* * * * *

[The foregoing pages were all in type before the appearance of Vol.  VIII. of the Bibliotheque de Carabas, which contains several criticisms by Mr. Andrew Lang on my “Testimony of Tradition” and “Underground Life.”  The already excessive length of this Introduction prevents me from now referring more particularly to these observations, as I should otherwise have done.  In the meantime, however, I beg to refer Mr. Lang to the present work, and to ask him whether he thinks the statements there quoted substantiate his conception of the Fir Sidhe as a deathless people, occupying some region “unknown of earth.”

An addition to the Bibliography of this subject is made in the above-named volume (p. 88).  “In his Scottish Scenery (1803), Dr. Cririe suggests that the germ of the Fairy myth is the existence of dispossessed aboriginals dwelling in subterranean houses, in some places called Picts’ houses, covered with artificial mounds.  The lights seen near the mounds are lights actually carried by the mound-dwellers.”  Mr. Lang adds:  “Dr. Cririe works out in some detail ’this marvellously absurd supposition,’ as the Quarterly Review calls it (vol. lix. p. 280).”]

[Footnote 1:  The Testimony of Tradition.  Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., London, 1890.]

[Footnote 2:  Such as at pp. ci.-cix. of Vol.  I., and pp. 46, 101, and 275 of Vol.  II.]

[Footnote 3:  Scott, however, had only imperfectly grasped this idea.  In numerous passages he inconsistently refers to “the little people” as purely the creatures of imagination.]

[Footnote 4:  A description of those dwarfs, obtained from Japanese records and pictures, may be seen in my monograph on “The Ainos” (Supplement to Vol.  IV. of the Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, Leiden, 1892).  Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., London.]

[Footnote 5:  Similarly, the “little Bushmen” referred to by Miss Olive Schreiner’s Waldo (as quoted by me on the title-page) would be remembered with as much uncertainty a century hence if the modern population of South Africa had nothing but tradition to depend upon. (It may be explained, in case of misapprehension on the part of any too-literal reader, that that quotation is not supposed to prove that the earth-dwellers of the Hebrides were small and ugly, with “little yellow faces,” any more than it proves the reindeer of Scotland to have been identical with the wild buck of South Africa.  But the cases are analogous, and the quotation seems a propos.)]

[Footnote 6:  Le Surnaturel dans les Contes Populaires, Paris, 1891, p. iv.]

[Footnote 7:  Some portions of it I have already amplified:  in a pamphlet entitled “The Underground Life,” Edinburgh, 1892 (privately printed); in a paper on “Subterranean Dwellings,” contributed to The Antiquary (London:  Elliot Stock) of August 1892; and at pp. 52-58 of “The Ainos,” previously quoted.]