RAB. "Pithee don't be spare about men: I'll meet and a narrow way is called a tha here a leet odds of two o'clock."

In the course of the conversation Bet gives Rab an account of one of her adventures, from which I take a paragraph:

"Tother day you must know I went to winding, and took the boy way me to cry em, and ruise away the pigs from muzzling in the corn; 'twas a tingley frost-quite a-glidder down the lane; 'twas so hard avrore that the juggymire was all one clitch of ice; et blunk'd at the same time as the weend huffled and

hulder'd it in wan's eyes. I was in a sad taking-no gwain to the lewside you know-I must vace it; though ma nose and lips were a-sprayed, and my arms ne spragged as a long cripple. By the time us a-do, the weend was a-go lie. Cryal! I was a-stugg'd in plid -I never was in such a pickle avore--my coats was a-dagg'd up, and my shoe heled in mux, for 'twas as dark as a pit. Well, to be sure, when we come home, maester was routing in the zettle (a pix take em!) before a gurt rousing fire, even to swelter wan, an we a-scrim'd way the cold."

"drang-way;" "schilt" for shield (German schild); "avrore" (German erfroren) for frozen; and many others that could be named.

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Among their most ancient words are some that we meet with occasionally in America, and usually regard as modern vulgarisms; e. g. transmogerrefy" and "argufy.' Some of their words are also significant enough. Thus "barthless" means houseless; it is related to the word berth. The root of the word is the Welsh bar, a "bush," and points infallibly to the period when the house was a hut made of bushes and their inhabitants literally barbaroi. The word "gubby," applied to the Dartmoor people in their wilder days, and now heard occasionally, is from gubber, “black mud," and similarly reports the era when they lived in mud huts-an era, by-the-way, not every where past in that region.

To begin now with the first of these speci- There may be a remote connection between mens, there is no difficulty in seeing how "rev- the words "gubby" and goblin. Many children el" should be shortened into rail. "Wrax- in the large towns of Devonshire still regard lin" (wrestling) is from the Saxon wraxlung. Dartmoor with superstitious awe; and a cen"Crowder" means fiddler; why, unless because tury ago the belief was quite common that on he draws a crowd around him, I can not im- that moor there lived a race of infra-human agine. "Gubby" (crowd) relates to the term beings, with long tusks, adepts in witchcraft, gubbins, by which the wild people of Dartmoor who usually passed the nights in dances around are known; it is a word to which I shall have mysterious circles, such as Tam O'Shanter saw, to refer hereafter. "A-purt" is from the and in various other diabolical orgies. These French bouter, to pout. "A-guest" is the wild beings lived in the region of the famous same as the Yankee I guess-an expression lead and tin mines. Now a settlement of Gerrarely met with out of Devonshire and New mans was, in historic times at least, the first to England. "Gonmar" is a mere corruption for work the Devonshire mines. The "goblin" is grandmother. "Chures" is household jobs-sim- in Germany essentially the spirit of mines, and ply the Yankee chores, This word is probably also caverns-but particularly it is a mining defrom the Saxon cyrre, "work," the form of the mon. He is called "Kobbold," and with the word in Exmoor being "chewry;" but it is un- Dutch "Kabouter;" the derivative meaning known in England outside of Devonshire. Al- being one who knocks (as in mines), and the though, as has been said, the touching of the superstition being that they could be at times Pilgrims on Devonshire was so incidental, more heard thumping underground. From this cerYankee words are found here than elsewhere. tainly comes the Welsh word "cob," a thump "Driling" is drawling. In the second para- (club is a related word), and "coblyn,” a knocker graph "winding" means winnowing; "cry," -substantially the same with goblin. It is poscarry; "ruise," drive. "A-glidder" (slippery) sible, also, that the definition of black mud apis from the Saxon glidan, "to slip." "Juggy-plied to "gubby" may have referred to the mire" (bog) means jog-mire, mire through which one jogs. "Clitch" means something that has run together. "Blunk" is any light flaky body falling-as sparks, or snow. "Huffled" means shifted; and "huldered," hurtled. "Lewside" is the leeside, or sheltered side. "A-sprayed" means chapped; "spragg'd," roughened. The phrase us a-do" is found in Chaucer-"I've a-do (done) it." "Cryal" is a modification of the exclamation Christ! "Plid" means dirt; "a-dagg'd," tucked; "heled," covered (from Saxon helan "to hide"). "Mux" is the Saxon Meox, and means clean road dirt. "Zettle" is the Saxon set, "seat," and is imitated in our common word settee. "A-scrim'd" is from the Teutonic krimpen, and means shriveled.

