. This kind of hut being deeply sunk in the earth, and being accessible only by a subterranean passage, is generally considered as formed altogether under ground. As, indeed, it rises very little above the surface, and as the roof, when entire, is generally covered with sods, and clothed with moss or grass, it partakes so much of the appearance of the rest of the ground, that it can scarcely be distinguished from it. I was much struck by its admirable adaptation to the nature of the climate and the circumstances of the inhabitants. The uncivilized Esquimaux, using no fire in these habitations, but only lamps, which serve both for light and for warming their victuals, require, in the severities of winter, to economise, with the greatest care, such artificial warmth as they are able to produce in their huts. For this purpose, an under-ground dwelling, defended from the penetration of the frost by a roof of moss and earth, with an additional coating of a bed of snow, and preserved from the entrance of the piercing wind by a long subterranean tunnel, without the possibility of being annoyed by any draught of air, but what is voluntarily admitted—forms one of the best contrivances which, considering the limited resources, and the unenlightened state of these people, could possibly have been adopted."[98]
Scoresby's description fully corroborates that given by Captain Ross a few years earlier, when relating his visit to the Eskimos living about the north-eastern corner of Baffin's Bay. These people he describes as "short in stature, seldom exceeding five feet," and he mentions that their sorcerers alleged that it was in their power to raise a storm or make a calm, and to drive off seals and birds."
With regard to their dwellings, he says:
"None of their houses were seen, but they described them as built entirely of stone, the walls being sunk about three feet into the earth, and raised about as much above it. They have no windows, and the entrance is by a long, narrow passage, nearly under ground. Several families live in one house, and each has a lamp made of hollowed stone, hung from the roof, in which they burn the blubber of the seal, etc., using dried moss for a wick, which is kindled by means of iron and stone. This lamp, which is never extinguished, serves at once for light, warmth, and cooking."[99]
It is not out of place to refer here also to an instructive article on "The Archæology of Lighting Appliances," read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by Mr. J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A.Scot., in the course of which he describes the stone lamps found in the habitations known as "brochs" (and popularly assigned to the Picts), with regard to which lamps he states that although not quite identical in shape with those used by modern Eskimos, they are substantially identical, and must have been used in precisely the same way. Comparing this with Baron Nordenskiöld's accounts, Mr. Romilly Allen observes: "The picture here given of the domestic life of the Eskimos at the present time enables us to form a tolerably correct idea of the way in which the inhabitants of the Scottish brochs lighted their dwellings during the long winter nights two thousand years ago." ("Proceedings of Soc. of Antiq. of Scot." 1887-88, p. 84.)
From all these remarks, then, it will be seen that the dwelling of the dwarfish Eskimo and the "house" assigned by Scottish tradition to the Pechts, or dwarfs, are substantially one. And a consideration of the statements also demonstrates clearly that, whatever the age of the word "pecht," none but a race of dwarfish stature would have built such places of abode. Indeed, the stature of the dwellers in the Pecht's house is doubly impressed upon the memory of the Northern Islanders. When Mr. Gorrie describes its outward appearance, he tells us (in similar terms to the Arctic voyagers), that "all that meets the eye at first is a green, conical mound ... resting silently amid the moorland solitude." But he really repeats himself, although he is not aware of it, when he refers on another page[100] to "the simple superstition (?) long prevalent among the inhabitants of Orkney and Zetland, that the strange green mounds rising by the sea-side and on solitary moors, were the abodes of supernatural beings known by the name of Trows." Of the "supernatural" attributes assigned to those people, or claimed by them—in early Scotland, in Lapland, and in Greenland—much remains to be said. But the people just referred to under two different, but synonymous, names, are undoubtedly one and the same.
