The testimony of Celtic literature goes to show that leprechauns and similar dwarfish beings are not due to a folk-memory of a real pygmy race, that they are spirits like elves, and that the folk-memory of a Lappish-like people (who may have been Picts) evidently was confused with them, so as to result in their being anthropomorphosed. Thus, in _Fionn's Ransom_, there is reference to an under-sized apparently Lappish-like man, who may be a Pict; and as Campbell, who records the ancient tale, has observed, there are many similar traditional Highland tales about little men or even about true dwarfs who are good bowmen;[126] but it is very certain that such tales have often blended with other tales, in which supernatural figures like fairies play a rôle; and, apparently, the former kind of tales are much more historical and modern in their origin, while the latter are more mythological and extremely archaic. This blending of the natural or ethnological and the supernatural--in quite the same manner as in the modern Fairy-Faith--is clearly seen in another of Campbell's collected tales, _The Lad with the Skin Coverings_,[127] which in essence is an otherworld tale: 'a little thickset man in a russet coat,' who is a magician, but who otherwise seems to be a genuine Lapp dressed in furs, is introduced into a story where real fairy-like beings play the chief parts. Again, in Irish literature, we read of a _loch luchra_ or 'lake of the pygmies'.[128] Light is thrown upon this reference by what is recorded about the leprechauns and Fergus:--While asleep on the seashore one day, Fergus was about to be carried off by the _luchorpáin_; 'whereat he awoke and caught three of them, to wit, one in each of his two hands, and one on his breast. "Life for life" (i. e. protection), say they. "Let my three wishes (i. e. choices) be given," says Fergus. "Thou shalt have," says the dwarf, "save that which is impossible for us." Fergus requested of him knowledge of passing under loughs and linns and seas. "Thou shalt have," says the dwarf, "save one which I forbid to thee: thou shalt not go under Lough Rudraide [which] is in thine own country." Thereafter the _luchuirp_ (little bodies) put herbs into his ears, and he used to go with them under seas. Others say the dwarf gave his cloak to him, and that Fergus used to put it on his head and thus go under seas.'[129] In an etymological comment on this passage, Sir John Rhŷs says:--'The words _luchuirp_ and _luchorpáin_ [Anglo-Irish leprechaun] appear to mean literally "small bodies", and the word here rendered _dwarf_ is in the Irish _abac_, the etymological equivalent of the Welsh _avanc_, the name by which certain water inhabitants of a mythic nature went in Welsh....'[130]