66

The specimens of the dialect given above do not by any means give a fair proportion of the German words to be met with in Devonshire. They use, for example, "dring" (to throng),

dark complexion ascribed by so many ancient writers to the original inhabitants of this district, who were, and sometimes are now, called "gubbins."

All of these words and facts point to the belief that among the early settlers here were people of Saxon or Danish origin. And indeed we are hardly left a doubt in the matter when we consider the constant recurrence of relics of the worship of Thor with which the neighborhood abounds. Every hill is called a "tor." And here I must ask my reader's company on an excursion to Scandinavia, as the only route to ancient England.

Thor with his hammer succeeded Odin with the sword; an era of work, that is, followed that of battle. The Hammer built ships, the ships bore emigrants, and so they were worshipers of Thor who occupied Britain. They found the "gubbins" already here, and probably

eyes.

The invaders, of whose origin I shall have something to say hereafter, probably hurled rough rocks in battle, their leaders only being provided with iron weapons, that metal as yet being very scarce.

made slaves of them, putting them to work in The giant, desirous of obtaining such the mines, where they lived so much out of sight magic vision, requested the dwarf to melt and —as the coal-miners do now—that they became pour lead in his eyes-an operation which the mythic, as "Goblins” and “Tröll”—this last little man was not slow in performing, and was word being simply thralls, or slaves. The orig- soon leading his blind enemy a captive to his inal inhabitants were dwarfish in stature and of own people. This story is characteristic of dark complexion; their conquerors were fair nearly all the giant stories. In the end, howand, comparatively, giants. The god Thor was ever, the big men forced the little men to the called "Red-beard;" he belonged to a race that wall and beyond it; and such as could not had red beards, and consequently blue eyes and move on were made " thralls," their chief fair complexion. The Sagas represent Thor as work, probably, being to make for their condestroying dwarfs and goblins. These were no querors those stone arrows which had already doubt the Laps. In his "Journey to Lapland" | gained the reputation of possessing magical Regnarden says, "Such is the description of virtue. this little animal called a Laplander; and it may be safely said that, after the monkey, he approaches nearest to man." The superstition may be yet found with Swedish and other northern peasantries that the Laps are a preternatural It is related in a Scanian story that once, or infernal race, and in 1576 Frobisher's crew, when a Northman discovered a dwarf, the lathaving caught a Lap woman, pulled off her boots ter ran away, dropping his weapons as he fled. to see if her feet were cloven. Thunder and The Northman went to get the weapons, but lightning are still called "Thördin" in the South the dwarf had by infernal art "turned them all of Sweden; and an old saying is known there, to stone." Of course they were ordinary flint "If there were no thunder-storms the world weapons. These flint arrows became graduwould be destroyed by goblins." Thor's-day ally associated with occult virtues. Few of us, or Thursday was within a hundred years a holi-perhaps, who listen to Weber's most charming day there. A superstition concerning Freya's day (Friday) still accompanies the British race in all its migrations, only whereas it was once a sacred day the Christians have made it a day of ill omen. It seems, then, that we have wellfounded tradition for the belief that a large blonde race in its northwestward migration overtook and came into conflict with a dwarfish people whom they regarded as most absolutely diabolical.

opera, think to what a venerable antiquity those magic bullets of Der Freischutz may be traced. Yet, in "Orva Oda's Saga," we read that the Norse warrior, having saved the life of a child of the Lapland chief, Guse, when an eagle was bearing it away, that chief presented to him three magical stone arrows warranted to hit whatever they were aimed at. The Swedish peasants place even now flint arrows over their doors as preventives against witchcraft, as the horseshoe is used elsewhere. They were led to this, however, by the supposition that these arrow-heads, which they picked up every where, were not the dwarfs' arrows, but such as