The Pechts of history, then, were a race of dwarfs. Thus, when Dr. Skene identifies the Feens of Gaelic folk-lore with the historic Pechts, he reveals them to us as a race of dwarfs. Therefore, the traditional story of the Feen chiefs visit to the "country of the big men," where he was regarded by that latter race as a "droich," is entirely in accordance with Dr. Skene's belief that the Feens were of the same race as the historic Pechts. It is not at all unlikely that this identity was taken for granted long before the nineteenth century, and in Scotland. In Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, a collection of Scottish poems written before the year 1600, there is a certain "Interlude of the Droichs," also referred to as "The Droichs' Part of a Play." Now, the spokesman of these droichs (or trows, or dwarfs) announces himself as a grandson of Fin, the great chief of the Feens of Ireland. And he makes a statement which is identical with one contained in a Feenic poem on the battle of Gawra. This statement need not be particularized here, but it tells us unmistakably that these "droichs" were regarded as the representatives of Fin and his Feens.[101] Therefore, it would appear from this poem that Fin and his Feens were regarded by the ruling class in Scotland, prior to 1600, as dwarfs. That is, as pechts.
So far, then, all that has here been said tends to show that the Feinne of Gaelic folk-lore, and the Finns of Northern history and tradition, ought to be regarded as one and the same people. And that one section, at any rate, of such people ought to be identified with the Pechts, or Picts, of history.
CHAPTER IX.
While the Picts, or Pechts, are remembered to a great extent as the builders of the subterranean and half-subterranean dwellings with which they are associated, these are far from being the only structures which popular tradition has stamped as the work of their hands. The architectural skill, of a kind, which they displayed in the construction of their own "Pechts' houses" may be seen from such a casual reference as this, gleaned from among certain specimens of Clydesdale folk-lore: "Our milkhouse," says a Clydesdale peasant, "whilk stude on the side of a dentie burn, and was ane o' thae auld vowts [vaults] whilk the Pechs biggit langsyne, had wa's sae doons strang that ane waud hae thocht it micht hae stude to the last day; but its found had been onnerminit by the last Lammas-spait."[102] If the "Pechts' houses" lacked, as they certainly did, evidences of high culture in the designers, or outward beauty of design in themselves, they were at least remarkable for their great strength and durability; so that, were it not for such accidents as a Lammas-flood, they might well have stood "to the last day." But the great bodily strength of this race, and their turn for masonry, were made use of in other ways than in the construction of the dwellings referred to; that is, if there is any truth in the popular ideas upon this subject.
The late Robert Chambers, in putting together the popular Scotch beliefs regarding these people,[103] not only states that they were "short, wee men," but he adds, still speaking as a Scottish peasant: "The Pechs were great builders; they built a' the auld castles in the kintry; and do ye ken the way they built them? I'll tell ye. They stood all in a row from the quarry to the place where they were building, and ilk ane handed forward the stanes to his neebor, till the hale was biggit." A special example of one of the buildings so reared is the Round Tower of Abernethy in Perthshire, well known as one of the two towers of this class still to be found in Scotland. "The story goes," says the Rev. Andrew Small, in his "Antiquities of Fife,"[104] "that it was built by the Pechts,... and that, while the work was going on, they stood in a row all the way from the Lomond Hill to the building, handing the stones from one to another.... That it has been built of freestone from the Lomond Hill is clear to a demonstration, as the grist or nature of the stone points out the very spot where it has been taken from, namely, a little west, and up from the ancient wood of Drumdriell, about a mile straight south from Meralsford." That Abernethy was long a seat of Pictish power is what no historian would deny, and the tower referred to is always denominated "Pictish." Of the way in which it was built we have just seen the local account.
