Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? Canon J. A. Macculloch Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4. (Dec. 31, 1932), pp.

362-375.
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W E R E FAIRIES AN EARLIER RACE O F M E N ? (A Paper read before the Anthropological Section of the British Association, September, 1932.)
BY C A N O N J . A . MACCULLOCH, D . D .

THEfairy superstition is widespread, and the imaginary fairy beings of different races are of different kinds. In Western Europe, or in the British Isles alone, there must have been much mingling of traditions regarding fairies, though i t is still possible to trace differences among the various kinds of fairy folk. This suggests, what a wide survey of the whole fairy belief confirms, that the belief in fairies had its origin in no single cause. We are concerned with the theory that fairies were an earlier race of men. Connected with this is the view that fairies originated from the ghosts of such men. Fairies and ghosts are separate objects of folk-belief. Nevertheless it is possible that in very remote times, ghosts or a folk-memory of ghosts becoming transmuted into other forms, may have been one of the strands with which the fairy belief was woven. Where a territory has been conquered, the aborigines are apt to be regarded in course of time as having a kind of spirit form, to which, doubtless, belief in their ghosts contributes. Instances of this occur among the Maoris, Melanesians, and African tribes. That all fairies are thus derived it is impossible to maintain, but in many traditions and by some investigators their origin has been traced to ghosts. About half a century ago Mr. Grant Allen saw in fairies ghosts of the Neolithic folk, the people of the long barrows, conquered by incoming Celts. " As the ghosts which haunted these early tombs were small and
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swarthy, they came to be thought of as a little people who dwelt underground, and there wrought curious utensils of stone and amber, or guarded hidden treasures, such as we know are sometimes found in barrows. And as the tendency is for myths always to exaggerate . . . the inhabitants of the Neolithic tumuli grew to be regarded as a very tiny set of spirits indeed." Mr. Grant Allen illustrates his theory with great wealth of detail, especially laying stress on the fact that old burial-mounds and the like are called by elfin names, and that stone arrow-heads are known as elf-bo1ts.l We must remember, however, that mounds, circles, and monoliths are equally ascribed to the devil, witches, giants, and various other personages. Nor should too much stress be laid on the belief that fairies used stone arrow-heads as a means of causing disease or death among cattle or men. The Neolithic people were probably less small than the theory presupposes. There is evidence also that Celtic fairies were not small. The belief that fairies or elves were small seems to have been brought to Britain by the Saxons. Still let us grant that it is not impossible that ghosts associated with burial-mounds did in course of time assume less ghostly and more elfin forms. Meanwhile, it should be noted that fairies and .ghosts as distinct groups in widespread tradition have yet curiously similar traits, and that there are similar beliefs and customs regarding both. Here are a number of these. Ancestral ghosts required much food ; so did fairies, especially the voracious changeling. Both stole children. The fairy stroke causing disease and death has its parallel in ghostly attacks. Savage ghosts kill with invisible darts as did fairies, in their desire to draw the living to themselves. Both may be seen by gifted persons, and both are most active in the dark, or a t certain seasons-Beltane, Midsummer, and Samhain. The same rites of riddance keep off fairies and ghosts. What repelled
Grant Allen, 1881, xliii. 338 ff.
"

Who were the Fairies ? " in Cornhill Magazine,

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Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

