Even imagination fails to carry us further back than the Picts or Celts or Gaels, who are supposed to have been the aborigines of all the British Isles. They were a wild warlike race,--wild from their rough struggling state of existence, warlike in their constant attitude of self-defence. Some have supposed that there were giants among them in those days, and that these were the originals of the colossal heroes of the Fingalian legends. The name of the Giant's Point (Ru Nohar) on Loch Maree, and the discoveries in the neighbourhood of what are alleged to be enormous graves, give some colour to the supposition. There are slight traces of Fingalian legends still current in the parish. Thus the hollow near the Gairloch Established Church, in which the Free Church communion services are held, is said to have been scooped out by Fingal for a bed where his white cow might calve. It is still called Leabaidh na Ba Bàine, or the bed of the white cow. Then the large stones in Loch Maree, in a line between the base of the Fox Point and the nearest part of the opposite shore, are said to have been placed there by Fingal for stepping-stones, to keep his feet dry when going this way to court Malvina, who lived in the direction of Torridon. Only an enormous giant could have stepped from stone to stone; they are to this day called the sweetheart's stepping-stones. Again, there is a mound in a depression near the summit of Beinn Tarsuinn, called Suidheachan Fhinn, or Fingal's seat, where they say he used to sit and spy when hunting on the mountains. These fragments are all we are told of Fingal's doings in Gairloch. Though we know nothing of their history, we can infer much regarding the condition of the original Pictish inhabitants of Gairloch. That they were numerous, we may judge from the several remains of Pictish brochs or round houses to be seen in the parish. These are doubtless but samples of numbers of others, still buried beneath moss and heather, or long since obliterated by agricultural operations. Each broch was the abode of several families, huddled together beneath its roof of skins. Most of the primitive weapons or implements to be enumerated in the chapter on the antiquities of Gairloch belonged to the Pictish natives of the parish. Our eyes may see, our hands may grasp, the very implements these Gairloch men formed and used possibly before the Christian era; and as we look upon them we may readily conceive how straitened were their owners' circumstances. Amongst the antiquities some alleged Druidical remains will be mentioned. Whether these were really Druidical or no, it is certain that the religion of this district before Christianity took root was that of the Druids. The sacrifices of bulls on Isle Maree, practised, as we shall see, so lately as 1678, were unquestionably relics of the rites celebrated by the Druidical priests, though they themselves had vanished a thousand years before.