Similar ideas are current in Northumberland. "The erection of several of these old castles [e.g., Dunstanborough Castle] is, by popular tradition, ascribed to the Picts.... The building of the Roman wall, which is by country people commonly called the Picts' wall, is also ascribed to them; and they are said to have formed the Catrail on the Scottish border, which is frequently called the Picts-work ditch. The Picts are described as men of low stature, but of superhuman strength; and on the moors of Northumberland the heaps of stone, which are supposed by antiquaries to mark the spot where 'bones of mighty chiefs lie hid,' are sometimes pointed out to the inquiring stranger as places where a Pict's apron-string had broken as he was carrying a load of stones to his work."[105]
Although the tower at Abernethy, and the "Pechts' houses" already spoken of, may be classed together as having been built for the use of the builders themselves, it is quite evident that if these people actually reared the many other structures attributed to them, in Scotland and in Northumberland, they did so in the character of serfs, working for people of other races. If Dunstanborough Castle, the Wall of Hadrian, and (perhaps also) the Catrail, not to speak of "a' the auld castles in the kintry," were built by the Pechts, the builders were evidently not working on their own behalf. This clearly must have been the case in the instance of the "Roman Wall," which was raised for the very purpose of checking the southward inroads of these fierce warriors. That it actually was a "Roman wall" is of course beyond question. But that fact does not interfere with the supposition that the drudgery was performed by captive Pechts, whose immense strength, and intimate acquaintance with the art of building such structures, would render them of the greatest use to their conquerors. That they, and not the Romans, were the actual builders of the wall, as Northumbrian tradition asserts, is therefore far from improbable. Indeed, there are one or two indications that the more northern "Wall of Antoninus" may also have been reared by kindred hands. And as with these early examples, so may the later buildings referred to have actually been unwillingly built by Pechts, at the command of other people.[106]
Not only walls and castles, or towers, but churches and cathedrals are also said to have been reared by the same dwarfish but powerful builders, as may be seen from the following instances.
One part of Scotland that continued to be a "reservation" of the Pechts, after that people had ceased to hold sway, is the hilly country lying to the south of Edinburgh, and known as "the Pentlands." Like the "Pentland Firth" on the north-east of Scotland, this district was so called because it was associated with the Pechts. We need not here concern ourselves as to the causes which made the name, in both instances, assume the modern form of "Pentland." But, in each case, the name was formerly "Pehtland," and it signified "the land of the Pehts, or Pechts." According to Dr. Skene, the Angles of Northumbria had, as early as the seventh century, established themselves pretty securely as the ruling caste throughout the south-east of what is now Scotland, then a part of "Northumbria." This territory seems to have reached as far on the north-west as the modern county of Linlithgow, and one of the chief Northumbrian strongholds in that neighbourhood has ever since been known by the name of the Northumbrian king, Edwin. Edinburgh, therefore, in the seventh century, appears as a seat of the Anglian race, which ruled from the Forth to the Humber. Three or four centuries later, the steadily growing power of "Scotia" annexed the whole of Northumbria lying north of the Borders. But the population, no doubt, remained little affected by this political change, and its speech and traditions continued the same.[107]
But, although those Angles were the rulers of south-eastern Scotland (in modern topography), there still remained a remnant of the Pechts in at least one part of that northern Northumbria.[108] And it was because of their residence there that the Angles spoke of the hilly region lying to the south and south-west of Edinburgh as "the Peht or Pecht land." How long the Pechts maintained some kind of individuality in that neighbourhood it is impossible to say. It is said that, after Kenneth's great victory over the Pechts at Forteviot or at Scone, in the middle of the ninth century, many of the fugitives sought refuge in England. And, as the Pentland Hills were then in "England," it is likely that they found shelter among their kindred there. In other parts of Scotland the Pechts are historically visible long after the seventh and ninth centuries. At the battle of the Standard, in 1138, the Galloway section formed one division of the Scottish army.[109] A popular tradition, to be presently referred to, also speaks of them as a distinct people in the Clyde valley, during the same century. It is therefore quite permissible to suppose that, once the people of the Midlothian "Pecht-lands" had realized that they were a conquered remnant, with no hope of ultimately recovering their lost power, they may have continued to live, if merely as serfs, not only to the twelfth century, but for several centuries longer.
That they did so is to be inferred from the following bit of "folk-lore," which relates to a locality that, though not strictly included in the district of the "Pecht-lands," is quite near enough to agree with this hypothesis.