ghosts in the Stone Age is unknown, but with the introduction of metals, the weapons made from them proved effective against the ghosts of stone-using men, no less than against themselves. In course of time all ghosts and supernatural beings were thought to be repelled by iron. Running water was a barrier against ghosts and fairies, and also against witches. According to widespread and ancient belief ghosts love dancing, a characteristic fairy trait. In the land of the dead, as in fairy-land, there is a supernatural lapse of time-a day is a year, a few years centuries. Even more copious are the parallels between eating the fatal food of fairy-land and that of the land of the dead. Between t h e speech of ghosts and fairies there is a curious resemblanceThat of fairies is thinner than the human voice, gentler, like the rustling of leaves, twittering, cheeping. Such a thin, whistling voice is often ascribed to ghosts. Isaiah spoke of wizards, or rather of the ghosts who spoke through them, that " chirp and mutter." Ghosts in the Odyssey twittered like bats. The whistling speech of ghosts is of widespread occurrence. It was also ascribed to devils, like that of Glenluce-a Poltergeist; and in a Scottish witch trial of 1677 the devil spoke to the witches " hollow and goustie."2 Then, again, the region of the dead is often underground. Greeks spoke of " those beneath the earth," and Zulus of " the people underground." Fairies are also an underground people, " subterraneans," as Kirk called them,3 and Teutonic dwarfs are the " unterirdische." A s entrance to a fairy mound was often gained by tapping upon it, or its inmates' attention was thus aroused, while even greater results were obtained from a magic wand, so to strike the earth has long been a recognized way of summoning the dead, in ancient Greece, in China, in New
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, edition of Robert Law's Memorzalls, Edinburgh, 1819, . lxxii. p Rev. Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fazrzes, edited by A. Lang, London, 1893.

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Guinea, in Zululand. Even in Moidart a MacDonald, pressed for rent b y an unsympathetic factor, beat the ground and called to his dead chief : " Simon, Simon ! hear me ; you were always good to me ! " The subterranean fairy world resembled the pre-Christian Hades and perhaps inherited much from it. Romantic tradition connected the two, and identified Pluto and Proserpine, queen over " death and the dead," with the fairy king and queen. In folk-tradition, too, the dead were often seen in the fairy realm, or rather, those who had been taken by the fairies and were believed to be dead, a semblance of their bodies having been left behind.4 The similarity of beliefs regarding fairies and ghosts, while yet the two classes of beings are regarded as different, rather points to their not having a common origin, but reminds us that similar traits are ascribed to all kinds of supernaturals, and that through the mingling of traditions, the traits of one class easily pass over to another. If fairies began as ghosts of an earlier race, they became in time more or less mythical spirits, not now envisaged as ghosts, but transformed into fairies ; while more or less recent ghosts retained their ghostly aspect. Probably, however, the ghost origin is only one of several. Popular tradition does actually regard certain fairies as souls of the dead or rather of certain classes of dead persons, but perhaps we need not lay too much stress on this any more than on folk-etymologies, interesting but erroneous. If some fairies took their origin from ghosts, this probably occurred in extremely remote times and the Nereids of Greece-a kind of fairies, the fdes of medieval romance, and the stately fairies of early Irish story, are certainly not derived from ghosts. One kind of elfin, however, the House-fairy, Brownie, Kobold, or Domovoy, is almost certainly a transformed
.4s in folk-tales, mainly Scottish ; in the Middle English romance of Orfeo and Heurod?'~; and in a late sixteenth century Scottish witch trial.

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ancestral spirit, helpful and kindly, yet a p t to take offence on slight provocation. A study of his traits and habits with those of ancestral spirits, will show that he is more nearly allied to spirits of the dead than are fairies in general. Apart from being explained as transmuted ghosts of an earlier race, fairies have been regarded as an actual small race of men, whose personalities and doings became more and more mythical as time passed, until tradition made of them a supernatural folk, with greater powers than men. Folk-tradition, with its passion for explaining things, has itself sometimes regarded fairies as an earlier race, though now no longer human. Dr. Cririe, in his Scottish Sce~zery (1803), held t h a t fairies were originally Druids or aborigines taking refuge in subterranean dwellings and emerging b y night to exercise their limbs b y dancing. This theory was styled a " marvellously absurd supposition " by a Quarterly reviewer. Sir Walter Scott, following Leyden, thought t h a t the Lapps, Letts, or Finns, conquered b y Norsemen, had been transformed into dwarfs. The origin of fairies in a small race of men, though it should be remembered t h a t all fairies are not small, was strongly advocated in more recent times b y Mr. David M a c R i t ~ h i e . ~ e regarded the Feinn, H the followers of Fionn in early Irish story, as an actual race, of small stature, though in actual fact gigantic size was generally attributed to them. Then he equated the Feinn with the small Finns or a small race akin to the Eskimo, though in truth there were no Finns in Britain in early days, and they were still east of the Gulf of Finland well within our own era. Neither etymologically nor ethnologically could the Feinn be Finns. They were next identified with the Picts, t h a t much harassed race, who are now generally recognized to have been not a dwarfish race, and indeed akin to the Brythonic Celts. Connected with this theory was the erroneous idea, shared also b y Professor
5 D. MacRitchie, T h e Testintony of Tradition, London, 1890 ; Fians, Fairies, and Picts, ibid., 1893.

