SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 49 



ones being worshipped at different places all over the Celtic area, different 

 names at least), were not immediately forgotten, but lingered on in the 

 secret practices of the people, declining in size as the memory of them 

 became fainter, until they reached the limit compatible with human form ; 

 taking at the same time a character that became more and more evil as time 

 went on. 



The third theory might perhaps be called an extension of the second. 



It is that the belief in the fairies is a Celtic form of a belief that is 



in its fundamentals universal to the human race, the belief that is usually 



called animism, viz., that whatever acts upon, influences, or in any way 



makes a difference to man is necessarily a living thing, or as a less primitive 



man would say, has a soul or spirit. Men did not at first distinguish soul 



from body, hence they spoke of the thing itself as alive, as speaking, as 



wishing, and thinking, whether it was a river or a rock, the wind, a tree, a 



star, or a salmon. When they did discover the soul or spirit, they thought 



of it as something inside the man, therefore as smaller than his body, going 



in and out at the mouth, the breath belonging to it, and speech ! Iso. If the 



fairies are spirits the spirits of rocks, woods, wells, and rivers then perhaps 



their smallness may have that explanation. But the brownie in Scotland 



and corresponding types of fairy in Cornwall, &c., suggest that many of the 



fairies were really household gods, and in the last resort, ancestors worshipped 



for their wisdom or their courage. This theory then is, that the fairy lore 



is the deposit of all the spirit beliefs and all the magical practices of the 



primitive Celts : ancestor-worship, worship of wells and rivers, of the sun 



and moon, the wind, the tree which gave them food, material for their 



houses, and shafts for their weapons. These beliefs in turn are based on 



their practice of sympathetic magic in the hunt, at the fishing, at initiation 



in warfare, and later in connection with domestic cattle and with the sowing 



and reaping of the grain. Among these practices, that of infanticide, and 



especially the exposure of weakly or deformed children was probably universal.* 



1. The animal-changes fairy appearing as bird, fish, snake, or other 



animal ; and, conversely, a fairy changing a human being for a time into a 



deer, an eel, a toad, and generally the swan-maiden group of stories : 



^v. Keclua' "Primitive Folk." Of this practice the ''changeling" stories are probably a deposit 

 in our modern culture. 



7 