The hill of Corstorphine, situated a little to the west of Edinburgh, is only about three miles north of the nearest point of the "Pecht-lands." Now, the village church of Corstorphine is one of the few churches in Scotland which are of interest to the antiquary. "Ancient it most unquestionably is," says a modern writer in the course of a description of the village and its church, and the foundation of the latter is placed in the year 1429. The fifteenth century is not very "ancient," as these things go, but perhaps the site has been occupied by a church from a much earlier period. At any rate, the writer just referred to, in visiting Corstorphine for the purpose of inspecting both church and village, obtained this piece of local tradition, believed to relate to the church of 1429. "Of this [church], in November 1881, an intelligent native assured the writer that it was 'wonderfully ancient, built by the Hottentots, who stood in a row and handed the stones on one to another from Ravelston quarry'"—on the adjacent hill of Corstorphine.[110]
Now, if one compares this account with the traditional description of the modus operandi of the Pechts, already instanced in the case of Abernethy, and generally accepted throughout Scotland, one hardly requires the historical testimony of the "Pecht-lands" to recognize in these "Hottentots" the Pechts of tradition. It is not necessary to take the expression here used by the Corstorphine villager as absolutely correct. His statement, it may be remarked, succeeded a conversation in which our various wars in South Africa had been discussed,[111] and it is not unlikely that this had suggested to the speaker the term "Hottentot" as aptly enough describing a race that to his ancestors, whose ideas he inherited, had seemed savage and inferior. That he absolutely believed the labourers who reared the walls of the church to be of a different race from his own is unquestionably indicated by the whole tenor of his remarks.[112]
This Corstorphine tradition points to a body of Pechts still surviving as a distinct type, in the Midlothian of 1429; and then regarded by the general population as a caste of drudges. This, too, is the position accorded to that race in one phase of Highland tradition. "I am informed," says Dr. Jamieson,[113] "that in Inverness-shire, the foundations of various houses have been discovered, of a round form,... and that when the Highlanders are asked to whom they belonged, they say that they were the houses of the Drinnich or Trinnich, i.e., of the labourers, a name which they give to the Picts." They may be seen in the Clyde valley, in the same position as those of Corstorphine, but three centuries earlier, on the testimony of tradition. "Throughout Scotland," says an antiquary previously quoted, "the vulgar account is, 'that the Pechs were unco wee bodies, but terrible strang'; that is, that they were of very small stature, but of prodigious strength. It is commonly added [he goes on] 'that the meal (oatmeal) was a penny the peck when they built the Hie Kirk [the Cathedral] of Glasgow;' for the building of all the cathedrals, and in general everything very ancient, is ascribed by the common people to the Pechs."[114] Now, the present Cathedral of Glasgow is said to have been built in the twelfth century, at which date the Pechts of Galloway formed a distinct and separate population in south-western Scotland. According to Reginald of Durham, as we have already seen, the town of Kirkcudbright was situated in the "Pecht-lands" (terra Pictorum), and the sermo Pictorum was still spoken there. In the same century the Galloway Pechts formed the van of the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard; and the Pechts of this period are remembered in the popular memory, assisted by a homely enough detail, as having been employed in the building of the "High Church" of Glasgow. Of course, the Clyde valley is not situated in Galloway; but the presence of Pechts in twelfth-century Glasgow may easily be explained by assuming that they belonged to another detachment of the race, or that it was worth while sending to Galloway for such famous builders. Belonging to a period less easily defined are the Pecht masons of the famous Round Tower at Brechin. Regarding this tower a local writer states: "Tradition, in Brechin, as well as at Abernethy, ascribes the erection to the Peghts," and he adds, that "it has stated they were only allowed a trifle for this work, and were cheated out of part of this trifle."[115] In this instance, also, the Pechts are remembered as working for people of another race; which is somewhat remarkable, as the tower itself is one of those which seem to have been built by the Pechts for their own purposes.