The causes of this superstitious awe of the dwarfs it is not difficult to trace. Weakness is the mother of cunning. The dwarf, unable to cope with the giant in physical strength, must outwit him or perish. He utilizes his small-Thor had hurled against the dwarfs, goblins, ness; it enables him to hide in crevices. ing in the region of caverns, he hides in them, and gathers from their stalactites the idea of a stone arrow, which he lets fly at his burly antagonist. His complexion helps to render him invisible against the dark earth, while the blonde giant is a shining mark. In a primitive age all these would combine to engender the impression that he was in league with infernal powers. All of our giant tales come from this source.

Liv and the like. Showers of them fell to the earth during every thunder-storm. Peasants wore them around their necks as amulets, and warriors wore them in battle as "VictoryStones," or "Life-Stones." It is possible that our "madstones" have this pedigree, and the "Agnus Dei," worn by the Irish Catholic, curiously resembles one kind of flint arrow.

In Didrik of Bern's Saga it is related that They King Nidung once feared to go into battle beall indicate that the giant was a huge lubber-cause he had left his "Victory-Stone" at home. ly simpleton who was perpetually conquered He offered his daughter's hand to the man that through the superior wit of some Jack the should bring it to him. Valent thus won his Giant-killer. bride, and the king the victory. It was but a One story, long a favorite with the Scandi-step from the worship of the stone arrow to the navian peasantry, relates that a giant was car- worship of the hammer which made it, and rying home with him Askovis, a dwarf, whom every thing else. Thus the emblem of Thor he had taken captive. On the way the dwarf was set up. When Christianity came to Scanpointed to the horizon and described many beau-dinavia it found the stone hammer stuck in tiful sights of cities, men and women, which he saw there. The giant, seeing nothing, asked the dwarf how he managed to see such things. The dwarf replied that the power could be acquired only by pouring melted lead in one's

mounds of stones; and by its ingenuity the hammer was made more and more to resemble the cross, until it actually became a cross, as the people were graduated from their old religion to the new.

and thence budded and blossomed into Chinese, ing legends of dwarfs and giants have sprung Aztec, Peruvian, and other empires and comparative civilizations, which were to be modified into other social formations by the subsequent admixtures of the great Aryan peoples, who occupied and spread over the great central lands of Western Asia and Europe. I venture to quote here a private note which I have received from Professor Huxley on this point:

up wherever a large race came into collision
with a small one. "The Philistines," he says,
"were the giants of the Israelites, and these
were the dwarfs of the former. The Cimbri
were the giants of the Greek adventurers, and
these were the dwarfs of the former. The Ger-
mans and the Celts were the giants of the Ro-
mans, and these were the dwarfs of the former.
The Icelanders, Normans, English, and other
kindred tribes were the giants of the Greenland-
ers and North American Esquimaux, and these
were the Skrälinger or dwarfs of the former."*
Cornwall is named after the Roman Corineus,
of whom the ancient chronicle says:
us, cousin to Brutus, the first conqueror of En-
gland, wrestling at Plymouth with the celebrat-

"Corine

broke his neck, and received in reward for that great feat the county of Cornwall." Here also Jack the Giant-killer slew Cormelian and Thunderbore:

"My impression is," he states, "that before the Aryan immigration a race of short, swarthy people (of whom I imagine the Iberians of Spain and the Silures of Britain to have been specimens) inhabited the southern and western parts of Europe, and very likely extended into Ireland. But where these people came from I know not. So far as I am aware there is no evidence that they came from the northeast. At the earliest periods to which our records extend the Iberians proper seem to have spoken Basque, while the corresponding people in the British Islands ap-ed giant Gog-magog, toppled him over the cliff, pear to have spoken Celtic dialects. But the Gauls who invaded the Roman Empire, and who were tall, fair, blue-eyed people, just like the Teutons and Scandinavians, also spoke Celtic dialects. But the Celtic dialects, philologers tell us, are derivations from the great Aryan stock of languages. Hence there seems to be every probability that the Celtic dialects were as much the proper language of the fair Gauls as the Norse and German dialects were the proper language of the people to whom they were physically similar. And, if this be the case, I can only conclude that the short and dark Celtic-speaking, Gaulish, British, and Irish populations, adopted the tongues of their invaders, and are, properly-speaking, a pre-Celtic population. In fact, the question has often suggested itself to me, whether the Celtic dialects, which differ so much from the other Aryan tongues, may not have been evolved in consequence of the contact of Aryans with the short dark folk. Thus you see that I think

that the stocks are included under the terms Gauls and Kelte-a fair race, Aryan by tongue, and very likely from the Northeast; a dark, non-Aryan, coming from God knows where."

