the wolf, the boar, and the gigantic stag; so that the sylvan, or savage life, the mode subsequently used, as by the Picts in Britain, was too dangerous. It is most likely that sandy knolls, covered with fern and gorse, now known as "knocks of furze," were, on account of their dryness, used as squatting places by the earliest incomers. Thither, in later ages, the Irish, during civil war, when fear or fire drove them from their habitations, used to retire for refuge; and the subterraneous chambers, which are numerous throughout the island, are almost always found in these elevated and arid sites. The underground habitation, of which Colgan speaks, having an almost invisible entrance, was a place where the proprietor was safe, not only from frost and rain, but from all enemies, whether men or wolves. An Englishman considers his house as his castle, to be guarded against intruders: but his jealousy must have been far surpassed by the aboriginal Irishman, who dared not let the entrance to his domicile be seen, concealing himself more carefully than foxes and badgers hide themselves in the earth. Not only was this fersidhe, or man of the hill, continually fearful lest he should be killed by either a man or a beast, but like all savages, hating competitors for his scanty food, he was eager to slay any and every human intruder. If we give credence to the earliest of Latin writers who notice the Irish, it is plain that this people had the reputation of being cannibals; and if we may hazard a conjecture, let it be, for the sake of the gist of our argument, that their anthropophagism had its origin in their jealous dread of new-comers, whom, like the Andamans, they devoured as soon as possible. Living on river fish and wild fruits and animals, the fer-sith lurked for his prey, whether human or bestial, without any weapons save a sling and a stone. Such was the state of the solitary fairy-the Robinson Crusoe of Ireland-who shuddered when he saw a footprint on the strand. When he became a family-man, surrounded by a troop of young fairies, his exigencies and his fears increased. He made himself a dart, or an elfin arrow, and tipped it with flint, or with a sharp tooth, and his wife rendered it deadly with poison. Like the Tipperary-men of the present day, who declare that "Ireland is for the Irish," his watchword was, "Ireland for the fairies"! He detested a new-comer, and when one he committed, with his new weapon, the first agrarian

he saw

outrage.

In later times, when the importation of novel weapons, by fresh immigrants, brought the age of bronze, superseding stone; and, subsequently at the introduction of the Iron Age, the anger of those oldest inhabitants, the fairies, must have known no bounds; and acting as the first "Peep-o'-day Boys" or "Rockites," they took care to make men afraid of terrors by night, and of the arrow that flew by day. Then, also, no doubt, the banshee, or fairy-woman, female physician, or witch, performed parts and offices similar to those assigned to her in recent times. It is likely that she undertook to cure wounds made by "elf

66

shots," whether envenomed or not, just as her modern representative cures a simple boil or blain, which she declares has been caused by a dart," superstitiously ascribing such hurts to those old sources of evil, the fairies, whose malignity has been believed in very long after they themselves have ceased to be visible. By incantation, she also either drew down their vengeance on her enemies, or averted it from her friends. Even to this day an angry cailleach, or hag, is believed capable of invoking the siabhra, or malevolent sprite, that strikes men and cattle with his gath guinteach, or venemous dart. In the days we are considering, she who could bring in the foes to do mischief, was surely also capable of preventing their hostility, particularly if she was paid for obtaining the "good-will" of those whom we suppose to have been the original but ejected occupants of the land. What does this pretended power, on the part of a caste of persons, of either producing or averting mischief to man or beast, imply? We know that, by its means, the other and suffering race of people were long induced to believe in the malevolence of distant enemies, and also that their credulity, in this respect, brought gain to this caste. May not its origin have been the fact that the enemy and the witch spoke a common and peculiar dialect, and that she levied a species of blackrent by occasionally bringing what were called fairies down bodily upon new settlers?

