David MacRitchie

It is manifest that the traditions relating to "the little people" contain many statements which at the first sight seem to be irreconcilable with one another. In one aspect, the dwarf races appear as possessed of a higher culture than the race or races who were physically their superiors. They forge swords of "magic" temper, and armour of proof; beautifully-wrought goblets of gold and silver, silver-mounted bridles, garments of silk, and personal ornaments of precious metals and precious stones, are all associated with them. They are deeply versed in "magic" (a term generally held to denote the science of the ChaldÆan Magi), and this renders them the teachers of the taller race, in religion, and in many forms of knowledge. In short, it is only in physical stature that they are below the latter people: in everything else they are above them. In another aspect, the positions are reversed. The dwarfs are the serfs and drudges of the taller race, to whom they are distinctly inferior in intellectual capacity. The articles associated with them, such as the primitive arrow-heads of flint, still spoken of as "elf-shot," are all indicative of the rudest savagery. They themselves are accustomed to go without clothes, which, when offered to them by their masters, they reject indignantly. As great a contrast is presented by their physique. In some tales, they are fair, and beautiful in feature, and yellow-haired; in others they are swarthy in complexion and hair; and again they are described as red-, or russet-haired. From such conflicting evidence what is one to infer?

Two or three solutions of this question may be offered. One that, as the Icelander Gudmund said of these people, they were "subject to poverty and wealth," like the members of any modern nation, which contains in itself the most violent contrasts. Or, again, that the fairy tales belong to various epochs, during a long stretch of time, in the course of which those tribes, like any others, underwent marked modifications. But what is probably the best solution is that the dwarf races of the past, like those of the present, were of various types. That as the South African Bushmen, the dwarfs of the Congo region, and the Ainos of Japan, though all included among the dwarf races, are really different from each other in many respects, so the dwarf races of the past were not one but many. That then, as now, there were black, yellow and white dwarfs; dissimilar in their history and characteristics; but all alike in one important respect. This last explanation, although the two others deserve consideration, is the one that to the present writer seems the most important.

To state even a few of the inferences to be drawn from the acceptance of these explanations, is more than can be attempted here. It is enough to continue as far as possible to confine these remarks within the limits already observed; and to keep specially in view that race which is known to British history as that of the "Picts." What, then, is the traditional idea of the outward appearance of these people, apart from their stature?

Scott's "Rob Roy," as he is described in the Glasgow prison, is said to have greatly resembled the Picts, as they are remembered in Northumbrian tradition. And when his appearance is again referred to in a later chapter (ch. xxxii.), one point of this resemblance is brought out; where it is stated that his legs were "covered with a fell of thick, short, red hair, especially around his knees, which resembled in this respect, as well as from their sinewy appearance of extreme strength, the limbs of a red-coloured Highland bull."

It matters little whether the historical "Robert MacGregor or Campbell," really answered to Scott's various descriptions of him. Rob Ruadh, or "Red Rob," may no doubt have been fitly applied to many a native of the British Islands, descended from the race of the Picts.[271] But this excessive hairiness of skin was one of the most marked characteristics of the Pechts, and forms indeed one of the most distinct clues to their ethnological position.

