it seems that there is some truth in the tale, and that these two children belonged to the Elfin or Dwarf stock that still lingered in the land. The green hue is probably an addition, so as to make them of Fairy stock. One can see now that there was a reason for the prejudice against green as being the colour of the strange people so far below the Aryan occupants of the land in intellect and culture.
That some of the myths of dwarfs ‘are connected with tradition of real indigenous or hostile tribes is settled beyond question by the evidence brought forward by Grimm, Nilsson, and Hanusch. With all the difficulty of analysing the mixed nature of the dwarfs in European folk-lore, and judging how far they are elves, or gnomes, or such like nature spirits, and how far human beings in a mystic aspect, it is impossible not to recognise this latter element in the kindly or mischievous aborigines of the land, with their special language, and religion, and costume.’[1]
As a farmer marks his sheep, and his horse turned out on the moors by a hole punched in the ear, or a snip, so persons are marked out as pertaining to the gods. Circumcision marks as pertaining to Jehovah or to Allah. The tonsure marks the priest or monk as belonging
- ↑ Tylor (E. B.). Primitive Culture, 1871, I. 348.