Without going much out of the way, it may be as well to point out that the popular idea of the Pechts being "men of low stature, but of superhuman strength," "unco wee bodies, but terrible strang," is not only supported by tradition on every side, but it is borne out by a consideration of the mementos they have left behind them. Much could be said on this subject; but it will perhaps be enough here to point to a hill-fortress in Forfarshire, which history and tradition agree in ascribing to these people. This is the stronghold known as the White Cater Thun, situated a few miles north-west of Brechin (which possesses the Pictish round-tower just referred to, and which was once a seat of Pictish monarchy). The fort crowns a hill which rises about 300 feet above the general level of the great valley of Strathmore, and is thus referred to:
"This is, perhaps, the strongest Pictish fortification extant. It is surrounded by a double rampart of an elliptical figure, being 436 feet long by about 200 broad, and containing about two imperial acres.... But the most wonderful thing that occurs in this Pictish fort is the extraordinary dimensions of the ramparts, composed entirely of large, loose stones, being 26 feet thick at the top, and upwards of 100 at the bottom, reckoning quite to the ditch, which, indeed, seems to be much filled up with the tumbling down of the walls. The vast labour that it must have cost to amass so enormous a quantity of large stones, and convey them to such a height, is astonishing.... In conveying the enormous quantity of large stones to the summit of White Cater Thun, the natives must doubtless have expended great labour, and much time. They seem, however, to have been familiar with a method of removing immense masses from considerable distances, and it is supposed they made use of hurdles on such occasions; it is not improbable they might have some kind of rude windlass for raising the larger stones from the bottom to the top of the hill."[116]
Whatever the method employed by the builders of this stronghold, the description just given will show the reader, what he cannot fail to be impressed with on a study of the Pechts, that these people and their buildings belonged to what is known as the "Cyclopean" type, and that they—the people—represented a race now quite extinct, in its purity, but which must undoubtedly have been remarkable for a prodigious strength of body, a strength that may well be spoken of as "superhuman," if it is to be compared with that of any existing race of men. It is this point that must always be borne in mind when one considers the traditions regarding the buildings of the Pechts, and this it is that justifies the very parts of those traditions which would otherwise appear utterly wild and incredible. Beyond question, there is much that demands criticism and inquiry in the traditional description of the way in which such edifices as Abernethy Tower and Corstorphine Church were reared. But two important points must not be overlooked. The one is that an immense number of people may have been simultaneously at work; the other is that the workers were of vast muscular strength.
CHAPTER X.
In the immediately preceding pages we have been considering the people known as "Pechts." But it is contended that the "Feens" of Gaelic story ought to be identified with the "Pechts." When the leader of the "Feens" landed in "the country of the big men," he was at once seized upon as eminently fitted to be the court dwarf, into which office he was duly installed; from which it was reasonably inferred that he was a "pegh," or dwarf. Now, in one of the many songs ascribed to the son of this "pegh," Oisin, who is ever bemoaning the departed glories of his race, he laments the fact that he finds himself in his old age "wearily dragging stones along to the church on the hill of the priest." "Here, where he is a drudge, he has seen the Feinne in their glory.... Were they alive, shavelings would not hold this mound." Thus laments Oisin, the representative of the old heathen Feens, bitter in his denunciations of Patrick the priest, and the new order which he represents, and ever bewailing the vanished "glory of the Feinn."
