Fairy Tales, Now First Collected/Dissertation 1

by Joseph Ritson

DISSERTATION I.

ON PYGMIES.

The existence of a little nation of diminutive people engaged in, almost, continual wars with the cranes, is an opinion of such high antiquity as to be coeval with the rudiments of the heathen mythology. Homer, who flourished 907 years before the vulgar æra, is, universally, admitted to be the earliest poet whose works remain, and, though totally blind and unable either to read or write (no written characters being known to the Greeks till many centuries after his time), he had recourse to his invention and, with a harp in his hand, went about various countries, singing and playing, as a bard or rhapsodist, and was well rewarded for his poetical effusions, which being fabulous stories, of his own composition, of gods, heroes, wars, battles, sieges, voyages, adventures and miracles, altogether incredible and impossible, and of persons, things, cities and countries, which never existed, but in his fertile invention and ingenious fabrication, [and with] which every one who heard him was delighted; and, in process of time, four or five centuries after his death, when his countrymen, the learned Greeks, possessing admirable memories and 'having,' some how or other, got an alphabet and being made capable to read and write, these delightful and ingenious compositions of our blind bard have, fortunately, come down to the present times, in the course of 2000 years or upward. When, therefore, translations have become common in, almost, every learned language, particularly, in our own, of which we are possessed of one so excellent that it has been, happily, said:

So much, dear Pope, thy English Iliad charms,When pity melts us or when passion warms,That after-ages shall, with wonder, seekWho 'twas translated Homer into Greek:

we are at liberty to conceive that the account of the Pygmies, as found in the Iliad, is there given and preserved, from ancient and established tradition and, possibly, recorded in history or celebrated in epic poetry, long before the time of Homer:

So, when inclement winters vex the plainWith piercing frosts or thick-descending rain, To warmer seas the cranes embody'd fly,With noise and order, through the mid-way sky,To Pygmy nations wounds and death they bringAnd all the war descends upon the wing.^[1]

Hesiod, likewise, had mentioned the Pygmies, in some work now lost, as we learn from Strabo.^[2]

[Birds] in the spring-time, says Aristotle, betake themselves from a warm country to a cold one, out of fear of heat to come, as the cranes do, which come from the Scythian fields to the higher marshes, whence the Nile flows, in which place they are said to fight with the Pygmies. For that is not a fable, but, certainly, the genus as well of the men, as, also, of the horses is little (as it is said) and dwell in caves, whence they have received the name Troglodytes, from those coming near them.^[3]

Herodotus, indeed, speaks "of a little people, under the middle stature of men 'coming' up to certain Nasamonians who were wandering in Africa and knew not the language of each other^[4]: but does not call them Pygmies or give them any other name. Cambyses, however, as he, elsewhere, says, went into the temple of Vulcan [in Egypt] and, with much derision, ridiculed his image, forasmuch as the statue of Vulcan was very like to the Phonician Pataicks, which they carried about in the prows of their gallies: which those who saw not, it was indicated to him to be those in the image of a Pygmean-man.^[5]

"Middle India has black men, who are called Pygmies, using the same language as the other Indians they are, however, very little that the greatest do not exceed the height of two cubits and, the most part, only, of one cubit and a half. But they nourish the longest hair, hanging down unto the knees and even below: moreover, they carry a beard more at length than any other men: but, what is more,... after this promised beard is risen to them, they never after use any clothing, but send down, truly, the hairs from the back much below the knees, but draw the beard before down to the feet: afterward, when they have covered the whole body with hairs, they bind themselves, using those in the place of a vestment. ...They are, moreover, apes and deformed. Their sheep, however, are equal to our lambs: their oxen and asses approach to the magnitude of our rams; their horses, likewise, mules and other beasts do not outreach. Of these Pygmies, the king of the Indians, has three thousand in his train: for they are very skilful archers. They are, however, most just and use the same laws as the other Indians. They hunt hares and foxes, not with dogs, but crows, kites, rooks and eagles. There is a lake among them, having the compass of eight hundred measures, containing 625 feet each, to which, as no wind blows, oil swims above: which, truly, they draw out of the middle of it with vessels, sailing through it in little ships and use it."^[6]

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, alludes to some old story, not now to be found:

"Another show'd, where the Pygmæan dame,Profaning Junos venerable name,Turn.'d to an airy crane, descends from farAnd, with her Pygmy subjects, wages war."^[7]

Pomponius Mela says that "More within the Arabian bay than the Panchæans were, the Pygmies, a minute race, and which ended in fighting against the cranes for planted fruits."^[8]

According to Sir John Maundevile the "gret ryvere that men clepen Dalay... gothe thorghe the lond of Pygmans: where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long: and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the wommen. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half yere of age, and geten children. And thei lyven not but. 6 yeer or 7 at the moste. And he that lyvethe 8 yeer, men holden him there righte passynge old. These men ben the beste worcheres of gold, sylver, cotoun, sylk, and of alle suche thinges, of ony other that be in the world. And thei han oftentymes werre with the briddes of the contree, that thei taken and eten. This litylle folk nouther labouren in londes ne in vynes. But thei han grete men amonges hem, of oure stature, that tylen the lond, and labouren amonges the vynes for hem. And of the men of oure stature, han thei als grete skorne and wondre, as we wolde have among us of geauntes, yif thei weren amonges us. There is a gode cytee, amonges othere, where there is duellinge gret plentee of the lytylle folk: and it is a gret cytee; and a fair; and the men ben grete, that duellen amonges hem: but whan thei geten ony children, thei ben als litylle as the Pygmeyes: and therfore thei ben alle, for the moste part, alle Pygmeyes; for the nature of the lond is suche. The grete cane let kepe this cytee fulle wel: for it is his. And alle be it, that the Pygmeyes ben lytylle, yit thei ben fulle resonable, aftre here age, and connen bothen wytt, and gode and malice, ynow."^[9]

