Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

Author(s): Canon J. A. Macculloch

Source: Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec. 31, 1932), pp. 362-375
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.
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 WERE FAIRIES AN EARLIER RACE OF MEN ?
(A Paper read before the Anthropological Section of the
British Association, September, 1932.)
BY CANON J. A. MACCULLOCH, D.D.

THE fairy 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 it 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
362
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 363
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 ten-
dency 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-bolts.'
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 asso-
ciated 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 change-
ling. 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 per-
sons, and both are most active in the dark, or at certain
seasons-Beltane, Midsummer, and Samhain. The same
rites of riddance keep off fairies and ghosts. What repelled
1 Grant Allen, "Who were the Fairies ?" in Cornhill Magazine,
1881, xliii. 338 ff.
364 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

ghosts in the Stone Age is unknown, but with the introduc-

tion 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 the
speech of ghosts and fairies there is a curious resemblance.
That 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." As
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 Memorialls,.
Edinburgh, 1819, p. lxxii.
3Rev. Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and
Fairies, edited by A. Lang, London, 1893.
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 365

Guinea, in Zululand. Even in Moidart a MacDonald,

pressed for rent by 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 sem-
blance 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 re-
minds 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-etymo-
logies, 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 fles 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
4As in folk-tales, mainly Scottish; in the Middle English romance of
Orfeo and Heurodys; and in a late sixteenth century Scottish witch
trial.
366 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

ancestral spirit, helpful and kindly, yet apt 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 Scenery
(I803), held that fairies were originally Druids or aborigines
taking refuge in subterranean dwellings and emerging by
night to exercise their limbs by dancing. This theory was
styled a " marvellously absurd supposition " by a Quarterly
reviewer. Sir Walter Scott, following Leyden, thought that
the Lapps, Letts, or Finns, conquered by Norsemen, had
been transformed into dwarfs. The origin of fairies in a
small race of men, though it should be remembered that all
fairies are not small, was strongly advocated in more recent
times by Mr. David MacRitchie.5 He regarded the Feinn,
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, that 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,.sharedalso by Professor
6 D. MacRitchie, The Testimony of Tradition, London, 1890 ; Fians,
Fairies, and Picts, ibid., 1893.
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 367
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 sculptures."
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.' 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 152o by South Carolina Indians to
the Spaniards.8 In view of Mr. MacRitchie's theory that
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 con-
6 J. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, London,
191o, i. Io, 119g.
SR. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891; C. E. Fox and
F. H. Drew, JouritalHfthe Royals ithropologic'al Institute, '1915, xlv. 184.
S
The legend was already told in 1520 to the Spaniard Ayllan by
South Carolina Indians. It has many variants.
 368 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

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 by a stone slab.
In Africa, where actual pygmies exist, there are legends
of tiny dwarfs who seem to be connected with them or with
an aboriginal race. Some of the myths about them from
all parts of Africa are almost identical: others show varia-
tions. 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 im-
parted 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 at cross-
roads 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 that you
saw him a long way off. If you say you first noticed him
quite near, your days are numbered, or he spears you at
once. These myths, it is claimed by 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 represen-
tatives of a prehistoric age, and have given rise to a great
deal of mythology." g
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
SProf. Alice Werner, African Mythology, Boston, 1925, gives a
summary of the African dwarf legends in chapter ix., "The Little
People." See also p. 12o.
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 369

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 Guinea-
are 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 pre-
Dravidian 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-
370 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

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.1o 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 de-
generate 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 anthro-
pologists from earlier pygmies or Bushmen. In Switzerland,
where pygmies existed, there are stories of an inoffensive
people driven out by " men." Similar legends occur else-
where 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 neigh-
bours. Nilesch thought that the legend of dwarfs haunting
caves and hills might be a reminiscence of the Neolithic
pygmies.11 Sir H. H. Johnston, who accepted this theory,
held that most fairy myths originated from " the contem-
plation of the mysterious habits of dwarf troglodyte races,
lingering still in the crannies, caverns, forests, and moun-
tains of Europe, after the invasion of Neolithic man," and
to J. Kollmann, bei Schaffhausen und Pyg-
" Das Schweizerbild
miten in Europa," in Zeitschrift fir Ethnologie, 1894, xxvi.189 ff.; cf.
Journ. of Royal Anthrop. Inst., 1896, xxv. G. Sergi, The Mediter-
ranean Race, London, 1901, pp. 233 ff. 117.
11 J. Niiesch, Der Dachsenbuel, eine H6hle aus fruhneol. Zeit, Zurich,
i903, and cf. L'Anthropologie, 1904, xv. 383.
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 371
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. Tradi-
tional dwarfs dislike church-building, bell-ringing, new
methods in metallurgy, cutting down forests, and agricul-
ture. 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 oppres-
sion and expulsion of an actual aboriginal race by new-
comers." 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 neigh-
bours. While actual pygmy races have little or no agricul-
ture, we know nothing of the attitude to it of Neolithic
pygmies, living among people who used it. Is the contrast,
12Sir H. H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, London, 190o2,
i. 513 ff.
372 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

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 interfer-
ence with their dwellings in mounds or tumuli by these
being built upon by the invading people, ignorant of those
who dwelt beneath. But tumuli were not dwellings: even
had they been they were too small for houses to 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. But here we are evidently
dealing with forms of the wide-spread belief that earth-
spirits-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 inter-
ference is primarily one concerning spirits: it had nothing
to do with aboriginal inhabitants dwelling underground.
Look now at the fairy dislike of iron, a dislike shared by
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 373

ghosts and spirits. This is certainly primarily a human dis-

like, transferred to them, for whatman 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 that use, con-
tributed 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 at 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 con-
quered, 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." 13 For such and other reasons, and for the fear of
metal by 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 by fairies need not
prove that they are an early non-metal using people trans-
muted into elfins, but only that 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 sick-
ness 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 that superstitious awe with
which aborigines are often regarded by conquerors because
they possess superior magic. This is possible, though it does
not follow that 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 to
13 M. Hoernes, Primitive Man, London, n.d., p. 86.
374 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?

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 d'etre of the elf-bolt is to be found in the fact that
they, as well as many other spirits, used invisible weapons
to 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 axe-
heads 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 super-
natural powers, their spirit aspect. These require explana-
tion. With every allowance for the facts, the existence of
an 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 History of Mankind, London, 1865, p. 207.
 Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men? 375
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 pre-
animistic ideas are the basis of the fairy creed, attached now
to groups of imaginary beings, now to all kinds of super-
naturals, now to traditions of actual men. On the other
hand, these traditional memories doubtless gave definite-
ness to the fairy creed, or to certain parts of it. Yet it must
be remembered that man always tends to regard the beings
of his creed in his own likeness-he never knows how anthro-
pomorphic 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 that 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. It is true that in many regions
Neolithic people developed a metal industry. But if
tradition proves anything, it points to a clash of metal-
using and stone-using peoples, somewhere and at some
time. With Andrew Lang we " cannot deny absolutely
that 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."'"15We conclude then that 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.
15 A. Lang, in Kirk, p. xxv.