Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

other in appearance, dress, mode of life, and dialects.Although the connection between climate and size is not very tenable, Campbell's remarks do openthe way to interesting speculations. He notes that the term Lapnach applies to a certain "little,thickset, insignificant man" who figures in many tales, and he adds:There are many traditional tales in the Highlands of much interest... in which little men ofdwarfish, and even pigmy size, figure as good bowmen, slaying men of large size, andpowerful make, by their dexterity in the use of the bow and arrow.In spite of their small size, they are understood to have been of very considerable strenght. Theywere not "undersized in the same way that children are, but full-grown individuals, undersized andsinewy, or muscular."These dwarfs or pygmies are called Na Amhuisgean or, more correctly, Na h-Amhuisgean. TheEnglish phonetics for the Gaelic amhisg would be "awisk." The same beings are sometimes foundunder the names Tamhaisg and Amhuish, and these words uniformly designate dwarfs. It is ironic,therefore, that in one tale ("The Lad with the Skin Garments," quoted by folklore researcherMacDougall) the awisks address a human intruder as "O little man" while he in turn calls them "bigmen all."Were there or were there not races of dwarfs living among the West and Middle Europeans ofantiquity? Were the legends about the fairies and the elves based on the fact that the ancientinhabitants of the northern parts of the British Isles were such a race? Historical and archaeologicalresearchers definitely say no. Yet several writers, such as folklore scholar David MacRitchie, claimthere are indications in this direction.In Tyson's Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients, published in London in 1894, ProfessorWindle, of Birmingham, re marks that a race of dwarfs supplied the best warriors and bodyguardsof several kings. Tyson made an extensive study of the dwarf races and quotes the Greek historianCtesias:And he adds:Middle India has black men, who are called Pygmies, using the same language as the otherIndians... Of these Pygmies, the king of the Indians has three thousand in his train; for theyare very skillful archers.There seem to have been near Lake Zerrah, in Persia, Negrito [pygmy black] tribes who areprobably aboriginal, and may have formed the historic black guard of the ancient kings ofSusania.Tyson's work, to which Windle provided the preface, was written in the seventeenth century. Aftercalling attention to the remark by Ctesias, it goes on:Talentonius and Bartholine think that what Ctesias relates of the Pygmies, as their beingvery good archers, very well illustrates this Text of Ezekiel.The Ezekiel text in question appears thus in the King James Bible:The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadimswere in thy towers....And indeed, the English Bishops' Bible of 1572 and 1575 does not have "Gammadims" but"Pygmenians." Without going into further detail, it is clear that the Gaelic story of a guard of dwarf