"At the north poynt of Lewis [one of the Hebrides, or Western isles] there is a little ile callit The Pygmies ile, with ane little kirk in it of ther own handey-wark, within this kirk the ancients of that countrey of the Lewis says, that the said Pigmies has been cirdit thair. Maney men of divers countreys has delvit upe dieplie the flure of the litle kirke and i myselve, amanges the leave and hes found in it, deepe under the erthe, certain banes and round heads of wonderfull little quantity, allegit to be the banes of the said Pigmies, quhilk may be lykely, according to sundry historys that we reid of the Pigmies. but i leave this far of it to the ancients of Lewis."^[10]

The inland parts, in some places of the coast of Coromandel, toward the hills, are covered with immense and impenetrable forests, which afford a shelter for all sort of wild beasts: but, in that which forms the inland-boundary of the Carnatic rajahs dominions, there is one singular species of creatures, of which Mr. Grose, the author of "A voyage to the East-Indies," performed, by himself, in the year 1750, (the second edition whereof was published, by the writer, at London, in 1772, in two volumes, octavo,) had heard much in India, and of the truth of which, he says, the following fact that happened sometime before his arrival there, may serve for an attestation:

Vencajee, a merchant of that country, and an inhabitant on the sea-coast, sent up to Bombay, to the then governor of it, mr. Horne, a couple of these creatures, as a present, by a coasting vessel, of which one captain Boag was the master, and the make of which, according to his description, and that of others, was as follows:

They were scarcely two feet high, walked erect, and had perfectly a human form. They were of a sallow white, without any hair, except in those parts in which it is customary for mankind to have it. By their melancholy, they seemed to have a rational sense of their captivity, and had many of the human actions. They made their bed very orderly, in the cage in which they were sent up, and, on being viewed, would endeavour to conceal, with their hands, those parts which modesty forbids manifesting. The joints of their knees were not reëntering like those of monkeys, but saliant like those of men; a circumstance they have in common with the ouran-outangs in the eastern parts of India, in Sumatra, Java, and the Spice-islands, of which these seem to be the diminutives, though with nearer approaches of resemblance to the human species. But, though the navigation from the Carnatic coast to Bombay is of a very short run, whether the sea-air did not agree with them, or they could not brook their confinement, or captain Boag had not properly consulted their provision, the female, sickening, first died, and the male, giving all the demonstrations of grief, seemed to take it so to heart, that he refused to eat, and, in two days after, followed her. The captain, on his return to Bombay, reporting this to the governor, was by him asked, what he had done with the bodies; he said, he had flung them over-board. Being further asked, why he did not keep them in spirits, he replied bluntly, he did not think of it. Upon this the governor wrote afresh to Vencajee, and desired him to procure another couple, at any rate, as he should grudge no expense to be master of such a curiosity. Vencajees answer was, He would very willingly oblige him, but that he was afraid it would not be in his power: that these creatures came from a forest, about seventy leagues up the country, where the inhabitants catch them on the skirts of it; but they were so exquisitely cunning and shy, that this scarcely happened once. in a century.

If the above relation, concludes our author, should be true, as there is no reason to doubt it, we have here a proof, that the existence of pygmies is not entirely fabulous, as nothing can nearer approach the description of them.^[11]

1. Homers Iliad, B. 3, v. 3, in the lines of Pope.
2. B. 1. p. 43; B. 7, p. 299. "But, for, to Hesiod no one would object ignorance, naming Half-dogs, Longicipites, and Pygmies. Neither, truly, that, concerning Homer, to be wonderful, when, also, by much, of those who come after, many things both have been ignorant of and, monstrously, feigned: as Hesiod, Half-dogs, Joltheads, Pygmies."
3. Of the history of animals, B. 8, c. 12. "Of the Pygmies, that is, of dwarfs, dandiprats and little men and women, the generation is alike: for, of those, also, whose members and sizes are spoiled in the womb and are, even as, pigs and mules." (Aristotle, of the generation of animals, B. 2, c. 8.)
4. Euterpe, 11, p. 32.
5. Thalia, III, p. 37.
6. From a fragment of Ctesias, who flourished in the 337th year before the vulgar æra, in Wesselings edition of Herodotus, p. 828.
7. B. 6.
8. B. 3, c. 8, p. 287.
9. Voiage and travaile, London, 1727, 8vo. p. 252.
10. Description of the Western isles of Scotland, by Donald Monro, high dean of the isles, who travelled through the most of them in 1549: Edin. 1784, 12mo. p. 37. See a defence of the existence of the Pygmies, in Rosses Arcana microcosmi, London, 1652, p. 106. Martin, likewise, in his Description of the Western islands of Scotland, 1703, p. 19, says, The island of Pigmies, or, as the natives call it, The island of little men, is but of small extent. There have been many small bones dug out of the ground here, resembling those of human kind more than any other. This, he adds, gave ground to a tradition, which the natives have of a very low-statured people living once here, called Lusbirdan, that is pygmies.
11. Vol. I, page 231, &c.