The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

Mycenae (Testimony of Tradition, p. 72). If we admit, for the sake of argument, that there were still Picts or "Pechs" in Galloway when Glasgow Cathedral was built (in the 12th century), these wild men of Galloway—the scourges of the English border—were the last people to be employed as stonemasons. The truth is that modern Scots have completely forgotten the eras of medieval art. Accustomed to the poorly built barns of a plundered and stingy church, they considered the cathedral to be something other than the work of ordinary human beings. They believed it was a creation of the Pechts, just as Mycenae and Tiryns, with their massive walls, were thought to be the creations of the Cyclopes In Greek mythology, the Cyclopes were giants credited with building prehistoric stone walls too large for normal men to move..

By another coincidence, the well-known story of the last Pecht—who refuses to reveal the secret of heather ale A legendary fermented drink said to be brewed from heather by the Picts.—is told in the Volsunga Saga and in the Lay of the Nibelungs regarding the "Last Niflung." Furthermore, the story of the last Pecht breaking an iron bar, which he mistakes for a human arm, is a common tale told of the Drakos original: Drakos; monstrous or giant spirits in Greek folklore. in modern Greece (see Chambers’s Popular Rhymes of Scotland regarding the last Pecht). I cannot believe that the historical Picts were a group of naked, dwarf-like savages—hairy men who lived underground. These are the theories of Sir Arthur Wardour and Monkbarns Characters from Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary who argue over Scottish history..

It can be said that Mr. W.F. Skene placed the historical Picts in their proper place as the ancestors of the Highlanders. The "Pecht" of legend corresponds to the Drakos and the Cyclopes: beliefs about their habits may have been suggested by ancient burial mounds, and even more so by brochs Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structures found in Scotland.. It seems less likely that they represent a genuine historical memory. As for the Irish "Feens" The Fenians or Fianna, legendary warriors of Irish mythology., that subject can only be discussed by Celtic scholars. But it does not follow that because the leader of the Feens looked like a dwarf among giants, his people were a dwarf race like those in Gulliver’s Travels. 1

Again, we often read in the sagas about a hero like Grettir who opens a burial mound, fights a "mound-spectre" (as Mr. Morris calls the "mound-dweller"), and wins gold and weapons. But the mound-dweller is often simply the "undead" ghost of a Norseman—a known and named character buried there—not a Pecht. Thus, it seems to me, the Scots and the Celts possessed a theory of a legendary people, just as the Greeks did. Whether any real tradition of an earlier race (perhaps Finnish) lay at the base of the legend is an obscure question. However, having such a belief, the Scots easily found homes for these imaginary people in ancient burial mounds: they "combined their information."

Fairies, again, are composite creatures. Regarding births, baptisms, and the Norse "wise wives" (as in the Saga of Eric the Red) who prophesied at festivals, Mr. MacRitchie "combines his information" again. He claims the wise wife is a Finnish woman, and thus "Finn" and "Fairy" merge.

But the Egyptians, as seen in the Tale of the Two Brothers (Maspero, Egyptian Tales), had their Hathors Goddesses who presided over love and childbirth. who came and prophesied at births; the Greeks had their Moirae original: Mœræ; the Fates of Greek mythology., as in the story of Meleager and the burning brand. The Hathors and the Moirae play the role of "fairy godmothers" at births in ancient Egypt and Greece, but surely they were not Finnish women! In short, while a memory of some ancient race may have mixed into the complex belief in fairies, this is, at most, only one element of the whole. The role played by ancestral spirits—who naturally dwell in the earth—is probably more important.

Bishop Callaway pointed out, in the preface to his Zulu Nursery Tales, that what the Highlanders say of fairies, the Zulus say of "the ancestors."

In many ways—such as when people taken to Fairyland meet recently deceased relatives or friends who warn them (as Persephone and Steenie Steenson were warned) not to eat anything in that place—Fairyland is clearly a memory of the pre-Christian Hades. There are other elements in the complex mass of Fairy tradition, but Chaucer knew that "the Queen of the Fairies—

1 The Testimony of Tradition, p. 75.