Whatever the man was like himself, however, "Rob Roy's country" contains, among its other features, that "shoulder of Ben Venue" which we have seen a former Earl of Menteith is said to have assigned to the dwarfs, and which is remembered in local tradition as a great resort of theirs. And a spot specially known as their gathering-place is called the Coire-nan-Uruisgean, which is rendered "the Corri, or Den, of the Wild or Shaggy men."[272] Now the same word here held to represent a "shaggy" man is also a synonym for a "brownie,"[273] and when we regard such a specimen of that class as the particular "brownie" that was an attendant of the chief of the Grants, we find her (for this was a ban-sithe, or fairy-woman) known as "May Mollach," which signifies "hairy May"; it being asserted by tradition that this May was distinguished for the hairiness of her arms.[274] The adjective molach signifies "hairy,"[275] and, among other uses, it is appropriately given, as a name, to many a shaggy little "Scotch terrier." But in that part of Armstrong's "Dictionary" where this adjective is spelt maildheach and mailgheach (of which the pronunciation is still mÂl'yach), its meaning is defined as "having large shaggy eyebrows." And this, it will be seen, is specially a characteristic not only of the traditional dwarfs, but of a race known to ethnology. But it is probable that the general meaning of "hirsute" is signified when the derivative noun mailleachan is used as an equivalent of brownie or uruisg;[276] and that a mailleachan was a "hairy one." Similarly, a special brownie, known as Pcallaidh an spÙit, or "Peallaidh of the waterfall," once well known "at those congresses" "in a certain district of the Highlands,"[277] may be Englished into "The Shaggy One of the waterfall." Thus, although uruisg does not literally mean "a shaggy man" (as Scott says), yet there is nothing wrong in saying that Coir-nan-Uruisgean, on Loch Katrine, was "the Den of the Wild or Shaggy Men"; because various terms and descriptions applying to those uruisgean show that they were actually "shaggy men."[278]

No one had a better opportunity of imbibing the traditional idea of a brownie than the late Mr. J. F. Campbell; whose birth and upbringing, combined with his great studies in later life, gave him every chance of learning the various Highland traditions regarding the appearance of those people. And when, during his stay in Lapland, he saw a certain Lapp "of the old school," he speaks of him thus:—"He was an old fellow with long, tangled elf-locks and a scanty beard, dressed in a deerskin shirt full of holes, and exceedingly mangy, for the hair had been worn off in patches all over. He realized my idea of a seedy Brownie, a grua-gach [another synonym] with long hair on his head; an old wrinkled face, and his body covered with hair."[279] Of course, it is not to be understood that the Lapp's body was "covered with hair." But the deerskin shirt, worn with the hair outwards, was one of the things that helped out the "brownie" appearance of the man; for Mr. Campbell's traditional brownie had his body covered with hair, like the other "shaggy men" we have just been speaking of. Again, the traditional brollachan or fuath of Sutherland is described as "rough and hairy."[280] Mr. Campbell also points out that the glashan of the Isle of Man[281] was the same as those "shaggy men" of the Scotch Highlands. "He wore no clothes, and was hairy; and, according to Train's history, Phynoddepee, which means something hairy, was frightened away by a gift of clothes,—exactly as the Skipness long-haired Grua-gach was frightened away by the offer of a coat and a cap. The Manks brownie and the Argyllshire one each repeated a rhyme over the clothes; but the rhymes are not the same, though they amount to the same thing."[282] In a certain story of South-Western Scotland, a brownie is described as a naked, hairy man; and in a Scotch "chap-book" of the eighteenth century, an old woman is made to state that the brownies are "a' rough but the mouth," and that they "seek nae claes" (do not wish any clothes).[283] The dwarfs of Northumbrian tradition, whether spoken of by that name or as "Picts," are hairy; and, as just mentioned, the Isle of Man contains similar evidence. The same thing is recorded in Wales. In his "British Goblins," Mr. Wirt Sikes not only describes the coblynau as hairy of skin, but he cites the well-known account of a sixteenth-century race of "Red Fairies" who "lived in dens in the ground," and bore several other resemblances to the Picts of Scotland. These "Red Fairies" have also been recently cited by Mr. G. L. Gomme, in the course of an article which points out the survival of savage customs and savage people, within the British Islands, during recent centuries.[284] The "Red Fairies" inhabited a certain part of Merionethshire, where it is said that people inheriting some of their blood are still pointed out. They are remembered as a race of much-dreaded marauders, their depredations being carried on in the night time, "and scythes were fixed in the chimneys of the nearest houses, to prevent the nocturnal descent of these plundering ruffians." The writer whose words have just been quoted, contributed an account of these people to the Scots Magazine of 1823,[285] and he states in this connection, that "scythes were to be seen in the chimney of a neighbouring farm-house about thirty years ago, but they have been since removed." After referring to their various characteristics, the same writer goes on:—"It appears that the enormities of the Gwylliaid Cochion Mowddwy [the Red Fairies, or Banditti,[286] of Mowddwy] had arrived at such a pitch as to render necessary the interposition of the most prompt and vigorous measures. To this end, a commission was granted to John Wynne ab Meredith, of Gwedir, and Lewis Owen, one of the Barons of the Welsh Exchequer, and Vice-Chamberlain of North Wales. These gentlemen raised a body of men, and, on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in securing, after considerable resistance, nearly a hundred of the robbers, on whom they inflicted chastisement the most summary and effectual, hanging them on the spot, and, as their commission authorized, without any previous trial."[287]

