504 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 301. 



is certain to itch and have the benefit of 

 the forbidden salve. "When this happens 

 the midwife has two very different views of 

 her surroundings : with the untouched eye 

 she sees that she is in the finest and grand- 

 est place that she has ever beheld in her 

 life, and there she can see the lady on 

 whom she is attending reposing on a bed, 

 while with the anointed eye she perceives 

 how she is lying on a bundle of rushes and 

 withered ferns in a large cave, with big 

 stones all around her and a little fire in 

 one corner, and she also discovers that the 

 woman is a girl who has once been her ser- 

 vant. Like the midwife, we have also to 

 exercise a sort of double vision if we are to 

 understand the fairies and see through the 

 stories about them. An instance will ex- 

 plain what I mean : Fairy women are 

 pretty generally represented as fascinating 

 to the last degree and gorgeously dressed ; 

 that is how they appear through the glamor 

 in which they move and have their being. 

 On the other hand, not only are some tribes 

 of some fairies described as ugly, but fairy 

 children when left as changelings are in- 

 variably pictured as repulsive urchins of a 

 sallow complexion and mostly deformed 

 about the feet and legs ; there we have the 

 real fairy with the glamor taken off and a 

 certain amount of depreciatory exaggeration 

 put on. 



Now when one approaches the fairy 

 question in this kind of way, one is forced, 

 it strikes me, to conclude that the fairies, 

 as a real people, consisted of a short, stumpy, 

 swarthy race, which made its habitations 

 underground or otherwise cunningly con- 

 cealed. They were hunters, probably, and 

 fishermen ; at any rate, they were not tillers 

 of the ground or eaters of bread. Most 

 likely they had some of the domestic ani- 

 mals and lived mainly on milk and the 

 produce of the chase, together with what 

 they got by stealing. They seem to have 

 practiced the art of spinning, though they 



do not appear to have thought much of 

 clothing. They had no tools or implements 

 made of metal. They appear to have had 

 a language of their own, which would im- 

 ply a time when they understood no other, 

 and explain why, when they came to a town 

 to do their marketing, they laid down the 

 exact money without uttering a syllable to 

 anybody by way of bargaining for their 

 purchases. They counted by fives and only 

 dealt in the simplest of numbers. They 

 were inordinately fond of music and danc- 

 ing. They had a marvelously quick sense 

 of hearing, and they were consummate 

 thieves ; but their thievery was not system- 

 atically resented, as their visits were held 

 to bring luck and prosperity. More power- 

 ful races generally feared them as formid- 

 able magicians who knew the future and 

 could cause or cure disease as they pleased. 

 The fairies took pains to conceal their 

 names no less than their abodes, and when 

 the name happened to be discovered by 

 strangers the bearer of it usually lost heart 

 and considered himself beaten. Their 

 family relations were of the lowest order ; 

 they not only reckoned no fathers, but it 

 may be that, like certain Australian savages 

 recently described by Spencer and Gillen, 

 they had no notion of paternity at all. The 

 stage of civilization in which fatherhood is 

 of little or no account has left evidence of 

 itself in Celtic literature, as I shall show 

 presently ; but the other and lower stage, 

 anterior to the idea of fatherhood at all 

 comes into sight only in certain bits of folk- 

 lore, both Welsh and Irish, to the effect that 

 the fairies were all women and girls. Where 

 could such an idea have originated? Only, 

 it seems to me, among a race once on a 

 level with the native Australians to whom 

 I have alluded, and of whom Frazer of 

 ' the Golden Bough ' wrote as follows in 

 last year's Fortnightly Revieiv : " Thus, in the 

 opinion of these savages, every conception 

 is what we are wont to call an immaculate 



