anecdotes. The fairies, etc., steal a child, they help a wanderer to a
drink and then disappear into a green hill, they help cottagers with
their work at night but disappear if their presence is noticed; human
midwives are asked to help fairy mothers, fairy maidens marry ordinary
men or girls marry and live with fairy husbands. All such things may
have happened and bear no such _a priori_ marks of impossibility
as speaking animals, flying through the air, and similar incidents of
the folk-tale pure and simple. If, as archaeologists tell us, there
was once a race of men in Northern Europe, very short and hairy, that
dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green
hillocks, it does not seem unlikely that odd survivors of the race
should have lived on after they had been conquered and nearly
exterminated by Aryan invaders and should occasionally have performed
something like the pranks told of fairies and trolls.

Certainly the description of the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland in
"Childe Rowland," has a remarkable resemblance to the dwellings of the
"good folk," which recent excavations have revealed. By the kindness
of Mr. MacRitchie, I am enabled to give the reader illustrations of
one of the most interesting of these, the Maes-How of Orkney. This is
a green mound some 100 feet in length and 35 in breadth at its
broadest part. Tradition had long located a goblin in its centre, but
it was not till 1861 that it was discovered to be pierced by a long
passage 53 feet in length, and only two feet four inches high, for
half of its length. This led into a central chamber 15 feet square and
open to the sky.

Now it is remarkable how accurately all this corresponds to the Dark
Tower of "Childe Rowland," allowing for a little idealisation on the
part of the narrator. We have the long dark passage leading into the