A similar race to these "fairies" of Merionethshire seems to be suggested by the "gubbings" or "gubbins" of Dartmoor. Those people are described by Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," published in 1662. Readers of Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" will remember "how Salvation Yeo slew the King of the Gubbings," and the description given at that place. Mr. R. D. Blackmore seems also to have had the same race in view in his "Maid of Sker"; although that novel is placed in the eighteenth century. "Cannibal Jack," or "Jack Wildman," the most civilized of those Devon savages, is made to state:—"I was one of a race of naked people, living in holes of the earth at a place we did not know the name of. I now know that it was Nympton in Devonshire." As to the origin of the term "gubbing," Fuller confesses himself ignorant.[288] But those Devonshire gubbings were, like the Red Fairies of Wales and the Picts of Scotland, underground people, or earth-dwellers. It does not seem to be stated anywhere that the "gubbings" were hairy of skin; but both in Devon and in Cornwall the underground people otherwise designated are so described.[289] Altogether the savage "gubbins" of Dartmoor, as described by Kingsley and others, seem to be practically the same people as the cave-dwelling "pixies" of Dartmoor, whose occasional raids into the town of Tavistock are still remembered in local folk-lore.

This nakedness of the brownie is referred to again and again in the folk-lore of Scotland. The general belief seems to be that when he was offered clothes in return for his labour he left the place where he had been working, in high dudgeon. Other accounts indicate that he accepted the clothes without demur. But the indications that the "shaggy men" were naked men, are numerous. And when Mr. Campbell says that "the Highlanders distinguish between the water and land or dressed fairies,"[290] he clearly infers that one section of the little people was remarkable for the entire absence of dress. Indeed, it was this peculiarity that, as the various stories show, offended the delicacy of the womenfolk at those farms where "brownies" worked, and so led to the offer of clothing, by way of wages. And, of course, the reason why their special hairiness of skin is so well remembered is because their own shaggy coats formed all their clothing; and probably answered the purpose very well.

Outside the British Islands there are plenty of similar traditional accounts. The Scandinavian trolls, or dwarfs, of the Eddas were hairy; and so was the German dwarf. The latter has one name, that of Bilwiz, said to be derived from a word denoting matted hair; and we are told that "the Bilwiz shoots like the elf, and has shaggy or matted hair."[291] And he, there can be little doubt, is the same as the "little forest-man." For the same authority[292] states that "little forest-men, who have long worked in a mill, have been scared away by the miller's men leaving clothes and shoes for them." And if these nude and hairy "little people" were not of the same race as the hirsute brownies of Scotland, they were remarkably like them in several striking characteristics. With them also may be compared the shaggy dwarfs remembered in Brittany under the name of viltansou, who are doubtless the same as the long-bearded barbao of the same province. (See M. SÉbillot's list of such names in the "Revue des Traditions Populaires," Feb. 1890, pp. 101-104.)

The German traditional idea of the mound-dwelling, metal-working dwarf people, is nowhere more perfectly given than in the etching which is here reproduced, and which is the work of a German engraver. It forms the base of a title-page, executed about thirty years ago,[293] consecrated to the memory of the great Barbarossa, whose figure occupies the centre of the title-page, and whose achievements are otherwise symbolically indicated. It is understood to be a facsimile of the base of Barbarossa's statue. The little gnomes, then, underneath him, are clearly meant to represent his companions in the "berg" where he and they are popularly believed to be still living—whether that be the Thuringian KyffhÄuser, or the Untersberg, near Salzburg. And the hairiness of skin, so characteristic of the Scottish brownie or pecht, is equally marked in this case. The term "shaggy men" could be applied to them with very great appropriateness. And if the artist has not made them as destitute of clothing as the "brownies" and "forest-men" are said to have been, yet what they do wear only serves to remind one of the red-cap of the traditional Lincolnshire dwarfs, and others of the same class, and of the "apron" so often mentioned in connection with the dwarfish builders of England and Scotland. It is not to be supposed that this picture represents in every detail the dwarfs of German or other traditions, nor is it to be supposed that any single account gives an absolutely correct idea of the appearance of those primitive races, but this will be generally recognized as being, on the whole,[294] a wonderfully good representation of the dwarfs of German folk-lore.