To this I may add, however, that in a lecture which I recently heard from Professor Huxley, at the Royal Institution in London, he indicated his belief, though he did not assert, that the primitive population of Southwestern England, Wales, and Ireland, came from the south. It may be also mentioned in this connection that the Irish "Milesians" have a tradition that their ancestors came from Spain, and that even St. Patrick was "a native of Ireland, born in Spain." They maintain, however, what is very doubtful, that their ancestors sailed directly from Spain to Ireland; there being some evidence that they settled in Devon and Cornwall, and were driven by invaders to Ireland. In these last-named counties the tradition of their having been settled by primitive Irishmen is very strong and clear.

May we not trace all the legends of giants with which Cornwall and the Scilly Isles abound to the contact of the tall, fair invaders with the small, dark people who originally occupied this region? Dubois de Montpereux has shown that the Cyclopes, on the east coast of the Bosphorus, pointed out by Homer as a frightful race of giants, hurling huge boulders at the Grecian ships, were a gigantic race of nomadic Cimbri, that is, Gauls. And Nillson, the most eminent Swedish ethnologist, has shown that correspond

"Child Rowland to the dark tower come,
The giant roared and out he ran;
His word was still-Fie, foh, and fum,

I smell the blood of a British man."
It is quite probable that the word "Fenian,"
with whose etymology philologers (as it is now
the ruling to call those who used to be termed
philologists) have vainly grappled, is derived
from this remote period. It is understood
that Fenian means a "giant" of a belliger-
ent disposition. The word fionn in Irish means
"white." But in those days the "white" was
to the dark, small Hibernian, a Gaul, conse-
quently a giant. But, it may be asked, what
part in the great march of races did this little
pre-historic people play? Nature is a great
economist, and wastes nothing. Whenever a
migration occurs it is chiefly the males who go.
It is now principally the Irish men who emigrate
to America, and the proportion of women in
California, and other Pacific regions, is small.
The men, like the first wanderer Cain when he
fled to the land of Nod, mingle and marry with
the women they find in the country to which
they go. From such a mixture of Spanish set-
tlers and squaws came the Creoles of America.
So when the fair blue-eyed race came to Britain
they took wives of the swarthy people they found
here, and thus the dark pigment got into our
Anglo-Saxon people, and with it the practical
shrewdness of "Jack" came to modify the dull-
ness of the Norse "giant." "Black eyes for
command," said Margaret Fuller. By this
mixture the speculative German has been al-
lied to the practical Turanian, and the Anglo-
Saxon made the captain race of the world.

The British, Welsh, Irish, and Pictish chronicles of the tenth and eleventh centuries contain

Concerning these Nillson quotes Mackenzie, who says that when he was traveling in North America the Esquimaux described some whites (English) on the west coast as giants, winged, who killed an enemy with the glance of an eye, and would swallow a whole beaver for a mouthful.

was.)

"Three hundred women were given
To them; they were agreeable.
But they were most cunning,
Each woman with her brother.
"There were oaths imposed on them,
By the stars and by the earth,
That from the nobility of the mother
Should always be the right to the sovereignty."

