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IRatural Ibistor? of tbe Xittle people. 



We are told by our most popular Welsh historian that the 

 fairy stones of Wales are perhaps dim traditions of the unknown 

 people who dwelt here before the coming of the Celts. This is 

 a scientific theory but not a Celtic one, and we had better leave 

 it for our lately founded (or projected) Folklore Society to decide 

 whether a savage race, which seems to have been more like the 

 Esquimaux than anything, could have given rise to the stories of 

 y tylwyth teg. The explanation offered by the folk tales themselves 

 is far more attractive. A scientific theory is said to be valuable 

 for the number of facts it- will explain, but a folk tale or local 

 tradition is much better in this respect. A scientific theory will 

 only explain what it can, but with a folk tale you can prove what 

 you like. Compare, for instance, the Scandinavian legend of the 

 origin of the brownies. " Brownies, fairies, and such creatures 

 originated in this way. When the wicked angels were cast down 

 from heaven some of them fell on hills and mounds, and these 

 became dwarfs ; some fell into woods and waste places, and these 

 became fairies ; while those that fell into the houses became 

 brownies. They are, all of them, just little devils." This last 

 remark explains why the little people have such a dislike of church 

 bells and of anything marked with a cross. In Denmark, at least, 

 the disappearance of the fairies is said to be due to the habit of 

 marking a cross on everything, though another theory is that they 

 have disappeared on account of their not being believed in. 



It is owing to this fact about their origin that the brownies 

 and dwarfs are unable to utter the word "good." A Danish 

 farmer who was driving one evening along the high road between 

 Kalundborg and Slagelse, close to Agerup mill, came across a 

 number of brownies. At a distance they looked like a crowd of 

 school-boys. " They wore dark clothes (he says), and each was smo- 

 king a silver pipe. As I passed them they greeted me with ' evening, 

 evening,' for that kind of people cannot say * good evening.' I can 

 remember that the sparks now and then flew out of their pipes. I 