But this characteristic of the dwarfs of Scottish tradition and of the "Picts" of history does not tend to show that such people were identical with the modern Lapps. Nor, indeed, is this to be looked for.

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THE DWARFS OF GERMAN FOLK LORE.

A race which was in its prime two thousand years ago may have many points in common with one or another of the modern races (presumably its own descendants, in some measure); but absolute identity of type can hardly be expected, if one considers the crossing, re-crossing, and in some cases almost the extermination of the various races of Europe during that period. At any rate, this marked hairiness of skin, attributed to the Pict, or Pecht, or dwarf, is not a Mongoloid characteristic. It is certainly not Mongolian; and although some divisions of the Mongoloid group—such as the Eskimos of Labrador—are described as wearing moustaches and beards, this fact, even if it be not exceptional, goes a very little way towards suggesting an actually hirsute ancestor. Had there been less doubt about the matter, one might have supposed that the hairy skin-garments of those Northern races had been erroneously assumed in the traditional tales to be the natural skin of their owners; and, indeed, the pictures of the modern Eskimos in their winter dress of skins with the hair outside, gives quite the appearance of a race of hairy little men. But the nudity of the historical Picts, and certain sections of the traditional dwarfs, or brownies, is beyond all doubt. To the Latin writers, as to the housewives of legendary history, this was equally an unmistakable and objectionable fact.

There is, however, an existing race that offers itself as akin to those traditional dwarfs in this respect, as well as in some others; although the modern Lapps, in several of their characteristics, also suggest that a not insignificant line of their ancestry is traceable to the same origin. The race referred to is that of the "hairy Kuriles," or Ainos of Japan; included by ethnologists among the modern dwarf races.

"Twelve hundred years ago," says Mr. E. B. Tylor, "a Chinese historian stated that 'on the eastern frontiers of the land of Japan there is a barrier of great mountains, beyond which is the land of the Hairy Men.' These were the Aino, so named from the word in their own language signifying 'man.' Over most of the country of these rude and helpless indigenes the Japanese have long since spread, only a dwindling remnant of them still inhabiting the island of Yezo. Since the early days when a couple of them were sent as curiosities to the Emperor of China, their uncouth looks and habits have made them objects of interest to more civilized nations."[295] Of their own traditions, another writer states:—"To them the past is dead, yet, like other conquered and despised races, they cling to the idea that in some far-off age they were a great nation. They have no traditions of internecine strife, and the art of war seems to have been lost long ago. I asked Benri [a chief] about this matter, and he says that formerly Ainos fought with spears and knives, as well as with bows and arrows, but that YoshitsunÉ, their hero god, forbade war for ever, and since then the two-edged spear, with a shaft nine feet long, has only been used in hunting bears."[296] YoshitsunÉ, it may be explained, is stated (op. cit. infra, II. 94, note) to have been the brother of a Japanese general of the twelfth century, famous for his victories over "barbarians." This tradition, therefore, if accepted without reserve, would place the conquest of the Ainos by the Japanese, with the consequent disarming of the former, somewhere about the twelfth century. And the scene of this struggle may be placed south and west of their present home. "The inference from records and local names, worked out with great care by Professor Chamberlain, is 'that the Ainos were truly the predecessors of the Japanese all over the Archipelago. The dawn of history shows them to us living far to the south and west of their present haunts; and ever since then, century by century, we see them retreating eastwards and northwards, as steadily as the American Indian has retreated westwards under the pressure of the colonists from Europe.'"[297]

