ne_ as "King
of the Picts." No explanation or comment is given, and one is therefore
led to infer that in Sutherlandshire _Feinne_ is without question
regarded as a Gaelic name for the Picts. This identity is, indeed, borne
out otherwise. There is a Gaelic saying in Glenlyon, Perthshire, to the
effect that "Fin had twelve castles" in that glen, and the remains of
these "castles," all said to have been built by him and his Fians, and
of which one in particular is styled "Castle Fin,"[48] are known to the
English-speaking people of Scotland as "Picts'" houses. For they belong
to a peculiar class of structures, all radically alike, and all known,
in certain districts, as "Picts' houses." The term "Picts' house" is
unknown in the Hebrides, says one writer. "In the Hebrides tradition is
entirely silent concerning the Picts ... there the Fenian heroes are the
builders of the duns."[49] Yet the self-same class of building is
elsewhere assigned to the Picts. To these structures I shall presently
refer more particularly; but it is enough to note in passing that, just
as Oisin, King of the Fians, is translated into Ossian, King of the
Picts, so the dwellings ascribed to the Fians in one locality, are in
another said to have been made and inhabited by the Picts.

Fians, then, are associated or identified with Fairies, and also with
Picts. To complete my equilateral triangle, the Picts ought also to be
regarded as Fairies, or as akin to them.

This undoubtedly is a popular belief. The earliest alleged reference of
this kind is placed by one writer in the middle of the fifteenth
century, before the Orkney Islands had passed from the crown of Denmark
to the crown of Scotland. A manuscript of the then Bishop of Orkney,
dated Kirkwall 1443, states that when Harald Haarfagr conquered the
Orkneys in the ninth century, the inhabitants were the two "nations" of
the _Papae_ and the _Peti_, both of whom were exterminated. By the former
name is understood the Irish missionaries: the _Peti_ were certainly the
Picts, or Pehts.[50] Now, of these Picts of Orkney it is said, that they
"were only a little exceeding pigmies in stature, and worked wonderfully
in the construction of their cities, evening and morning, but in
mid-day, being quite destitute of strength, they hid themselves through
fear in little houses under ground."[51]

The exact date of this statement is at present doubtful, but it is quite
in accordance with the widespread ideas he