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Rhys, that mounds, barrows, and tumuli had been, not burial-places, but dwellings of dwarfish people, Picts or Neolithic men, who became the fairies of popular belief. While fairies cannot be derived from Picts, Finns, or Feinn, were they, or were the dwarfs of tradition, closely akin to fairies, originally a small, or even a pygmy race of men ? Traditions of pygmy races are everywhere found in myth and folk-lore from the days of Homer onwards, and some of these traditions clearly refer to the pygmies of the African forests, known to the Egyptians. Other dwarfs were connected with India by classical tradition and are actually represented on early Buddhist sculpture^.^ Pygmies are also well known in the myths of savages-very copiously in Melanesia, tiny and with many elfin traits. They are not regarded by the natives as human, but anthropologists-Codrington, Fox, and Drew-think that there is a basis of fact in the traditions, along with much mythical fancy.7 They regard these pygmies as an earlier race in Melanesia. American Indians have also many pygmy legends, and even know of their being killed by the long bills of cranes, quite independently of the similar Greek myth, since the story was already told in 1520 by South Carolina Indians t o the S p a n i a r d ~ . ~ view of Mr. MacRitchie's theory that In fairies were Lapps, akin to Eskimo and Ainu, it is significant that both these peoples have themselves traditions of dwarfs, while neither Lapps nor Finns are pygmies in the scientific sense of the word. The Neolithic folk in Japan were not smaller than the Ainu. This pygmy tradition may be one of a purely mythical folk, or of an earlier race cone J. Fergusson, History of I n d i a n and Eastern Architecture, London, 1910, i. 110, 119. ' R. H. Codrington, T h e Melanesians, Oxford, 1891 ; C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew, Jour&l%f the Royal.;4nthropological Institute, 1915,xlv. 184. The legend was already told in 1520 to the Spaniard Ayllan by South Carolina Indians. It has many variants.

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ceived of in mythical terms. Such a dwarf tradition exists all over the further East. Sometimes, as in the Japanese sacred book, KO-ji-ki,these dwarfs are tailed, and live in subterranean caves, closed b y a stone slab. In Africa, where actual pygmies exist, there are legends of tiny dwarfs who seem to be connected with them or with a n aboriginal race. Some of the myths about them from all parts of Africa are almost identical : others show variations. They are very small, about two feet high, and some have enormous heads. They dwell in the thick grass ; or on or in a mountain ; or, as in Thonga belief, in the sky. They have a knowledge of metal-working, which they imparted to the nations. Great knowledge of " medicine " is supposed to be theirs. They rob gardens, cause rot among pumpkins, and their touch makes vegetables and fruits bitter. Hence offerings are made to them a t crossroads to save the crops. Some go on all fours ; some are bearded. They are sensitive about their size, and a story with many variants is widespread. When you meet one, and he asks where you first saw him, you must say t h a t you saw him a long way off. If you say you first noticed him quite near, your days are numbered, or he spears you a t once. These myths, it is claimed b y most of those who reported them, refer to former inhabitants of the country, transmuted into mythical beings. " Both Bushmen and Pygmies, whether racially akin or not, are living representatives of a prehistoric age, and have given rise to a great deal of mythology." In view of these folk-beliefs in mythical pygmies who so much resemble our elves, fairies, and dwarfs, and of the existence of actual pygmies in different parts of the earth, the question may be asked : Was a pygmy race ever widely distributed over the earth ? There are various pygmy
Prof. Alice Werner, African Mythology, Boston, 1925, gives a summary of the African dwarf legends in chapter ix., " The Little People." See also p. rzo.