"As is well known, the hairiness of the Ainos marks them sharply off from the smooth-faced Japanese. No one can look at photographs of Ainos without admitting that the often-repeated comparison of them to bearded Russian peasants is much to the purpose. The likeness is much strengthened by the bold quasi-European features of the Aino contrasting extremely with the Japanese type of face."[298] "The expression of the face and the manner of showing courtesy are European rather than Asiatic," says Miss Bird, who has lived among these people; and she again remarks, on a later page, "I am more and more convinced that the expression of their faces is European."[299]

"The men are about the middle height,[300] broad-chested, broad-shouldered, 'thick-set,' very strongly built, the arms and legs short, thick, and muscular, the hands and feet large. The bodies, and specially the limbs, of many are covered with short bristly hair. I have seen two boys whose backs are covered with fur as fine and soft as that of a cat." "The 'ferocious savagery' of the appearance of the men is produced by a profusion of thick, soft, black hair, divided in the middle, and falling in heavy masses nearly to the shoulders. Out of doors it is kept from falling over the face by a fillet round the brow. The beards are equally profuse, quite magnificent, and generally wavy, and in the case of the old men they give a truly patriarchal and venerable aspect, in spite of the yellow tinge produced by smoke and want of cleanliness." "The beard, moustache, and eyebrows are very thick and full." "At a deep river called the Nopkobets," says the same writer, "we were ferried by an Aino completely covered with hair, which on his shoulders was wavy like that of a retriever, and rendered clothing quite needless either for covering or warmth. A wavy, black beard rippled nearly to his waist over his furry chest, and, with his black locks hanging in masses over his shoulders, he would have looked a thorough savage had it not been for the exceeding sweetness of his smile and eyes. The Volcano Bay Ainos are far more hairy than the mountain Ainos." Again—"These LebungÉ Ainos differ considerably from those of the eastern villages, and I have again to notice the decided sound or click of the ts at the beginning of many words. Their skins are as swarthy as those of Bedaween, their foreheads comparatively low [the Aino forehead being in general remarkably high], their eyes far more deeply set, their stature lower, their hair yet more abundant, the look of wistful melancholy more marked, and two, who were unclothed for hard work in fashioning a canoe, were almost entirely covered with short, black hair, specially thick on the shoulders and back, and so completely concealing the skin as to reconcile one to the lack of clothing. I noticed an enormous breadth of chest, and a great development of the muscles of the arms and legs. All these Ainos shave their hair off for two inches above their brows, only allowing it there to attain the length of an inch." "Their voices were the lowest and most musical that I have heard, incongruous sounds to proceed from such hairy, powerful-looking men.... These, like other Ainos, utter a short, screeching sound when they are not pleased, and then one recognizes the savage."[301]

The picture of "An Aino Patriarch," which is here reproduced from Miss Bird's book,[302] does not enable one to fully realize the purest type of Aino; partly owing to the fact that the figure is clothed, and partly because this man appears to have belonged to one of the more modified sections of the race. However, as he is, he is not a very bad representative of the bearded dwarf, with disproportionately large head, so familiar in tradition; and that he is one of the race of "shaggy men," we know without fuller evidence. His beard does not fall down to his waist, like that of his kinsman who figures as a ferryman in the foregoing quotation; but the heavy moustache and beard, and the shaggy eyebrows, strongly characterize this living race as well as the legendary dwarfs. The latter are again and again referred to as "little old[303] men, with long beards"; and, indeed, in one of Grimm's tales ("Snow-White and Rosy-Red"), a dwarf has a beard so long that it gets caught in the trunk of a tree that has been felled. The artist who drew the picture of Barbarossa's dwarfs has not forgotten this marked traditional feature.[304] Such dwarfs are all remembered as possessed of supernatural powers, enchanters, magicians, etc.; and, conversely, the magicians (Gaelic druidhean) of early Britain are famous for their flowing beards.

An earlier Aino than those pictured by Miss Bird is that which Baron NordenskiÖld gives in his "Voyage of the Vega." With regard to it he says:—"The drawing is taken from a Japanese work, whose title, when translated, runs thus—'A Journey to the North Part of Japan (Yezo), 1804.'"

