492 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have reason to know from the example of Ohio, began in the 

 hunting stage of humanity — the burial mound would be almost 

 certainly conspicuous, from this cause alone, for its exceptional 

 greenness. In the second place, again, the body within would 

 add to its fertility, the more so as a great chief was seldom com- 

 mitted to the tomb alone, but was usually accompanied to the 

 grave, whose megalithic stone chamber was to serve as his future 

 palace, by his slaves, his wives, and his other belongings. In the 

 third place, too, animals would be slaughtered, and feasts would 

 take place at the newly made barrow. The blood of the victims 

 on such occasions is habitually poured out on the grave, or on 

 the surface of the altar stone ; offerings of meat, of fruit, of milk, 

 of oil, are made there in abundance by trembling worshipers. 

 These offerings would act, of course, as rich manures, and would 

 encourage on the barrows an unusual wealth and luxuriance of 

 vegetation. But primitive man knows nothing of the nature and 

 action of manure. To him, the fact that grass grew greener and 

 bushes spread faster on the tumulus of the dead would almost 

 inevitably appear as an effect immediately due to the supernatu- 

 ral power of the ghost or spirit who dwelt within it. In all prob- 

 ability, the savage would envisage to himself the actual herbs 

 and shrubs which so sprang upon the tumulus as the direct 

 embodiment of the soul of his ancestor, or his departed chieftain. 

 Now, it could hardly be expected that any direct evidence of so 

 abstruse a point as this would be forthcoming from books or the 

 accounts of travelers. Yet, fortunately, however, I have been 

 lucky enough to hit in an unexpected place upon one curious lit- 

 tle bit of actual confirmation of this a priori suggestion. In his 

 excellent work on Nether Lochaber, the Rev. Alexander Stewart, 

 of Ballachulish, quotes and translates a Gaelic MSS. poem, col- 

 lected by Mr. Macdonald, the minister of the parish of Fortin- 

 gall, in Perthshire, one stanza of which runs as follows : 



" And ever he saw that his maidens paid 



To the fairies their due on the Fairy Knowe, 

 Till the emerald sward was under the tread 



As velvet soft and all aglow 

 With wild flowers such as fairies cull, 

 Weaving their garlands and wreaths for the dance when the moon is full ! " 



Upon this suggestive verse Mr. Stewart makes a curious and 

 important comment. 



" The allusion to paying — 



'The fairies their due on the fairy knowe,' 



has reference to the custom, common enough on the western 

 mainland and in some of the Hebrides some fifty years ago, and 



