n of the shells, and from other reasons
which you would not understand, that these mounds were made an enormous
time ago, when the water of the Baltic Sea was far more salt than it is
now.

But what has all this to do with my fairy tale? This:--

Suppose that these people, after all, had been fairies?

I am in earnest. Of course, I do not mean that these folk could make
themselves invisible, or that they had any supernatural powers--any more,
at least, than you and I have--or that they were anything but savages;
but this I do think, that out of old stories of these savages grew up the
stories of fairies, elves, and trolls, and scratlings, and cluricaunes,
and ogres, of which you have read so many.

When stronger and bolder people, like the Irish, and the Highlanders of
Scotland, and the Gauls of France, came northward with their bronze and
iron weapons; and still more, when our own forefathers, the Germans and
the Norsemen, came, these poor little savages with their flint arrows and
axes, were no match for them, and had to run away northward, or to be all
killed out; for people were fierce and cruel in those old times, and
looked on every one of a different race from themselves as a natural
enemy. They had not learnt--alas! too many have not learned it yet--that
all men are brothers for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. So these
poor savages were driven out, till none were left, save the little Lapps
up in the north of Norway, where they live to this day.

But stories of them, and of how they dwelt in caves, and had strange
customs, and used poisoned weapons, and how the elf-bolts (as their flint
arrow-heads are still called) belonged to them, lingered on, and were
told round the fire on winter nights and added to, and played with half
in fun, till a hundred legends sprang up about them, which used once to
be believed by grown-up folk, but which now only amuse children. And
because some of these savages were very short, as the Lapps and Esquimaux
are now, the story grew of their being so small that they could make
themselves invisible; and because others of them were (but probably only
a few) very tall and terrible, the story grew that there were giants in
that old world, like that famous Gogmagog, whom Brutus and his Britons
met (so old fables tell), when they landed first at Plymouth, and fought
him, and threw him over the cliff. Ogres, too--of whom you read in fairy
tales--I am afraid that there were such