David MacRitchie
David MacRitchie (16 April 1851 – 14 January 1925) was a Scottish
Early life
David MacRitchie was the younger son of William Dawson MacRitchie and Elizabeth Elder MacRitchie. He was born in
Career as folklorist
In 1888 MacRitchie founded the Gypsy Lore Society to study the history and lore of Gypsies.[3] He was also a member of several folklore societies. In 1914, he joined the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, serving as vice-president from 1917 – 1920. He was noted for his interest in archaeology, being appointed as a trustee for Lord Abercromby's endowment for an Archaeology department at the University of Edinburgh. He was also a member of the Scottish Arts Club and vice-president of the Philosophical Institution.
From 1922 until his death, he served as the treasurer of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society.[4]
Fairy euhemerism
David MacRitchie was a prominent proponent of the euhemeristic origin of fairies, a theory traceable to the early 19th century that considers fairies in British folklore to have been rooted in a historical pygmy, dwarf or short-sized aboriginal race, that lived during Neolithic Britain or even earlier.[5]
Origins
MacRitchie is often credited as being the founder of the euhemerist school regarding British
The theory
Fairy euhemerism, as developed by MacRitchie, attempts to rationally explain the origin of
Different ideas surfaced in the late 19th century and early 20th century concerning the "racial" origin of the supposed dwarf aborigines of Britain, and these hypotheses ranged from proposing that they were (using the ethno-racial labels of the era, which are now obsolete) real African "
MacRitchie himself argued in his Testimony of Tradition, under a chapter subheading entitled "A Hairy Race" (p. 167), that they were somewhat connected to the "
MacRitchie's identification of
Support
MacRitchie's rationalisation of fairies, as having their basis as a historical population of diminutive size, won over much support from anthropologists from the late 19th century who questioned the religious or psychological origin of fairies.
Among folklorists who considered, supported, or praised MacRitchie's views were Laurence Gomme, who in 1892 published Ethnology in Folklore, which argued folklore preserved a strong racial history of conquered or replaced indigenous peoples. The folklorist
Criticism
MacRitchie's theories of fairies sparked criticism from proponents of the religious or psychological origin of
In regarding the Fians as a race of dwarfs, I do not overlook the fact that they are also spoken of as "giants." But to assume them to have been of gigantic stature is both totally at variance with the bulk of the evidence regarding them, and at variance with the fact that the word "giant" has very frequently been used to denote a savage, or a cave−dweller.
Therefore, in MacRitchie's view, the Irish myths and folkloric accounts which describe the Fianna as "giants" only did so in a non-literal figurative sense to describe their savage nature, not size. This idea was later expanded upon in his The Savages of Gaelic Tradition (1920) yet was not well received by contemporary folklorists.[44] However, ancient authors such as Macrobius shared MacRitchie's beliefs that the "giants" of mythology were not giants in size, but huge in impiety (or their primitiveness).[45] According to MacRitchie there were also "two" Pictish races, the former were the aboriginal dark Lappish or Ainu race, while a later white-skinned, red-headed group invaded them, who he considered the Caledonians.[46]
British origin of Gypsies
In his Ancient and Modern Britons, MacRitchie claimed that the Gypsies were not of foreign origin, but were in fact the more conservative element of the native British population who had retained their nomadic way of life while the majority adopted a settled lifestyle.
References
- ^ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1925, p. 49.
- ^ "Review of Scottish culture", Issue 10, National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, 1997, p. 131.
- ^ "The English Gypsy Lore Society", The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 34, No. 134, Oct. – Dec. 1921, p. 399.
- ^ Records of The Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society
- ^ Bihet, Francesca (2019) Late-Victorian Folklore Studies and Fairy-Lore. In: Betwixt and Between, 18-19 May 2019, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle. http://eprints.chi.ac.uk/4685/
- ^ Scottish fairy belief: a history Edward J. Cowan, Dundurn Press Ltd., 2001, p. 21.
- ^ Cowan, 2001, pp. 21–22.
- ^ MacRitchie himself acknowledged the earlier work of Campbell in his Fians, Fairies and Picts (1893).
- ^ The idea is also found in Sven Nilsson's The primitive inhabitants of Scandinavia (1868).
- ^ "On the Origin of Fairies: Victorians, Romantics, and Folk Belief", Carole Silver, Browning Institute Studies, Vol. 14, The Victorian Threshold, 1986, p. 143.
- ^ Silver, 1986, p. 149.
- ^ The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, 1911, p. 234 [1]
- ^ Tylor, "Primitive Culture", 1871, pp. 385–386.
- ^ Wentz, 1911, pp. 234–235.
- ^ "Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?", Canon J. A. Macculloch, Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4, 31 December 1932, p. 366.
