Local names are often evidences of superstition. In Gairloch we have Cathair Mhor and Cathair Bheag,--names applied to several places,--and the Sitheanan Dubha on Isle Ewe and on the North Point. There is Cathair Mhor at the head of Loch Maree, and Cathair Beag (the Gaelic name of the place) at Kerrysdale. These names mean respectively the big and little seats of the fairies. There are no stories told now-a-days of these fairy seats, but their names testify to the belief in fairies which was universal not long ago. The name Sitheanan Dubha signifies the black knowes or hillocks of the fairies. It is applied to two places in Gairloch, viz., to the highest hill tops at the north end of Isle Ewe, and to a low hill and small round loch a full mile due north of Carn Dearg house; both are shown on the six-inch ordnance map. There is a tradition of a Gairloch woman having spent a year with the fairies; a tale founded on this story is given in the _Celtic Magazine_, vol. iv., page 15. About midsummer 1878 I went in an open boat from Poolewe to the Shiant Isles, to observe the birds which breed in such numbers there. It was after 11 P.M. when I landed on the largest island of the group. About a mile distant was a shepherd's house, the only human habitation in these islands. I thought of going to the shepherd's to beg shelter for the night, but my servant, a Gairloch lad, dissuaded me. On my pressing him for a reason, he told me there was a fairy in the house, as he had been informed by a Gairloch fisherman, who had spent a night there not long before. This fairy was said to be a mischievous boy, "one of the family," who, when the rest were asleep, appeared in the rafters of the roof and disturbed the sleepers by bouncing on them. The night (it was but two hours' twilight) was so fine, and the way to the shepherd's house looked so rough, that I decided to sleep in a plaid on the beach, and so I missed the only opportunity that ever presented itself to me of observing the peculiarities of a fairy imp. Hugh Miller, in "My Schools and Schoolmasters," mentions that, when he was voyaging down Loch Maree in 1823, the boatmen told his companion in Gaelic, "Yon other island (Eilean Suainne) is famous as the place in which the good people [fairies] meet every year to make submission to their queen. There is a little loch in the island, and another little island in the loch; and it is under a tree in that inner island that the queen sits and gathers kain [tribute] for the evil one." "They tell me," said Hugh Miller's companion, "that for certain the fairies have not left this part of the country yet."