David Macritchie - The Testimony of Tradition

ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITONS: a Retrospect.
2 vols., demy 8vo, 24s.

ACCOUNTS OF THE GYPSIES OF INDIA. Collected
and Edited. With Map and 2 Illustrations.
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

A large portion of this work has already appeared in the form of a series of articles contributed to the Archological Review (Aug.-Oct., 1889, and Jan., 1890), but these have here undergone some alteration and have been supplemented to a considerable extent.

With regard to the correctness of the deductions drawn in the following pages from the facts and traditions there stated, there may easily be a difference of opinion. And indeed one writer, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in the course of a very learned dissertation on the Development of the Fenian or Ossianic Saga, possessing a tangible test of its worth. What that test is will be readily seen by every reader. If the result of future archological excavations should be to confirm tradition (as it is needless to say the writer of these pages believes will be the case), the question then will be one, not of interpreting tradition so that it may square with current beliefs, but of modifying or altering these beliefs, where they are distinctly in disagreement with tradition.

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Shetland FinnsOrkney FinnmenFinn LocalitiesKayaks and Kayak-menAn Orkney Kayak of 1696

"Zee-Woners"Piratical Mer-folkLandsmen and Mermen Iberian Skin-boatsBoats made by Norway Finns"Marine People" of the HebridesProbable Finns in Galloway

"Inhabitants of the Isles of this Kingdom"The Isles in the Seventeenth Century"Barbarous Men"

Homes of the FinnsNorwegian Suzerainty

Finnish Influence in Norway

The FeinneThe Battle of GawraThe Feenic Confederacy

Feens or CruithnFin in the Kingdom of the Big Men Dwarfish Tyrants

Pechts or DwarfsPechts' HousesEarth-Houses in Greenland"Interlude of the Droichs"

How the Pechts BuiltPecht-landsThe Builders of Corstorphine Church"Unco wee bodies, but terrible strang"

Strongholds of the FeensThe Broch and the Sith-Bhrog

Fians and FairiesTenth-Century FairiesContinental Fians and FairiesFinn and his Dwarf in Sylt

Witchcraft of the TrollmenThe King of the Sidhtir of MunsterThe "Great-Beamed Deer" of the FeensReindeer in Scotland in the Twelfth CenturyPechts and Fairies

Hollow HillocksThe Settler and the Mound-Dwellers "Hog-Boys"Maes-HowInterior of the Chambered MoundA Dwarf's House in SyltThe Little People in ScotlandFairy Mounds

The Brugh of the BoyneThe Brugh as Described in 1724Gaels versus DanannsDananns, Fir Sidhe, or FairiesCruithne=FeinneInmates of the Brugh Plunder of the Boyne Hillocks in 861Sith Eamhna Tales of Adventures in "Weems"The Dowth Mound

Goblin HallsThe Castle Hill of ClunieTomnahurich, InvernessThe Palace of the King of the PechtsPecht LocalitiesThe Fairy Knowe of AberfoyleChambered Mounds

Scott's "Rob Roy"Shaggy MenRed Fairies of Wales Brownies and Forest-MenThe AinosA Hairy RaceModern "Pechts"Cave-MenDwarf-Tribes and ReindeerPgmei Vulgo Screlinger Dicti

Platycnemic MenUr-uisg=Mailleachan

In one of an interesting series of papers on "Scottish, Shetlandic, and Germanic Water Tales," Dr. Karl Blind remarks as follows:

It is in the Shetland Tales that we hear a great deal of creatures partly more than human, partly less so, which appear in the interchangeable shape of men and seals. They are said to have often married ordinary mortals, so that there are, even now, some alleged descendants of them, who look upon themselves as superior to common people.

In Shetland, and elsewhere in the North, the sometimes animal-shaped creatures of this myth, but who in reality are human in a higher sense, are called Finns. Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea. At the same time they are held to be deeply versed in magic spells and in the healing art, as well as in soothsaying. By means of a "skin" which they possess, the men and the women among them are able to change themselves into seals. But on shore, after having taken off their wrappage, they are, and behave like, real human beings. Anyone who gets hold of their protecting garment has the Finns in his power. Only by means of the skin can they go back to the water. Many a Finn woman has got into the power of a Shetlander and borne children to him; but if a Finn woman succeeded in reobtaining her sea-skin, or seal-skin, she escaped across the water. Among the older generation in the Northern isles persons are still sometimes heard of who boast of hailing from Finns; and they attribute to themselves a peculiar luckiness on account of that higher descent.

Tales of the descent of certain families from water beings of a magic character are very frequent in the ... North. In Ireland such myths also occur sporadically. In Wales ... the origin from mermen or mermaids is often charged as a reproach upon unhappy people; and rows originate from such assertions. In Shetland the reverse is, or was, the case. There the descendants of Finns have been wont to boast of their origin; regarding themselves as favourites of Fortune....

But who are the Finns of the Shetlandic story? Are they simply a poetical transfiguration of finny forms of the flood? Or can the Ugrian race of the Finns, which dwells in Finland, in the high north of Norway, and in parts of Russia, have something to do with those tales in which a Viking-like character is unmistakable?

Repeated investigations have gradually brought me to the conviction that the Finn or Seal stories contain a combination of the mermaid myth with a strong historical elementthat the Finns are nothing else than a fabulous transmogrification of those Norse "sea-dogs," who from eld have penetrated into the islands round Scotland, into Scotland itself, as well as into Ireland. "Old sea-dog" is even now a favourite expression for a weather-beaten, storm-tossed skippera perfect seal among the wild waves.

The assertion of a "higher" origin of still living persons from Finns ... would thus explain itself as a wildly legendary remembrance of the descent from the blood of Germanic conquerors. The "skin" wherewith the Finns change themselves magically into sea-beings I hold to be their armour, or coat of mail. Perhaps that coat itself was often made of seal-skin, and then covered with metal rings, or scales, as we see it in Norman pictures; for instance, on the Bayeux tapestry. The designation of Norwegian and Danish conquerors, in Old Irish history, as "scaly monsters," certainly fits in with this hypothesis.

But however the Finn name may be explained etymologically, at all events Norway appears in the Shetland tales, and in the recollection of the people there, as the home of the "Finns." And this homeas I see from an interesting bit of folk-lore before meis evidently in the south of Norway....

"Before coming to this important point, I may mention a Shetlandic spell-song ... [which] refers to the cure of the toothache; the Finn appearing therein as a magic medicine-man: