48 PROCEEDINGS OF TIIE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



customs connected with the great changes or turning points of the seasons 

 the turn of the year at the beginning of May, the Summer Solstice (St. John's 

 Eve and Day at Midsummer), the turn of the year again at November 1st, 

 and the winter solstice at Christmas ; ceremonies and other customs at the 

 start of the fishing season, the launching of a new boat, the " hanselling " of 

 a new house, or suit of clothes, the initiation of a member of a club, a 

 wedding, a funeral, any adventure in which the issue is uncertain.* All 

 the ways by which this issue is supposed to be either foreseen or influenced 

 in Scotland, e.g., the forms of good and bad luck, from meeting a cross-eyed 

 man, to walking under a ladder, or spilling the salt, these are found, or 

 close analogues of them are found, all over the globe; the inference is that 

 they belong, if not to the very root of the mind, at least to the lowest part 

 of its stem ; they represent some of the earliest reactions of the human mind 

 upon its environment. Take, for example, the belief in the fairies them- 

 selves ; apart from the theory which I suppose we must dismiss, though 

 Dr. Wentz adopts it, that the fairy faith is true, there are three views-f- 

 as to how the fairies came to be believed in the pygmy theory of 

 MacRitchie, the pagan gods theory, and the animist theory. 



To the first the fairies are a dim memory of a real people, a pygmy, or at 

 least a small-sized race, like the Esquimaux, which once inhabited Britain and 

 the neighbouring parts of the continent ; they were conquered and driven into 

 the recesses of the mountains by the Celts, lived on in the mound dwellings 

 and in the caves, sometimes the slaves, always the enemies of the conquerors, 

 but gradually dying out. They had magical practices at their festivals and 

 hunting expeditions, and probably human sacrifices for which they would, 

 like the Africans in a similar case, kidnap the children or young men and 

 women of the conquerors, much as the Jews are occasionally accused of 

 kidnapping Christian children for their supposed ritual sacrifice ; somewhat 

 on the same lines of this view is that which sees in the fairies a memory of 

 the Druids, the priests of the pagan worship found in Britain when Caesar 

 landed. 



The second theory has been more popular, that when Christianity 

 came and conquered, the old pagan gods (who were innumerable, different 



*A well-known collection is "Brand's Observations on Popular Anticiuities." 

 fSee Wuntz, o/>. cit. Introduction and Chapter III. 