We find Oisin, therefore, accepted universally as the type of his race, unwillingly occupied in "dragging stones for priests to build churches," in his old age and after the downfall of his people. Nor was it only as the serf of another race that he had so worked; because, he explains to Patrick that this old age of drudgery had been foretold to him by his leader, Fin, on a previous occasion, before the coming of Patrick, and on that occasion not only Oisin, but a great number of the Feens of Ireland, were engaged in a similar task. The great difference was that then they were not working as the drudges of another people, but for themselves, and at the command of their leader. And it was not a church, but a hill-fortress, that they were building, "on Cuailgne's bare and rounded hill." Oisin speaks of it as Fin's "famous fort," and the hill on which it was built is "said to be in the county of Armagh," or, as another writer states, in County Louth. According to Oisin, two-thirds of the materials for the fort were brought thither by the Feens of Connaught and the west of Ireland, and the remainder by the Feens of Leinster and the east of Ulster, to which section both Oisin and Fin belonged. Assuming these traditional accounts to be correct, we thus see the Feens, in the day of their independence, "dragging stones" to the top of a hill, in order to build a fortress; and later on we see them, personified by Oisin, occupied in a similar manner, but as the drudges of Christian priests and the builders of Christian churches. The one account applies to Scotland and the other to Ireland; but the Pechts of the White Cater Thun have their counterparts in the Feens who reared the "famous fort" "on Cuailgne's bare and rounded hill;" and the Pechts who built the churches of Glasgow and Corstorphine are also duplicated in the conquered Feens, "weary dragging stones for priests to build churches," in Ireland. Consequently, the traditional fame of the Pechts of Scotland, as a great race of builders, is not at all at variance with the belief that they and the Feens were of one nation.[117]
But, if Fin and his Feens were builders of the hill-forts of the "Pechts," and were themselves veritable Pechts, it is evident that the Feens built and inhabited the dwellings known as "Pechts' houses." This is quite borne out when we regard that class of building which, although an archæologist already quoted (Mr. Petrie) does not hold it to be strictly entitled to the designation of "Pecht's house," is nevertheless a variety of the same species, and often receives the same title. The variety referred to differs from what has been accepted as the true "Pecht's house," in that it has no superimposed covering of earth or turf. But the two varieties undoubtedly belong to the same general class. Now, with regard to this second order of "Pecht's house," we have such a statement as the following: "Glenlyon, in Perthshire, is remarkable for the great number of remains of aboriginal works scattered through it, in the shape of circular castles built entirely of dry stones. The common people believe these structures to have belonged to their mythic hero, Fion,... and have a verse to that effect:
'Bha da chaisteal dheug aig Fionn
Ann an Crom-ghleann-nan-clach.'
That is, Fion had twelve castles in the Crooked Glen of Stones (such being an old name for Glenlyon)."[118] And a like belief prevails in other Perthshire glens, such as Glenshee and Glenalmond, beside the latter of which, as every reader of Wordsworth knows, Oisin himself is said to be buried.
The true "Pecht's house," however, is not this dry-stone circular "castle," open to air and sun. These "castles" are, indeed, popularly included among "Pechts' houses," but such an archæologist as the one recently referred to prefers to speak of them as "brochs." This word "broch" (akin to burgh, etc.) has been adopted by Dr. Joseph Anderson and other eminent students of such buildings, to distinguish this special structure; and although, etymologically regarded, the distinction is arbitrary, it is very convenient. But the "broch," standing visibly exposed like any other ruin, its stone walls uncovered to the sun, is by no means the same thing as the "Pecht's house" described by Mr. Petrie and others. This, it may be remembered, is almost or altogether identical with the dwellings of the North-Greenland Eskimos, as portrayed by the explorers of seventy years ago. It is approached through a long, dark tunnel, entered from the face of a bank or brae, so low that one has to crawl along it, its sides and roofs composed of large stone slabs, and the roof itself flush with, or even underneath, the surface of the ground. At the end of this long, dark, narrow passage one enters the central chamber of the dwelling of the North-Greenlander and the ancient Pecht. It, too, would be in darkness, were it not for the rude stone lamp, fed with the oil of seal or whale, soaking through moss or the pith of rushes, which hangs from the roof and is always burning. Here and there at the side of this central chamber are openings in the wall which lead into small cavities used as sleeping-places. Briefly and imperfectly, that is the interior of the Pecht's house.[119]
Viewed from the outside, what does it resemble? The underground passage of approach is invisible. The "house" itself "is generally of a conical form, and externally closely resembles a large bowl-shaped barrow. It consists of a solid mass of masonry, covered with a layer of turf a foot or more in thickness, and has a central chamber surrounded by several smaller cells." Or, as another writer describes it, "all that meets the eye at first is a green, conical mound ... resting silently amid the moorland solitude." The entrance to this seeming hillock, situated sometimes at its base, more frequently, perhaps, at the extremity of a narrow, underground tunnel, was never very conspicuous, since it was only about a couple of feet high. In the days when the Pechts were actually inhabiting these "green hillocks," it is likely they took the precaution to conceal this outer orifice, small though it was, as well as possible. Thus, the adventurer or colonist of another race, arriving at a settlement of Pechts' houses, saw nothing but one or more grassy, conical hillocks rising out of the surrounding moor.
