quaries in 1883 determined to dear out this cave, and verify or confute the tradition if possible; and after much labour, and removal of several hundred tons of earth and fallen rock, they did find ample confirmation of the legends. No fewer than eighteen crosses, carved either upon the walls of the cave or on detached rocks, a pavement, apparently that of a religious cell, and various objects of great interest were found, showing that the tradition had had sufficient vitality to survive the fourteen centuries and a half which had intervened since its occupation by St. Ninian." Another tradition in the same county was to the effect that a certain loch—Dowalton Loch—contained in its depths an ancient village. The loch was drained in the year 1862, though not for archaeological reasons; and the old tradition was verified by the appearance of the remains of an ancient settlement of the lakedwellers.
In the last three instances, then, tradition appears, not as the mere henchman of history, but as the actual leader. Had the statements of the Wigtownshire countryfolk been listened to with respect a century ago, our grandfathers would have increased the sum of their knowledge by the addition of at least two facts. And the situation has its parallel at the present day. Folk-lore, as a popular inheritance, is perishing fast; but there is, I believe, much veritable history yet to be gleaned from it. One cannot, of course, accept all its statements literally; but, because this or that traditional account appears at the first glance incredible, it does not follow that there is no actual germ of truth concealed in it. For example, when one hears some wild story of a dreaded giant or ogre living in a castle surrounded with walls of glass, one knows that, according to modern speech, such a castle could not have existed. But it seems to me that the real explanation of such a statement is indicated by Lady Ferguson, when speaking of the "Fomorians" of Irish tradition and "their famous glass castle upon Tor Inis, or Tory Island", off the north coast of Ireland. This glass castle, she suggests, "may possibly have been a vitrified fort".[1] And this, it appears to me, is the simple solution of the difficulty. Whether Tory Island does contain a vitrified fort, I do not know, but as there are many in the neighbouring district of Galloway, and in Western, Northern, and
- ↑ The Story of the Irish before the Conquest, London, 1868, p. 3.
