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Tyson, Edward, 1650-1708

"A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients"

[C]
[Footnote A: _Flint Chips_, p. 104.]
[Footnote B: Fison, _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xiv, 14.]
[Footnote C: Joske, _Internat. Arch. f. Ethnographie_, viii. 254.]
5. The little people make their dwellings either in the interior of a
stone or amongst stones. I am not here alluding to the stones on the sides
of mountains which are the doorways to fairy dwellings, but to a closer
connection, which will be better understood from some of the following
instances than from any lengthy explanation. The Duergas of the
Scandinavian Eddas had their dwelling-places in stones, as we are told in
the story of Thorston, who "came one day to an open part of the wood,
where he saw a great rock, and out a little way from it a dwarf, who was
horridly ugly."[A] In Ireland, in Innisbofin, co. Galway, Professor Haddon
relates that the men who were quarrying a rock in the neighbourhood of the
harbour refused to work at it any longer, as it was so full of "good
people" as to be hot.[B] In England the Pixy-house of Devon is in a stone,
and a large stone is also connected with the story of the Frensham
caldron, though it is not clear that the fairies lived in the rock
itself.


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