The attributes with which the "little people" of North Europe are accredited cannot be given in detail here. It is enough to note that they were believed to live in houses wholly or partly underground, the latter kind being described as "hollow" mounds, or hills; that when people of taller race entered such subterranean dwellings (as occasionally they did) they found the domestic utensils of the dwarfs were of the kind labelled "pre-historic" in our antiquarian museums; that the copper vessels which dwarf women sometimes left behind them when discovered surreptitiously milking the cows of their neighbours, were likewise of an antique form; further, that they helped themselves to the beef and mutton of their neighbours, after having shot the animals with flint-headed arrows; that melodies peculiar to them are still sung by the peasants of certain localities; that words used by them are still employed by children in their games; and that many families in many districts are believed to have inherited some of their blood.[19] Of this intercourse between the taller races and the dwarfs, there are many records in old traditions. In the days of King Arthur, when, as Chaucer tells us, the land was "ful-filled of faërie," the knights errant had usually a dwarf as attendant. One of King Arthur's own knights was a Fairy.[20] According to Highland tradition, every high-caste family of pure Gaelic descent had an attendant dwarf. These examples show the "little people" in a not unfriendly light. But many other stories speak of them as "malignant" foes, and as dreaded oppressors. Of which the rational explanation is that these various tales relate to various localities and epochs. The connection visible between Fians and Fairies, between Fians and Picts, and between Picts and Fairies, may now briefly be stated. The earliest known association of the first two classes occurs in an Irish manuscript of the eleventh or twelfth century,[21] wherein it is stated that when the ninth-century Danes overran and plundered Ireland, there was nothing "in concealment under ground in Erinn, or in the various secret places belonging to Fians or to Fairies" that they did not discover and appropriate. This statement receives strong confirmation from a Scandinavian record, the _Landnáma-bok_, which says[22] that, in or about the year 870, a well-known Norse chief named Leif "went on warfare in the west. He made war in Ireland, and there found a large underground house; he went down into it, and it was dark until light shone from a sword in the hand of a man. Leif killed the man, and took the sword and much property.... He made war widely in Ireland, and got much property. He took ten thralls."