In this picture, which is here annexed, there are several notable features. Not only has this Aino of 1804 the short, thick-set figure, heavy beard, and "bull-necked" appearance of the traditional dwarf, but he is represented as driving a reindeer. Now, this seems at once to connect the Aino with the Samoyed and the Lapp. For, although the reindeer is hunted by the Eskimos of North America, these people have never domesticated it. Moreover, the Aino is standing on runners, which appear to be very similar to the "skies" of the Lapps. Both of these details are distinctive of the Aino and the Lapp (for although the "skies" are used to the south of Finmark, they are peculiarly associated with the Lapps, who excel all other Norwegians in this accomplishment). "The deer-hide moccasins which they wear for winter hunting"[305] form another link of custom uniting the Aino to the Lapp and the Eskimo. So also does the harpoon and line which the Ainos use, or used, in seal-hunting, as is evidenced by two of Professor Chamberlain's tales.[306] Thus, although the Aino differs very much, in some respects, from the Eskimo type of man, he cannot be regarded as wholly different from him.[307] As regards stature, the two are much alike; and several usages have just been cited that distinctly unite the two. If one might discriminate, it might be said that the relationship extends westward from the Kurile Islands, rather than eastward into North America. That the Aino should remind travellers so strongly of certain European types, is very suggestive of a line of ancestry which is shared by Europeans. Indeed, those hirsute qualities which distinguish the Aino exist, though in much more modified forms (even in the instance of Russian peasants) among the people of Europe; sufficiently to mark off the average European from the races of other continents. That one line of European ancestry should lead back to a race strongly resembling the modern Ainos is therefore a belief that the outward appearance of the modern European rather tends to strengthen.

In speculating upon the appearance of the European "cave-man" of the past, a writer in the "Cornhill"[308] (? Mr. Grant Allen) states as his opinion that "at any rate, he was distinctly hairy, like the Ainos, or aborigines of Japan, in our own day, of whom Miss Isabella Bird has drawn so startling and sensational a picture." Again, after remarking that those cave-men "seem to have been in most essential particulars almost as advanced as the modern Eskimo, with whom Professor Dawkins conjecturally identifies them," Mr. Grant Allen goes on to say[309]—"But if Professor Dawkins means us to understand that the cave-men were physically developed to the same extent as the Eskimo, it is necessary to accept his conclusion with great caution. It does not follow because the Eskimo are the nearest modern parallels of the cave-men, that the cave-men therefore resembled them closely in appearance. Several of the sketches of cave-men, cut by themselves on horn and bone, certainly show (it seems to me) that they were covered with hair over the whole body: and the hunter in the antler from the Duruthy cave has a long pointed beard and high crest of hair on the poll utterly unlike the Eskimo type." And although Mr. Allen admits, on a later page, that "it is possible enough that the cave-man was the direct ancestor of the Eskimo," yet he qualifies this admission by observing that "it does not at all follow that in physical appearance the earlier cave-men were the equals of the Eskimo, or, indeed, that the Eskimo are any more nearly related to them than ourselves."[310]

Of course, it is understood by the writer of these lines that the remarks upon "cave-men" just quoted, were made in the belief that all those cave-men lived at a period immensely removed from the present time. But the classification of man's history into so many "periods" and "ages" is admittedly vague. And the recognition of a visible relationship between certain races of living men, and those others who are called "pre-historic," is practically a recognition of the possibility that the not very remote ancestors of such races may be remembered with comparative clearness in the popular memory of those who are mainly descended from races of a higher type.

That this is really the case is what all the evidence adduced in these pages tends to show. And, indeed, the actual picture of a living Aino of about ninety years ago, reproduced above, is by no means remarkably different from the traditional figure given below, which represents the magician, or "good fairy," as he appears in the popular memory, when arriving from the far North, on Yule Eve, laden with gifts for his vassals. The annexed woodcut gives the idea of "Santa Claus," as he figures in the American fancy, and that, as the title given to him indicates, is really the German idea. The German idea, then, of this good magician is that he is a thick-set, bearded, little man, whose heavy furs denote that his home lies in the North, and whose reindeer team, harnessed to the sledge in which he has travelled, indicates that, like the Lapp and the Aino, he not only lives in a country where reindeer abound, but he has learned to tame them and make them serve his purposes. In this traditional figure one seems to see the type of a race that was even more like the Aino than the Lapp, or the Eskimo, although closely connected in various ways with all of these. Neither this figure, nor those of Barbarossa's dwarfs, need be regarded as absolutely correct; but in both we see that the popular memory is wonderfully faithful to what appears to be the actual truth.