John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, who relates his experiences in Kilkenny, in the reign of Queen Mary, speaks of the wood-kerne, who harassed his See lands as the Baron of Upper Ossory's "fairies." 1 Is it possible that a dim tradition still connected the name and idea of fairies with attacks upon colonists ? Their identity with the aborigines may be conceived from the old histories which describe the tragic end of Muircheartach, the first Christian King of Tara. According to the story, this prince, in order to have no rival pretenders to his throne, slew the whole family of Sighe, who were "of the old tribe of Tara," excepting a beautiful daughter of the house, named Sheen, who put herself in his way, and became his mistress, for the purpose of taking vengeance upon him. This Nemesis of her race is distinctly called a ban-sidhe. The first effect of her fascination was to cause the king to put away his wife and children. At length when, at the entreaty of a missionary, he discarded this last scion of the old stock, she burnt his house, Cleitach, near Stackallan, on the river Boyne, over his head, and he perished in the flames.2

If the prevalent idea of the existence of fairies had its beginning, as it would seem, in some sort of human beings, there remains the question as to what the race of these aborigines was. Were they Pictish Kelts, or

1 See note 3, p. 128.

2 O'Curry's "Lectures," p. 599.

"Annals of the Four Masters," A.D. 526.

Finns, or Cimbri, or Attacots, or Druidic British, or none of these? The honour of being the originals of the fairies under discussion is assigned by all authorities to the Tuatha Dé Danann. A very ancient manuscript is quoted by the late learned Dr. O'Donovan, in a note to the "Annals of the Four Masters," to the effect that this people inhabited many places in Ireland as fairies, with corporeal forms, but endowed with immortality; and the erudite commentator draws the inference that the Dé Dananns lingered in this country for many centuries after the invasion of the Gaels, and that they lived in retired situations, where they practised abstruse arts, which induced the Gaels to regard them as magicians. Unfortunately for our theme, our sagest antiquaries have not yet decided who the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves were, so that the stirps of the fairies that sprang (if they did spring) from them is still to seek. Probably the Hon. Algernon Herbert went nearest the mark where, in his notes to Nennius, he considers the people in question to have been Druids driven from Britain by the Romans. Should this theory be correct, it harmonises with the impression which is now general among archæologians, viz. that the first settlers in Eire (the Western island) were of Pictish, i.e. British breed, of the highest antiquity, and lowest barbarity. The necromantic character of the Druids, who accompanied what would seem to have been among the first immigrants of Pictish race, is described in the Irish "Nennius," where we read of "six demonlike" Druids, so styled because they were skilful in diabolic arts. The sciences they cultivated are specified as necromancy, idolatry, druidism, the honouring of Sredh [or Sreod], i.e. sneezing, and of other omens; choice of weather, lucky times (which are such as the French style bonheurs and mal-heurs), and augury, or watching the flight of birds.

So far as to the title of our Picts to have been the first fairies. Agreeably with all legend, the Tuatha Dé Danann were devoted to druidism and the black art. Perhaps the explanation of their name, attempted by Mr. Herbert, is the nearest now attainable. This learned antiquary translates their name thus:-The people devoted to the gods and to bardic sciences. The gradual transformation of druidic families into bardic is capable of demonstration; and, by analogy, these latter were styled Aos-dána, that is, people of dan, or rhymers. We are also told that the Dé Dananns came from Northern Europe, where alliterative rhyme was peculiarly admired. Perhaps the best clue to the reason why supernatural powers were assigned to them is the mention, in a manuscript quoted by Zeuss, of the leech and the smith. Our old word leech

1 Among the Gaelic manuscripts preserved on the Continent, which are understood to excel, in point of age, the oldest writings in the same language elsewhere, are those consulted by the philologist Zeuss, when, in his "Grammatica Celtica," he proved the close affinity of the British and Irish dialects. Of these most ancient volumes is one from which the dialectician quotes some curious charms against various ills which human flesh is heir to. The words charms and incantations imply (as is well