Since the Gaelic term broch (for it is Gaelic, though not exclusively so) is used to denote the one variety of these "Pictish" dwellings, let us employ, if only temporarily, the Gaelic term which denotes the other. That kind of broch, then, which is covered over with earth and turf so as to resemble a conical green mound, is known in Gaelic by the name of sith-bhrog, or sith-bhrugh; that is to say, the broch of the sith. Still more commonly, it is styled a sithean, or sith-place. When rendered in our modern English spelling, according to its pronunciation, this distinctive sith becomes spelt shee; as in the case of Gleann-sith, which is written "Glenshee." And, similarly, sithean becomes sheean. It is the "sheean," then, and not the "broch" proper, that is regarded by such archæologists as Mr. Petrie as peculiarly the dwelling of the Pechts.
Now, if any Highlander were asked his opinion as to the former inhabitants of the "sheeans," he would have but one answer to give. And the nature of that answer is very clearly shown by those Highlanders who have compiled the leading Scottish-Gaelic dictionaries. Brog (i.e., "broch") is itself defined as an obsolete term for "a house"; but bruth and other variants connect, if they do not identify, the "broch" with the "sheean." The various definitions are these: Bruth, "a house half under the surface," "the dwelling of fairies in a hill"; sith-bruth, sith-bhrugh, "a fairy hill or mansion"; sith-bhrog, sith-bhruach, sith-bhruth, "a fairy hill," "a fairy residence," "fairyland"; sithean, "a little hill or knoll," "a fairy hill"; sithain, "a green knoll or hillock, tenanted, according to superstitious belief, by fairies."[120]
Thus, the houses of the Pechts or dwarfs were inhabited by the people known as "fairies." As the fairies were "little people," there is here no contradiction in terms. We have, moreover, seen that the same "conical, green mounds" are remembered in Orkney and Shetland as the homes of the "trows." "Trow," however, is itself equivalent to droich, or dwarf. Therefore, the belief that those outward-seeming "green hillocks" were the abodes of Pechts is quite in agreement with the traditions that refer to those mound-dwellers as trows and fairies (otherwise "the little people"). Because pecht (or pech), trow, and fairy are all synonyms for "dwarf."
CHAPTER XI.
In a reference to the popular traditions of Northumberland, the Picts are spoken of as "a race of people who are represented, in such legends, as endowed with supernatural power, and holding, in the scale of beings, an intermediate rank between men and fairies."[121] Sir Walter Scott also corroborates this belief as existent in Northumberland ("Rob Roy," ch. xxiii). And the writer previously quoted, in describing the local tradition with regard to the building of the tower at Abernethy by the Pechts, explains that "the people always, when they speak of these Peghs, associate that idea with a notion that they were a preternatural sort of beings, such as fairies and brownies." Therefore, without entering into any discussion as to what is or was meant by "supernatural power," we have ascertained from these extracts that the Pechts were regarded, in Northumberland and in Scotland, as a race of people possessing or claiming "supernatural" attributes. And that they were akin to "fairies and brownies," if they were not identical with them. This also is the position of the "Feens" of Gaelic folk-lore, as the following references will show.