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races now existing, i.e. peoples under four feet eleven inches in height. The Negrillo tribes of Central Africa, perhaps akin to the Bushmen, are not all of one physical type, but they are regarded as a primitive and dwarfed form of the Forest Negro. The Negritos-Andamanese, Semang (Malay Peninsula), Aeta (Philippines), Pesechem and Tapiro of New Guineaare believed to represent a woolly-haired, brachycephalic, pygmy stock, extending in early times over a wide area. Still another pygmy stock-Sakai of Malay Peninsula, jungle tribes of the Deccan, and the Veddas of Ceylon, are regarded as remnants of an early widely distributed preDravidian race, the Indian dwarfs of Ctesias. Others are believed to exist in South America and in Central America. These various pygmy groups are generally in a low state of culture. Some are ignorant of fire. Most are nomads; agriculture, where it exists, is primitive. They live on fruits and roots, by hunting, less often by fishing. Their dwellings are rock or bough or leaf shelters, circular beehive huts (Africa), and some have no dwelling. Where they live among other tribes, they rob the plantations by night, and the Aetas steal cattle. If the robbery from the Negro plantations is not resented, or if bananas are laid out for the pygmies, they leave gifts of game, or otherwise show their gratitude. Methods of barter, or of " the silent trade," exist between pygmies and their taller neighbours, and they are sometimes regarded as demons by the people trading with them. They are quick, bright, cheerful in disposition, children rather than men. Some are cruel and treacherous, but mention is made of " their mischievous pranks, unseen, spiteful vengeance, quick gratitude, and prompt return for kindness." In the Neolithic age in Europe groups of pygmies seem to have lived side by side with taller peoples, as sepulchral remains suggest (Schweizerbild and elsewhere in Switzer-

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land, in France, Italy, and Germany), and Prof. Sergi is of opinion that a large pygmy element existed in the people of Italy from prehistoric times. This element has been found in the existing population, as well as in Sardinia.lo This pygmy strain is connected with the Neolithic pygmies. Different theories about these early pygmies have been formulated. They are a distinct variety of man, preceding the taller races in Europe, the original stock from which all others were evolved. Again, they are regarded as degenerate types ; or they and taller races are separate branches of the main primitive human type. If such a pygmy race once existed widely in Europe, and if traditional dwarfs and, to some extent, fairies, are derived from memories of an actual race, we might regard pygmies as the source of the tradition, as the African mythical " Little People " are derived by some anthropologists from earlier pygmies or Bushmen. In Switzerland, where pygmies existed, there are stories of an inoffensive people driven out by " men." Similar legends occur elsewhere in Europe. In Melanesia small, mythical beings are in part a dim memory of earlier men, perhaps pygmies. Many folk-traditions might be traced to such a source. Pygmy tribes are apt to be regarded as uncanny, as spirits, or as sorcerers. They are propitiated by their taller neighbours. Niiesch thought that the legend of dwarfs haunting caves and hills might be a reminiscence of the Neolithic pygmies.ll Sir H. H. Johnston, who accepted this theory, held that most fairy myths originated from " the contemplation of the mysterious habits of dwarf troglodyte races, lingering still in the crannies, caverns, forests, and mountains of Europe, after the invasion of Neolithic man," and
10 J . Kollmann, " Das Schweizerbild bei Schaffhausen und Pygmlen in Europa," in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1894, xxvi. 189 ff. ; cf. Journ, of Royal Anthrop. Inst., 1896, xxv. 117. G. Sergi, T h e Meditevranean Race, London, 1901, p p 233 ff. 11 J . Niiesch, Der Dachsenbuel, eine Hohle aus fruhneol. Zeit, Zurich, 1903. and cf. L'Anth~opologie,1904, xv. 383.

