in the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate by
knocks, and other sounds, the presence of ore in mines.

It would seem that many people had dim traditions of a small race who had
their dwellings in the rocks. This wide-spread belief in the existence
of cave men has, in our days, been shown to have had a foundation in
fact, and many vestiges of this people have been revealed by intelligent
cave hunters. But the age in which the cave men lived cannot even
approximately be ascertained. In various parts of Wales, in the lime
rock, their abodes have been brought to light. It is not improbable that
the people who occupied the caves of ancient days were, in reality, the
original Fairy Knockers. These people were invested, in after ages, by
the wonder-loving mind of man, with supernatural powers.

AEschylus, the Greek tragic poet, who died in the 69th year of his age,
B.C. 456, in _Prometheus Vinctus_, refers to cave dwellers in a way that
indicates that even then they belonged to a dateless antiquity.

In Prometheus's speech to the chorus--[Greek]--lines 458-461, is a
reference to this ancient tradition. His words, put into English, are
these:--"And neither knew the warm brick-built houses exposed to the sun,
nor working in wood, _but they dwelt underground_, like as little ants,
_in the sunless recesses of caves_."

The above quotation proves that the Greeks had a tradition that men in a
low, or the lowest state of civilization, had their abodes in caves, and
possibly the reference to ants would convey the idea that the cave
dwellers were small people. Be this as it may, it is very remarkable
that the word applied to a _dwarf_ in the dialects of the northern
countries of Europe signifies also a _Fairy_, and the dwarfs, or Fairies,
are there said to inhabit the rocks. The following quotation from
Jamieson's _Scottish Dictionary_ under the word _Droich_, a dwarf, a
pigmy, shows this to have been the case:--

"In the northern dialects, _dwerg_ does not merely signify a dwarf, but
also a _Fairy_! The ancient Northern nations, it is said, prostrated
themselves before rocks, believing that they were inhabited by these
pigmies, and that they thence gave forth oracles. Hence they called the
echo _dwergamal_, as believing it to be their voice or speech. . . They
were accounted excellent artificers, especially as smiths, from which
circumstance some suppose that they have received their name . . . Other
Isl. wri