legends concerning the origin of the early in- that after the Britons had conquered this counhabitants of these islands which are very fanci- try the Picts came from Scythia with a fleet unful, now and then poetical, but always to be well der their king, Roderic. "The Britons used sifted before taken. They are believed, how- poisoned weapons. These wounds a Druid of ever, to point in the direction of the truth at the Picts professed to cure by spilling the milk least. Scotland is therein said to have been of 120 cows on the plain where a battle was to So Hamed from Scotia, a daughter of Pharaoh, be fought." Roderic was slain, and all that who married Gaythelos, son of Neolus, King of remained of his army were made slaves; "and Greece. Neolus, it is related, visited Egypt in for the first time the land around Caithness the days of Moses, and led a colony thence into was tilled." The Britons refused to let them Spain, and afterward to Ireland, under Symon marry of their women. So the Picts petitioned Brek, King of Spain, who brought with him the Gille Caor, the King of Ireland, who sent them marble chair on which all British kings sit when wives; and of this intermarriage was descendthey are crowned, and which is now a curiosity ed the Scots. The Irish king exacted as a of Westminster Abbey. Under the grandson condition that the right to the throne in Scotof Neolus the colony passed over to Scotland. land should always be in the maternal line. Another chronicle derives Scotia from Scythia, | (It was much more certain in those days who a whence it says the Scots originally came. The person's mother was than who his or her father original Scots were undoubtedly Hibernians from Ireland, and the legend just quoted points again to the Spanish origin of that people. The Albani (whence Alba) are said in the same chronicles to have been a white-haired folk, their hair having gained its whiteness from the region of perpetual snows from which they came. These were probably the early Britons, the first of the many Celtic immigrant bands. The Goths are said to have been the descendants of Japhet, It will be observed that there is much conand to have been so called from Japhet's son fusion and vagueness as to the origin of the Magog-no doubt another Celtic colony. Much Picts. In the absence of any thing definite it controversy has occurred concerning the Scots. seems to me natural to suppose that the habit The charge that they were originally cannibals of tattooing and painting their bodies, from rests on a sentence by St. Jerome, who says: which they received their name, points to their "When a very young boy I beheld in Gaula a relationship with the Mongolian tribes. The tribe called Scotas devouring human flesh." Aryans had no such custom. If this be so, we When that was written the world knew no should have, as the pre-Celtic occupants of difference between the Irish and the Scots. Great Britain, two colonies of small dark peoScot is probably from an old word Scuet-ple, who, having parted in the East, and fringcognate with "scud"-and meaning a fugitive, or, as some say, a thief. They were not at all the Scots of the present day, but a set of Hibernians who fled to Ireland and afterward to Scotland before the first Celts. And in the latter country they came into alliance with the Picts, who have already been described as the first inhabitants of Scotland. Who, then, were the Picts? They were first called Picts by the Romans, "a picto corpore”—that is, from their habit of tattooing their bodies. They were known to the northern tribes as the Cruthneach.

"The Cruthneach," says their most ancient chronicle, "came from the land of Thracia: that is, they are the children of Glevin, son of Ercol. Agathirsi was their name. Five brothers of them came at first, viz., Solen, Ulfa, Drosten, Engus, Leithuin. The cause of their coming: Policornus, King of Thrace, fell in love with their sister, and proposed to take her without a dower. They after this passed across the Roman territory into France, and built a city there, viz., Pictavis (Poictiers), a pictos; that is, from their arms; and the King of France fell in love with their sister. They put to sea after the death of their fifth brother, Leithuin; and in two days after going on the sea their sister died."

Another chronicle says they entered Scotland under Cruithne, by way of Orkney and Caithness. A Welsh chronicle (A.D. 1120–35) says

ing, one the southern the other the northern coasts, meeting again, after the lapse of ages, in these islands; intermarrying, and forming one people, to defend, through many ages, their refuge from the more powerful Aryans, who may have originally driven them from the East. These are the root of the genealogical tree of the race that now leads the world.

It has been my purpose to confine myself in this first saunter to the most primitive inhabitants, and to leave for a visit to Stonehenge the great epochs of Saxon, Roman, Celt, and the mysterious Druids. The views which I have given may seem to some speculative; I may say, however, that they will before long cease to seem so. When Professor Huxley shall give to the world the facts which he has recently laid before the Royal Institution, and when Sir John Lubbock shall have published a work on the Stone and Bronze Ages, which I have reason to know he is now preparing on the basis of his volume already printed, these things that now seem to some theoretical will appear as facts.

Before leaving Devon I should say that I can not doubt that the legends of the little folk called there "Pixies" (fairies) are traceable to the last remnants of the Picts, who were re