ve happened and bear no
such _a priori_ marks of impossibility as speaking animals, flying through
the air, and similar incidents of the folk-tale pure and simple. If, as
archaeologists tell us, there was once a race of men in Northern Europe
very short and hairy, that dwelt in underground chambers artificially
concealed by green hillocks, it does not seem unlikely that odd survivors
of the race should have lived on after they had been conquered and nearly
exterminated by Aryan invaders, and should occasionally have performed
something like the pranks told of fairies and trolls."[B] In the same
place, and also in another article,[C] the writer just quoted has applied
this theory to the explanation of the story of "Childe Rowland."

[Footnote A: _Journ. Ethnol. Soc._, 1869-70, p. 325.]

[Footnote B: _English Fairy Tales_, p. 241.]

[Footnote C: _Folk Lore_, ii. 126.]

Mr. MacRitchie has, in another paper,[A] collected a number of instances
of the use of the word _Sith_ in connection with hillocks and tumuli,
which are the resort of the fairies. Here also he discusses the possible
connection of that word with that of _Tshud_, the title of the vanished
supernatural inhabitants of the land amongst the Finns and other "Altaic"
Turanian tribes of Russia, as in other places he has endeavoured to trace
a connection between the Finns and the Feinne. Into these etymological
questions I have no intention to enter, since I am not qualified to do so,
nor is it necessary, as they have been fully dealt with by Mr. Nutt, whose
opinion on this point is worthy of all attention.[B] But it may be
permitted to me to inquire how far Mr. MacRitchie's views tally with the
facts mentioned in the foregoing section. I shall therefore allude to a
few points which appear to me to show that the origin of the belief in
fairies cannot be settled in so simple a manner as has been suggested, but
is a question of much greater complexity--one in which, as Mr. Tylor
says, more than one mythic element combines to make up the whole.

[Footnote A: _Journ. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland_, iii. 367.]

[Footnote A: _Folk and Hero Tales from Argyleshire_, p. 420.]

(1.) In the first place, then, it seems clear, so far as our present
knowledge teaches us, that there never was a really Pigmy race inhabiting
the northern parts of Scotland.

The scanty evidence which we have on this point, so far as it goes, proves
the truth of this assertion. Mr. Carter Blake found