TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 887 



but as an indirect inference one would probably be right in supposing' this race 

 to have been no other than the very primitive "one which has been e"xaggerated 

 into fairies. At the same time it must be admitted that they could not have been 

 singular always in this respect among the nations of antiquity, as is amply proved 

 by the prevalence of legends about virgin mothers, to whom Frazer alludes, 

 not to mention certainwild stories such as some of those recorded by the naturalist 

 Pliny concerning certain kinds of animals. 



Some help to make out the real history of the Little People may be derived 

 from the names given them, of which the most common in Welsh is that of 

 y Tylwyth Teg or the Fair Family. But the word cor, ' a dwarf,' feminine corres, 

 is also applied to them ; and in Breton we have the same word with such deriva- 

 tives as korrik, ' a fairy, a wee little wizard or sorcerer,' with a feminine korrigan 

 or korrigez, analogously meaning a she-fairy or a diminutive witch. From cor we 

 have in Welsh the name of a people called the Corannians figuring in a story in 

 the fourteenth-century manuscript of the Red Book of Hergest. There one learns 

 that the Corannians were such consummate magicians that they could hear every 

 word that reached the wind, as it is put ; so they could not be harmed. The name 

 Corannians of those fairies has suggested to Welsh writers a similar explanation 

 of the name of a real people of ancient Britain. I refer to the doritani, whom 

 Ptolemy located, roughly speaking, between the river Trent and Norfolk, assigning 

 to them the two towns of Lindum, Lincoln, and Rata, supposed to have^been 

 approximately where Leicester now stands. It looks as if all invaders from 

 the Continent had avoided the coast from Norfolk up to the neighbourhood of the 

 Humber, for the good reason, probably, that it afl'orded very few inviting landing- 

 places. So here presumably the ancient inhabitants may have survived in suffi- 

 cient numbers to have been called by their neighbours of a different race 'the 

 dwarfs '_ or Coritani, as late as Ptolemy's time in the second century. This 

 harmonises with the fact that the Coritani are not mentioned as doing anything, 

 all political initiative having long before probably passed out of their^hands into 

 those of a more powerful race. How far inland the Coritanian territory extended 

 it is impossible to say, but it may have embraced the northern half of North- 

 amptonshire, where we have a place-name Pytchley, from an earlier Pihtes lea, 

 meaning 'The Pict's Meadow,' or else the meadow of a man called Pict. At all 

 events, their country took in the fen district containing Croyland, where towards 

 the end of the seventh century St. Guthlac set up his cell on the side of an 

 ancient tumulus and was disturbed by demons that talked Welsh. Certain portions 

 of the Coritanian country offered, as one may infer, special advantages as a home 

 for retreating nationalities: witness as late as the eleventh century the resistance 

 offered by Hereward in the Isle of Ely to the Norman Conqueror and his mail- 

 clad warriors. 



In rea.soning backwards from the stories about the Little People to a race in 

 some respects on a level with Australian savages, we come probably in contact 

 with one of the very earliest populations of these islands. It is needless to say 

 that we have no data to ascertain how long that occupation may have been 

 uncontested, if at all, or what progress was made in the course of it : perhaps 

 archaeology will be able some day to help us to form a guess on that subject. But 

 the question more immediately pressing for answer is, with what race outside 

 Wales may one compare or identify the ancient stock caricatured in Welsh fairy 

 tales ? Now, in the lowlands of Scotland, together with the Orknevs and Shet- 

 lands, the place of our fairies is to some extent taken by the Picts', or, as they 

 are there colloquially called, 'the Pechts.' IMy information about the Pechts 

 comes mostly from recent writings on the subject by iMr. David MacRitchie, of 

 Edinburgh, from whom one learns, among other things, that certain underground— 

 or partially underground— habitations in Scotland are ascribed to the Pechts. 

 Now one kind of these Pechts' dwellings appear from the outside like hillocks 

 covered with grass, so as presumably not to attract attention, an object which was 

 ^rther helped by making the entrance very low and as inconsfiicuous as possible. 

 But one of the most remarkable things about them is the fact that the cells or 

 apartments into which they are divided are frequently so small that their inmatea 