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he pointed to traits of the Congo pygmies which recalled those of our elfin folk. At the same time, he uttered a needed warning against reckless theorizing.12 Some traits of existing pygmies resemble those told of mythical dwarfs, and vice versa. Of these may be mentioned the method of barter, familiar in dwarf and fairy tradition. Pygmies, like dwarfs and fairies, are shy of being seen, and can appear or disappear with marvellous speed. Traditional dwarfs dislike church-building, bell-ringing, new methods in metallurgy, cutting down forests, and agriculture. These represent various strata in civilization and therefore in tradition. Dislike of agriculture reminds us of the Negrilloes, who do not cultivate the soil. These and other antipathies, giving the impression of one race in presence of a higher one, and of Paganism in presence of Christianity, have a historic aspect. But inevitably such known or imagined dislikes on the part of actual men, would easily be transferred to groups of supernatural beings in course of time. There are legends of dwarfs, or elfins, migrating usually because of men and their ways. These suggest " the oppression and expulsion of an actual aboriginal race by newcomers." On the other hand, perhaps with the gradual disbelief in supernatural beings, new legends would arise in answer to the question : where have they gone ? Everywhere, be it remembered, there are myths of the departure of gods, of spirits, from earth, because of men's wickedness. Though dwarfs are said to dislike agriculture, other legends speak of their help in harvesting, just as African pygmies clear the ground of weeds for their taller neighbours. While actual pygmy races have little or no agriculture, we know nothing of the attitude to it of Neolithic pygmies, living among peopk who used it. Is the contrast,
l2 Sir H. H. Johnston, T h e Lrganda Protectorate, London, 1902, i. 5 1 3 ff.

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then, a dim memory of the contrast between Paleolithic men, who knew no agriculture, and Neolithic men who did ? While dwarfs and fairies dislike human civilization, they often take advantage of it, as do also pygmy tribes. Tales of fairies' borrowing ; of their theft of produce, animals, or utensils ; of their kidnapping women and infants, might conceivably reflect incidents in the contact of conquered and conquering races. Such kidnappers would appear always more sinister in traditional memory. Nevertheless the same kidnapping is ascribed to beings who could not be transmuted men-water-spirits, and spirits and demons of all kinds. The existence of such beings was used to explain certain facts in human life. At the same time actual doings of men were reflected upon spirits and such-like beings. Actions of gods and spirits were often human actions first of all. Mr. MacRitchie based his theory of fairies as once actual men partly on stories of fairies resenting human interference with their dwellings in mounds or tumuli b y these being built upon by the invading people, ignorant of those who dwelt beneath. B u t tumuli were not dwellings : even had they been they were too small for houses t o be built on them, nor are there any traces of dwellings on the top of mounds; nor would the invaders long remain ignorant of the presence of such hypothetical subterranean dwellers. There are many stories, however, of fairies resenting a human dwelling being built above their own, or refuse finding its way down to it. B u t here we are evidently dealing with forms of the wide-spread belief t h a t earthspirits-whether Earth personified, or spirits and demons, or, later, dwarfs and fairies-resent men's opening up the earth, ploughing it, building on it, defiling it. Hence many propitiatory rites ; hence foundation-sacrifices. The interference is primarily one concerning spirits : it had nothing to do with aboriginal inhabitants dwelling underground. Look now a t the fairy dislike of iron, a dislike shared b y

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ghosts and spirits. This is certainly primarily a human dislike, transferred to them, for what man feared, spirits would also fear. And doubtless it first concerned bronze or copper. The discovery and working of metals was surrounded with mystery. This, and the suspicion connected with its early use and the supposed ill-luck following on t h a t use, contributed to the ideas regarding it in folklore. Its discovery was bound to be revolutionary to men whose ancestors had used stone weapons and tools for thousands of years ; and as it was a t first bound to be rare, magical ideas were easily connected with its use. Those who found it used against them would be struck with terror and easily conquered, just as in New Guinea " the possession of a single little piece of iron, out of which they would fashion a rude but terrible weapon, increased the repute of a single tribe." l 3 For such and other reasons, and for the fear of metal b y those who did not possess it, men now regarded it as obnoxious to supernatural beings and effective against their inroads. Thus this dislike of iron b y fairies need not prove t h a t they are a n early non-metal using people transmuted into elfins, but only t h a t a well-known human fear of metal was transferred to supernatural beings by those who used it. There is again the use of flint arrow-heads by fairies. When used by fairies, trolls, witches, mermaids, the Slavic Vily and various other beings, the arrow-head caused sickness or death, but left no trace of a wound. This use of arrow-heads by elfins is thought to be a relic of the time when stone-using men lived in contact with those who used metal, and who held the former in t h a t superstitious awe with which aborigines are often regarded by conquerors because they possess superior magic. This is possible, though it does not follow t h a t fairies are a transmuted form of such aborigines, and it is remarkable that dwarfs, who much more easily answer to this description, are seldom said t o
l 3 M.