- ^ "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics", Part 9, James Hastings, Kessinger Publishing (reprint), 2003. p. 126.
- ^ "Folklore and the fantastic in nineteenth-century British fiction", Jason Marc Harris, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008, pp.64–66.
- ^ The fairy tales of Oscar Wilde, Jarlath Killeen, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007, p. 137.
- ^ The different racial theories are found discussed at length by T. Rice Holmes in his Ancient Britain and the invasions of Julius Caesar (1907).
- ^ Scott pioneered the "Lapp−Dwarf parallel", writing "there seems reason to conclude that these duergar [dwarves] were originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish, Lettish [Latvian] and Finnish nations."
- ^ Science, Vol. 21, No. 523, 10 February 1893, pp. 82–83.
- ^ Cowan, 2001, p. 21.
- ^ Fians, Fairies and Picts (1893), footnote 51
- ^ The testimony of tradition, David MacRitchie, Paul. Trench, Trübner, 1890, pp.60–67.
- ^ Cowan, 2001, p. 21.
- ^ Fians, Fairies and Picts (1893), footnote 21
- ^ Silver, 1986, pp. 47–52.
- ^ Professor J. Kollmann, of Basel, in his Pygmden in Europa (1894), argues for the existence of a European pygmy race in Neolithic times
- ^ Macculloch, 1932, p. 362.
- ^ "Who were the Fairies", Cornhill Magazine, 1881, xliii. 338f.
- ^ "The Arrival of Man in Britain in the Pleistocene Age", W. Boyd Dawkins, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 40, Jul. – Dec. 1910, pp. 233–263.
- ^ Recherches anthropologiques sur le Squelette quaternaire de Chancelade, Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Lyon, 1889.
- ^ Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons (1924, 2nd ed. 1925), in this work Waddell cites MacRitchie.
- ^ Silver, 1986, p. 150.
- ^ Folk Memory Or the Continuity of British Archaeology by Walter Johnson (1908) is another work in this vein.
- ^ Quoted in "Fairies in nineteenth-century art and literature", Nicola Bown, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 166.
- ^ The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 3, No. 11, Oct. – Dec. 1890, pp. 319–320.
- ^ Macculloch; 1932, p. 366 ff; Silver, 1986, pp. 143–152.
- ^ The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
- ^ "A New Solution of the Fairy Problem", David MacRitchie, The Celtic Review, Vol. 6, No. 22, Oct. 1909, pp. 160–176.
- ^ Cowan, 2001, pp. 21–35.
- ^ Ancient Britain and the invasions of Julius Caesar, Clarendon Press, 1907, p. 393.
- ^ Fians, Fairies and Picts
- ^ Celtic Review, "The Pygmy-Fairy theory examined" (June 1921).
- ^ Macrobius well explains the meaning of " giants" as distinguished for their enormous impiety : "Gigantes autem, quid aliud fuisse credendum est, quam Hominum quandam impiam gentem, Deos negantem ?" Saturnal. I. 20.
- ^ Ancient and modern Britons, a retrospect, Vol. I, 1884; see also "Memories of the Picts", David MacRitchie, The Scottish Antiquary, or, Northern Notes and Queries, Vol. 14, No. 55 (Jan. 1900), pp. 121–139.
Works
Publications by MacRitchie include:
- Ancient and Modern Britons, a Retrospect, 1884
- Accounts of the Gypsies of India, 1886
- The Testimony of Tradition, 1890
- The Ainos, 1892
- The Underground Life, 1892
- Fians, Fairies and Picts, 1893
- Scottish Gypsies under the Stewarts 1894
- Pygmies in Northern Scotland, 1892
- Some Hebridean Antiquities, 1895
- Diary of a Tour through Great Britain, (editor) 1897
- The Northern Trolls, 1898
- Memories of the Picts, 1900
- Underground Dwellings, 1900
- Fairy Mounds, 1900
- Shelta, the Caird's Language, 1901
- Hints of Evolution in Tradition, 1902
- The Arctic Voyage of 1653, 1909
- Celtic Civilisation, No date
- Druids and Mound Dwellers, 1910
- Les Pygmies chez les Anciens Egyptiens et les Hebreux, 30 October 2023 (with S.T.H. Hurwitz), pp 418-422, 1912
- Les kayaks dans le nord de l'Europe, 1912
- Great and Little Britain, 1915
- The Celtic Numerals of Strathclyde, 1915
- The Duns of the North, 1917
- The Savages of Gaelic Tradition, 1920
- The Aborigines of Shetland and Orkney, 1924
External links
- Media related to David MacRitchie at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by or about David MacRitchie at Wikisource
- Works by David MacRitchie at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about David MacRitchie at Internet Archive