of the dwarfs who built them, and likewise in India it is a usual legend of such prehistoric burial-places, that they were dwarfs' houses — the dwellings of the ancient pygmies, who here again appear as representatives of prehistoric tribes.[1] But a very different meaning is obvious in a mediæval traveller's account of the hairy, man-like creatures of Cathay, one cubit high, and that do not bend their knees as they walk, or in an Arab geographer's description of an island people in the Indian seas, four spans high, naked, with red downy hair on their faces, and who climb up trees and shun mankind. If any one could possibly doubt the real nature of these dwarfs, his doubt may be resolved by Marco Polo's statement that in his time monkeys were regularly embalmed in the East Indies, and sold in boxes to be exhibited over the world as pygmies.[2] Thus various different facts have given rise to stories of giants and dwarfs, more than one mythic element perhaps combining to form a single legend — a result perplexing in the extreme to the mythological interpreter.
Descriptions of strange tribes made in entire good faith may come to be understood in new extravagant senses, when carried among people not aware of the original facts. The following are some interpretations of this kind, among which some far-fetched cases are given, to show that the method must not be trusted too much. The term 'noseless' is apt to be misunderstood, yet it was fairly enough applied to flat-nosed tribes, such as Turks of the steppes, whom Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela thus depicts in the twelfth century: — 'They have no noses, but draw breath through two small holes.'[3] Again, among the common ornamental
- ↑ Squier, 'Abor. Monuments of N. Y.' p. 68; Long's 'Exp.' vol. i. pp. 62, 275; Hersart de Villemarqué, 'Chants Populaires de la Bretagne,' p. liv., 35; Meadows Taylor in 'Journ. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 157.
- ↑ Gul. de Rubruquis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 69; Lane, 'Thousand and One N.' vol. iii. pp. 81, 91, see 24, 52, 97; Hole, p. 63; Marco Polo, book iii. ch. xii.
- ↑ Benjamin of Tudela, 'Itinerary,' ed. and tr. by Asher, 83; Plin. vii. 2. See Max Müller in Bunsen, 'Philos. Univ. Hist.,' vol. i. pp. 346, 358.
