elief is not confined to the Highlanders of Scotland"
(I. c.) "This class of stories is so widely spread, so
matter-of-fact, hangs so well together, and is so implicitly
believed all over the United Kingdom, that I am persuaded of the
former existence of a race of men in these islands who were smaller
in stature than the Celts; who used stone arrows, lived in conical
mounds like the Lapps, knew some mechanical arts, pilfered goods
and stole children; and were perhaps contemporary with some species
of wild cattle and horses and great auks, which frequented marshy
ground, and are now remembered as water-bulls and water-horses, and
boobries, and such like impossible creatures" (IV. 344).

And much more to the same effect,[2] with which it is unnecessary to
trouble the reader. Now, all this was quite new to me. If I had ever
given a second thought to the so-called "supernatural" beings of
tradition, it was only to dismiss them, in the conventional manner as
creatures of the imagination. But these ideas of Mr. Campbell's were
decidedly interesting, and deserving of consideration. It was obvious
that tradition, especially where there had been an intermixture of
races, could not preserve one clear, unblemished record of the past; and
this he fully recognised. But it seemed equally obvious that the
"matter-of-fact" element to which he refers could not have owed its
origin to myth or fancy. The question being fascinating, there was
therefore no alternative but to make further inquiry. And the more it
was considered, the more did his theory proclaim its reasonableness. He
suggests, for example, that certain "fairy herds" in Sutherlandshire
were probably reindeer, that the "fairies" who milked those reindeer
were probably of the same race as Lapps, and that not unlikely they were
the people historically known as Picts. The fact that Picts once
occupied northern Scotland formed no obstacle to his theory. And when I
learned that the reindeer was hunted in that part of Scotland as
recently as the twelfth century, that remains of reindeer horns are
still to be found in the counties of Sutherland, Ross, and Caithness,
sometimes in the very structures ascribed to the Picts, then I perceived
this to be a theory which, to quote his words, "hung well together."
Further, the actual Lapps are a small-statured race, the fairies also
were so described, and this, too, I found to be the traditiona