drifting sand it is a subterranean Pict's house.... I regard the
comparatively large Picts' houses of the Orkneys as the pastoral
residence of the Pictish lord, fitted to contain his numerous
family and dependents. Such an one exists on the Holm of Papa
Westray, which, according to the Highland method of stowage, would
certainly contain a whole clan. When writing the description of it,
I had not made acquaintance with a people who would close the door
to keep in the smoke, or that nested in holes in a wall like
sand-martins....

"But the _both_ of the Long Island is only the lodging of the
common man or 'Tuathanach,' and is consequently of small
dimensions, and not remarkable for comfort. If the modern Highland
proprietor or large farmer should ever be induced to lead a
pastoral life, and adopt a Pictish architecture in his residence,
we might again see a tumulus of twenty feet in height, with its
long low passage leading into a large hall with beehive cells on
both sides."[69]

But the point of all this is that these dwellings, whether above ground
or below, are known as _Picts' Houses, Fairy Halls, Elf Hillocks_, "the
hidden places of _Fians and Fairies_." Thus, the three titles which I
have shown to be associated in other ways are all given to the alleged
builders and occupiers of those very archaic and peculiar structures.

It is true that, in their most modern form, some of those dwellings are
still inhabited for months at a time. And their inhabitants are neither
Fians, Fairies nor Picts. But it is among those people that stories of
Fians and Fairies are most rife, and many claim an actual descent from
them. And although they are certainly not pigmies, yet they live in a
district in which the _small_ type of this heterogeneous nation of ours
is still quite discernible; and that part of the island of Lewis (Uig),
which has longest retained those places as dwellings, is inhabited by a
caste whom other Hebrideans describe as small, and regard as different
from themselves.[70] Dr. Beddoe states that the tallest people in the
United Kingdom are to be found in a certain village in Galloway, where
a six-foot man is perfectly common, and many are above that height. It
is quite certain that such men could not "nest like sand-martins" in the
holes in the wall described by Captain Thomas. And, in proportion as
such Galloway men are to the mode