When the celebrated Irish king, Brian Borumha, defeated the Danes of Dublin and their allies, in the year 1000 A.D., it is stated that he appropriated all the vast treasures that the Danes had gathered together:—"gold and silver, and bronze, and precious stones, and carbuncle-gems, and buffalo-horns, and beautiful goblets," as well as "various vestures of all colours."[122] And the chronicler explains that "never was there a fortress, or a fastness, or a mound, or a church, or a sacred place, or a sanctuary," which the Danes had not plundered when it fell to their arms. The first three terms, which in the Gaelic are dún, daingean, and diongna, are closely allied, and each designates something akin to the "hollow mounds" of which we have been speaking.[123] But the succeeding sentence is quite explicit: "Neither was there in concealment under ground in Erinn, nor in the various solitudes belonging to Fians or to fairies, anything that was not discovered by these foreign, wonderful Denmarkians, through paganism and idol worship." With regard to which last allusion, Dr. Todd says: "The meaning is, that notwithstanding the potent spells employed by the Fians and fairies of old for the concealment of their hidden treasures, the Danes, by their pagan magic and the diabolical power of their idols, were enabled to find them out."[124] (The Gaelic from which Dr. Todd translates the above sentences is as follows:—"Ni raibh imorro dún no daingean, no diongna, no ceall, no cadhas, no neimedh do gabhadh ris an ngláim nglifidhigh, nglonnmair, ngnuismhir do bhí ag teaglaim, ocus ag teaccar na hédala sin, óir ni raibhe ifolach fo thalmain in Erinn ina fá dhiamhraibh díchealta ag fianaibh no ag síthcuiraibh ní na fuaratar na Danmargaigh allmardha ingantacha sin, tre geintlidhecht, ocus tre iodhaladhradh.")[125]
Like the Pechts in Northumbrian tradition, the Feens are here not absolutely identified with the fairies, although the two are so closely associated that it is difficult to distinguish between the one and the other. The traditions of the Feens themselves testify to a distinction between the two. Thus, in the "Dan an Fhir Shicair," or Ballad of the Fairy Man,[126] Fin and his six nobles, while walking out one evening, see a fairy-man coming towards them, who announces that he comes from the neighbouring Golden Doon (Dún an oir), and that his purpose is to cause those Feens to come, by enchantment, to dine that day with him and his people in their "hill." Here, then, we have the Feens associating, to some extent (though not, as it appears, on a very friendly footing) with fairies, and yet not themselves regarded as identical with that people.
From the foregoing reference to the plunder of the Danes at Dublin, in the year 1000, it is evident that "the Feens and Fairies" were understood, in the traditional history of the Gaels, to be then actually inhabiting those underground and half-underground dwellings known as "Pechts' houses." There is another reference, in the same history, that corroborates this belief. The date when Brian Borumha became possessor of those "fairy-hoards," which the Danes had previously obtained by their well-known process of "how-breaking,"[127] was the close of the tenth century. Now, a son of this same Brian, and also one of his father's chief warriors, are both described as asserting (on a certain occasion, in the reign of the same Brian)[128] that they had been tempted by the fairies to forsake their ancestral cause. "Often," says Murchadh, "was I offered, in hills and in fairy mansions [i sithaib ocus i sithbrugaib], this world and these gifts; but I never abandoned for one night my country nor my inheritance for them." As Murchadh's response was evoked by a similar statement on the part of Dunlang, it thus appears that, in rifling the abodes of the "how-folk," the Danes were robbing a race then alive, and were not merely appropriating unclaimed treasure. And, indeed, the Scandinavian accounts of "how-breaking" distinctly point out that this pastime involved a struggle of life and death with the armed inmate of the "how."
The evidence of Murchadh and Dunlang, then, shows that intercourse with "the fairies" was not a matter for wonder; and, moreover, that, for one reason or another, the latter desired to seduce the Gaelic-speaking people from their allegiance. That they were eventually successful with Dunlang seems pointed out by the statement, made elsewhere, that this Dunlang was himself a fairy (sioguidhe).[129] And it is well known that "Fairies," as well as "Feens," while possessing distinct innate attributes, were not averse to obtaining adherents from other races, who thus became "Feens" and "Fairies" by adoption.
In the instance of Murchadh and Dunlang, however, the Feens are not named; and it is a matter for conjecture whether they ought to be included among the Fairies there spoken of. But, at any rate, the incident shows that the Fairies (if not the Feens) formed an active, existent caste or race, subsequent to the date of Brian's famous victory over the Danes; and that the Danish inroads on their doons, brochs, hows, etc., in the neighbourhood of Dublin had not by any means annihilated them as a people.