Okay, how old is the idea of fairies as the surviving indigenous inhabitants of Britain?
I have no idea! Buchan cites it, though, in the dialogue of one character:
"Take the story of the Brownie. What is that but the story of a little swart man of uncommon strength and cleverness, who does good and ill indiscriminately, then disappears? There are many scholars, as you yourself confess, who think that the origin of the Brownie was in some mad belief in the old race of the Picts, which still survived somewhere in the hills."
So yep, I think you're right about Victorian folklore theories bleeding over into fiction. And quite possibly the bleed happened by exactly this route, with a character in fiction citing the theory; then later stories removed that intermediate step.
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Date: 2023-03-02 11:30 pm (UTC)I have no idea! Buchan cites it, though, in the dialogue of one character:
"Take the story of the Brownie. What is that but the story of a little swart man of uncommon strength and cleverness, who does good and ill indiscriminately, then disappears? There are many scholars, as you yourself confess, who think that the origin of the Brownie was in some mad belief in the old race of the Picts, which still survived somewhere in the hills."
So yep, I think you're right about Victorian folklore theories bleeding over into fiction. And quite possibly the bleed happened by exactly this route, with a character in fiction citing the theory; then later stories removed that intermediate step.