The existence in Europe of such a race, neither Lapp nor Aino, though akin to both, seems indicated by as recent a geographer as Olaus Magnus. In his map of Northern Europe,[311] the extreme north of Norway is neither "Lappia" nor "Finmarchia" (although both of these are shown), but a country which borders them on the north, and which he calls "Scricfinnia." This name appears to have been otherwise spelt "Scritfinnia" or "Scridfinnia," and one writer states that its people, the "Scridfinni," "derived their name from the word skrida, which in the Danish and Swedish languages means to slide."[312] This refers to the snow-skates, or "skies," which they are described as using, but as Olaus Magnus pictures the people of "Lappia" as also using "skies," it does not seem that that usage was distinctive of the "Scridfinni." But what appears to be of much more importance than this etymological point is the fact that the gloss which Olaus Magnus places opposite "Scricfinnia" is to this effect:—"Hic habitant Pÿgmei Vulgo Screlinger dicti." The earliest cited mention of the Screlinger, or SkrÆlings, occurs in the accounts of the Norse visits to North America, at the end of the tenth century; and the people thus referred to are generally identified with the Esquimaux. "The Northmen were used to call the Esquimaux SkrÆlings, a term of contempt, meaning, says Crantz, 'chips, parings, i.e., dwarfs.'" And the North American SkrÆlings of the tenth century, who are described as paddling about in skin-canoes, "skimming the surface of the water in their swift flight," are quite obviously either of the same race as the modern Eskimos, or else closely allied to them.[313] In the course of eight or nine centuries, the "SkrÆlings" may have become modified to some extent; and, indeed, modern travellers[314] are wonderfully unanimous in remarking upon the effect that nineteenth-century intermixture has had upon Asiatic and Greenland Eskimos, and upon the Ainos. But whatever the exact appearance of the tenth-century "SkrÆling," the map of Olaus Magnus denotes that, five or six centuries later, the extreme north of Norway was inhabited by a race of "SkrÆlings"; and that these people were the same as the "pygmies" of classical writers. It has already been pointed out[315] that the Greenland "SkrÆlings" were also spoken of as "goblins," and this again shows that that American type, whether most akin to the modern Eskimo or to the Aino, was not a new type to those European explorers,—whose legendary history was already teeming with stories of encounters with "goblins."[316]

Whatever may have been the ethnical position of the tenth-century "SkrÆling" of America, this sixteenth-century map of North Europe certainly signifies that the "pigmies," "Screlings," or "Scric-Finns" of the extreme north of Scandinavia were neither "Finns" nor "Lapps," but a race that ultimately yielded place to these. There are similar indications in the extreme north of Asia. The Chukches of Siberia undoubtedly connect the Lapp in the west with the Eskimo in the east. But these Chukches have traditions of a race called Onkilon, i.e., "sea-folk," whom the Chukches, moving northward, displaced or annihilated. "Tradition relates that upwards of two hundred years ago these Onkilon occupied the whole of the Chukch coast, from Cape Chelagskoj to Behring's Straits; and indeed we still find along the whole of this stretch remains of their earth-huts, which must have been very unlike the present dwellings of the Chukches; they have the form of small mounds, are half sunk in the ground and closed above with whale ribs, which are covered with a thick layer of earth." Baron NordenskiÖld, who is here quoting Wrangel's "Reise" (1825), gives himself a representation of one of those Onkilon earth-dwellings, seen by him at Cape North.[317] In these now-extinct "Onkilon," then, we have a race of people who, like the Finns and sea-trows of Shetland, were famed as "sea-folk," and who at the same time were underground-people or mound-dwellers.