TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 605 
conquerors. These may sometimes be distinguished by comparing the folk- 
tales of the West of Ireland with the same stories as told in the Highlands. 
Both are to be met in the Isle of Skye, and sometimes a blend of the two. 
The contrast is marked in the way the Water Elementals are regarded—to the 
pure Celt the people of the waters are gentle, kindly, and very friendly, but 
to the Norsemen, fierce, cruel, and revengeful. ‘The legend on which Matthew 
Arnold’s ‘Forsaken Merman,’ common to both the Western Gael and the 
Norseman, is based, is a good example of a poetic blending of both. Extraneous 
stories sometimes crop up in a Celtic dress, as that of the fairy flag of Dunvegan, 
which bears manifest traces of a Saracen origin, but is ascribed to mermaid 
traditions of Skye. 
Akin to this part of the subject is the folk-music, and also the folk-dances ; 
the fairy tunes which old pipers heard underground when they slept on 
fairy knolls, and the similarity in the phrasing and modulation to Egyptian 
and other Eastern types. There seems little doubt that the reel was originally 
a war dance, the Skye eightsome a religious dance; and both have Eastern 
analogies. 
The Saxon or Teutonic colonists, usually called Lowland Scots, have an 
entirely different group and character of folk-tales. Here we find mostly 
stories of ghosts and hauntings. The Elementals are neither the gentle, kindly 
folk of the pure Celt, nor the fierce and revengeful type of the Scandinavian, 
but rather the gruesome and horrible. Also here we get the witch legends, 
and compacts with the devil. These are very little to be met with among the 
Celts of the West. A witch there is a creature of the mist, usually not in any 
sense human. But among the Lowland Scots a witch is a perfectly human 
woman, who has made a compact with the devil. 
The blending of all kinds of folk-lore is found in the Province of Moray, 
which for that reason is one of the most interesting parts of Scotland for the 
study. The aspirations of the great Somerled brought an influx of Celts and 
Scandinavians, and the Teutonic settlements of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries introduced a strong Saxon element, all of which may be traced in 
the stories commonly told among the peasants to-day. 
6. Report on the Distribution of Artificial Islands in the Lochs of the 
Islands of Scotland.—See Reports, p. 204. 
7. Pigmy Flints in the Dee Valley.1 By Miss H. Leste Paterson. 
The minute and finely chipped implements of stone called ‘Pigmy Flints’ 
are of at least four distinct varieties. They are (1) the shouldered or triangular 
pigmy flint, (2) the rounded and pointed, (3) the crescent, (4) the rhomboidal 
form. They are manufactured from small flakes, the natural edges of which 
are in many cases left untouched, whilst the thicker sides or backs are beauti- 
fully finished by fine secondary flaking. The use of these tiny tools seems as 
yet a profound mystery, although there are many conjectures, and the periods 
usually assigned to them are Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. They are found 
in India, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Southern Spain, France, Belgium, 
and Great Britain. 
Until quite recently pigmy flints were not known to exist north of the 
Forth, and it is really due to that tireless enthusiast, the Rev. Reginald A. 
Gatty, LL.B., of Hooton Roberts, Rotherham, Yorkshire, that we are now able 
to extend their location to Kincardineshire. Through reading an article from 
his pen entitled ‘The Home of the Pigmies,’ which appeared in ‘ Chambers’s 
Journal,’ April 1905, we received both knowledge and stimulus. The result was 
patient search, and, just as it chanced, our home site (on a river terrace of great 
beauty and shelter) had found favour in the eyes of those distant people who 
fashioned these mysteriously tiny and unaccountable implements. The collec- 
tion is as yet small, but each flint is a real fact ; and multiplication of them, whilst 
* To be published in full in Man. 
