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The Fenlanders (a race dwelling in our country prior to the Kelts) were little, but strong, dexterous, and good swimmers, they lived by hunting and fishing. Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century thus pictures their descendants or race: "They had large heads, flat faces, flat noses, and large mouths. They lived in caves of rocks, which they quitted in the nighttime for the purpose of committing sanguinary outrages." The Keltic people, and later those of German race, so tall and strong, could hardly look upon such little folk as human beings. They must have regarded them as strange, mysterious creatures. And when these negroes or Fenlanders had lived for a long enough time hidden, for fear of the new people, in their grottoes, especially when they at lenght fell into decay through poverty, or died out, they became changed in the imagination of the dreamy Germans into mysterious beings, a kind of ghosts or gods. In a footnote, MacRitchie states that he is "not aware on what grounds this author speaks of them as black people," but he admits that these dwarfish Fenlanders might be regarded as the originals of the awisks of the Gaelic legend. A tradition in the Orkney Isles offers a parallel to the above story. Sometime in the first part of the fifteenth century, Bishop Thomas Tulloch of Orkney gave details, in De Orcadibus Insulis, of the tradition that the archipelago had been inhabited six centuries earlier by the Papae and a race of dwarfs. The Papae were the Irish priests. And the dwarfs were the Picts. In this, MacRitchie follows Barry's Orkney, where we read: They are plainly no other than the Peiths, Picts, or Piks.... The Scandinavian writers generally call the Piks Peti, or Pets: one of them uses the term Petia, instead of Pictland (Saxo-Gram.); and besides, the firth that divides Orkney from Caithness is usually denominated Petland Fiord in the Icelandic Sagas of histories. The consistency running through these ancient accounts, MacRitchie says, is indeed remarkable. The Irish priests followed St. Columba, who himself was a great-grandson of Conall Gulban, who, tradition states, had fierce battles with a race of dwarfs. Conall Gulban's fights with the dwarfs indeed are the origin of a series of tales sometimes attributed to other legendary heroes. If we try to get as close as possible to the original story, this is what we get: According to J. F. Campbell of Islay, Conall Gulban was the son of the famous Neil, the ancestor of the O'Neills of Ulster. He was the great-grandfather of St. Columba. His adventures begin in the northwest of Ireland, "somewhere in the dawn of the fifth century." After various experiences, Gulban landed in the "realm of Lochlann," generally believed to be Scandinavia, which itself had a rather vague meaning at the time. There Gulban was intrigued by a strange construction and asked his guide: "What pointed house is there?" "That is the house of the Tamhaisg, the best warriors that are in the realm of Lochlann," the guide wood "Tt were not my counsel to thee!" were the guide's last words. This advice, naturally, Conall Gulban disregarded. He went straight to the palace of the King of Lochlann and challenged him to combat. He was told, as recorded by Campbell of Islay: He should get no fighting at that time of night, but he should get lodging in the house of the amhusg (awisks), where there were eighteen hundred amhusg, and eighteen score.... He went, and he went in, and there were none of the amhuish within that did not grin. When he warriors is not an isolated case. If we return now to David MacRitchie's quotation from the Flemish folklore journal Ons Volksleven, we can learn more: