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.
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