is manifestly a corruption of the Celtic liagh, a physician. We shall presently consider our special theme, the banshee, in her valuable quality of female physician. When iron was extremely scarce, the smith was a much more important character, and was almost worshipped by savage people, who, like the Otaheiteans during their age of stone, venerated a knife, considered an iron sword magical, esteemed the axe a deity, and offered sacrifices to a saw. The antiquaries of Switzerland, judging from the tools and implements deposited on the lake islands of that country, are of opinion that the men of bronze suddenly invaded and extirpated the men of flint, and that they were in their turn overcome by men armed with iron. The same process seems also to have taken place in Ireland. In our own opinion, it was not the Dé Dananns, but the Picts (by corruption pixies) that may have been the originals of the fairies. The Dé Danann smith referred to in Irish incantations may have been the first to introduce, not only the arts of the smithy, but swords and other instruments of Swedish steel. Mr. Smiles, in his "Industrial Biography," quotes fairy tales for traditions illustrative of belief in the magical properties of iron and steel; and Campbell, in his "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," observes that this fabulous faith may, though a mere fiction, be founded on fact, and that fact probably was the first use of iron. To this day, a piece of iron, nailed on the threshold of a door, is considered a potent protector against the powers of evil. Who," Campbell asks, were those powers who could not resist iron? Those fairies who shot arrows tipped with stone, or elf-darts, and were foes to the human race? Is not all this a dim, hazy recollection of war between invaders who had iron weapons, and a guerilla native race who had not; the race whose remains are found all over Europe, who struck down men and cattle, and were bogies, hobgoblins, brownies, dwarfs, and pixies?" Certes, as Campbell says, old mystic tales about smiths belong to mythology. The extraordinary value set, even in the eleventh century, on that rare article, a steel claymore, is apparent in the Norse sagas, in which we read of King Magnus Barefoot's good sword "Leg-biter." Of Andrew Ferrara, a comparatively modern swordmaker, we know that he practised his art in secrecy among the Highland hills, working in an underground chamber, in order to preserve the degree of heat of the metal, and to conceal his secret method of working.

Whoever the primitive settlers in old Erin actually were, there is ample proof that some of them, who retained hereditary memory of

known) that the superstitious ceremony of enchanting, i.e. of singing propitiatory verses, was performed by the initiated. These heathen songs were, doubtless, chanted by the banshees, or fairy-women, when working their spells. Notably enough, Diancecht, the leech, and Goibnean (now Gowan, or Gow), the smith, and Credne Cerd, or the brazier, are mentioned in these incantations.

1 Smiles' "Industrial Biography."

certain useful branches of knowledge, derived traditionally from their ancestors, selected to live on the hill side, in order to study and practise certain sciences which then were inseparable, namely, medicine, astrology, bardism, and prophecy. These departments of knowledge were peculiar to the bardic caste, which, remarkably enough, can be shown to have, for the most part, had their residences on hills down to the sixteenth century. Thus, it appears by Sir William Petty's maps that the Desmond bards had their habitations on the very mountains; and by the printed State papers that Lord Leonard Grey, Viceroy to Henry VIII., was reprimanded for plundering "the rhymers on the mountain side" -a circumstance which also carries the curious testimony that even Harry of England's Privy Councillors reprehended his representative in Dublin for breach of the reverence and immunity in war which the Irish rendered to the bardic caste.

By dwelling in these remote places, the bardic seers and leeches kept themselves distinct from the ordinary inhabitants of the country, and by assuming to be apart and to live a mystic life, they kept a great distance in every way between themselves and their simple neighbours, and thus sustained the superstition which, in the dark ages, identified them with fairies, and which, down to the seventeenth century, upheld the belief that they were in communication with them.

In their secluded abodes these professionalists affected, when applied to, to appeal to their invisible allies, and to consult the stars; they studied the properties of herbs, from which they carefully extracted the essence, and, by pretending to make the success of their medical, surgical, and prophetical practices dependent on incantations, spells, and conjuration, they kept the old veil of awe and mystery drawn tight around them. They were, in short, magicians and witches, and as such were often resorted to, to advise upon the hundred causes which agitated the minds and bodies of men and women.

Philologists are well aware that Jacob Grimm, the eminent investigator of Teutonic literature, has by means of inquiry into early popular tales and superstitions (which were vulgarly considered as mere old wives' fictions) thrown a flood of light on the early history of Europe. And the talented Dr. Dasent, in an introductory preface to his "Popular Tales from the Norse," observes that, in one aspect, the whole race of mythic Scandinavian giants stands out in strong historic light, since there can be little doubt that, in the tradition of their existence in old forests and amongst the rocks and hills, we have a memory of the gradual repulsion and extinction of some wild, fierce, and hostile race of men, who gradually retired into the natural fastnesses of the land, and speedily became mythic.

[After quoting a passage from Spenser's "Faerie Queene," suggested by the foregoing, Mr. Hore continues]:

With regard to the origin of these supposed monsters, the learned