Hoernes, Pvzmztzue Man, London, a d . , p. 86.

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use the elf-bolt. The association of elfins with arrow-heads must have arisen when the use of stone-weapons by man was forgotten. How quickly it might be forgotten is seen by the fact that in Kamchatka, where the use of such weapons might have been remembered, a native, finding a fluted prism of obsidian, from which blades had been flaked, had no idea of its purpose.14 While some memory of a stone-using race might be transferred to fairies, the raison dle"tre of the elf-bolt is to be found in the fact that they, as well as many other spirits, used invisible weapons t o cause a " stroke," and that when arrow-heads were found near a person attacked by sudden illness, as they must frequently have been, they were regarded as these weapons now become visible. The superstition is actually the expression of an animistic belief that gods, spirits, demons, and sorcerers cause sickness or death by invisible weapons which might become visible, like the stone axeheads which are thought to be thunder-bolts thrown by deities who were assuredly not transmuted Stone Age men. Thus the attribution of stone arrow-heads to fairies is in keeping with this, and does not prove that they had once been an actual stone-using race. Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude that while some traits of fairies and dwarfs suggest an earlier race of men, others, when traced back, are found to be purely animistic in origin. Even where, as in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Africa, certain groups of fairy-like beings seem to be an earlier race thus transformed, many things said of them are non-human-their tiny size, their supernatural powers, their spirit aspect. These require explanation. With every allowance for the facts, the existence of a n early pygmy or dwarfish race cannot be the sole cause of the belief. Probably the belief in the manikin soul, no less than general animism, and also human imagination and dreams, had great influence in its formation. Many traits
14

E. B. Tylor, Early Hzstory of Mankznd, London, 1865, p.

207.

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of fairies are also those of supernatural beings with no human ancestry-a fact too often forgotten-Greek Nereids, Slavic Vily, spirit foxes in Japan, spirits of all kinds, and such near cousins of fairies as nixies, mermaids, and swan-maidens. Primitive animistic or even preanimistic ideas are the basis of the fairy creed, attached now t o groups of imaginary beings, now t o all kinds of supernaturals, now to traditions of actual men. On the other hand, these traditional memories doubtless gave definiteness to the fairy creed, or to certain parts of it. Yet it must be remembered t h a t man always tends t o regard the beings of his creed in his own likeness-he never knows how anthropomorphic he is. In so far as the fairy tradition is connected with actual men it may go back to the hostile relations existing between Paleolithic and Neolithic groups. Men of the Old Stone Age, driven out by Neolithic invaders, would act towards them in some of the ways ascribed to fairies ; and in accordance with the rule t h a t incomers regard aborigines as more or less supernatural, demoniac, possessed of powerful magic, they would be viewed more or less mysteriously. A tradition would be formed, and it might be handed on to metal-using tribes by their Mesolithic or Neolithic captives, while new traditions, due to the use of metal, would be formed. I t is true t h a t in many regions Neolithic people developed a metal industry. But if tradition proves anything, it points t o a clash of metalusing and stone-using peoples, somewhere and a t some time. With Andrew Lang we " cannot deny absolutely t h a t some such memory of an earlier race, a shy and fugitive people who used weapons of stone, may conceivably play its part in the fairy legend."15 W e conclude then t h a t there has been interaction between animistic belief in groups of imaginary beings and folk-memory of earlier races regarded always more and more from an animistic and mythical point of view.

" A. Lang, in Kirk, p. xxv.