274 WH O WERE THE FAIRIES ? 



as Campion calls her, and it is plain that in very 

 fact the dread Persephone,' the ' Queen over 

 death and the dead,' had dwindled into the lady 

 who borrows Tamlane in the ballad. Indeed, Kirk 

 mentions but does not approve of this explanation 

 ' that those subterranean people are departed 

 souls.' Now . . . the dead are dwellers under 

 earth." 



But, even if we grant that Mr. Lang was right 

 in his hypothesis, and there is far more evidence 

 in favour of it than it has been possible to set down 

 here, we are no more precluded than he was from 

 agreeing that in Mr. MacRitchie's theory there is 

 a powerful adjuvant in the building up of the fairy 

 mythology. Given an idea of a people living under 

 ground the souls of the dead we naturally arrive 

 ^ at the idea of a small people/for many primitive 

 races seem to have pictured the soul as a small 

 replica of the man. Thus the Macusi Indians be- 

 lieve that although the body will decay " the man 

 in our eyes " will not die but wander about. 

 Given this fundamental idea it is quite easy to 

 see how accretions, derived from wholly different 

 sources, may have become added to it. If there is 

 one thing obvious about mythology it is that tales 

 get told about persons to whom they never be- 

 longed until they become part of the stock history 

 or legend. 



And in the same way it is quite easy to see how 

 the doings of a conquered but unenslaved race, 

 hiding from their conquerors by day and only 

 venturing forth at night on stealthy forays ; in- 

 termarrying occasionally, as the fairies are said to 



