Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/216

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PIXIES AND BROWNIES
213

finds. The former may safely be said to derive from an Eastern Asiatic source, probably from the Chalybii of the Caucasus. The La Tène find may, however, be due to indigenous Celtic industry, inspired from the same source.

The importers of Caucasian steel into Europe were the Thracians, who with the Illyrians of the same race occupied the northern part of the Balkan peninsula from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic. Imports across the Bosphorus from Pontus would be numerous, and Thracians and Illyrians would be the distributors along the upper course of the Danube. These primitive people have been expelled from their lands, and driven West by successive waves of invaders from the North, the Goths, the Avars, and the Sclaves; and by pressure from the South by the Macedonian conquerors and the Greek colonists. But they have left their tombs, and these are rich in iron. Bronze was largely in use still, but mainly in ornaments. At Glusinac, in Bosnia, on the eastern slope of the Romanja-Plantina, is a plateau on which are thousands of the graves of these ancient people. They consist of small cairns and cover interment of bodies unburnt, with swords, spear-heads, and axes, ornaments of