Chief among the early Gaelic inhabitants was the renowned order of heroes known as the Féinne, the Fianna, or the followers of Fingal, or Finn, the leader. They are supposed to have lived in the second and third centuries of our era, and to have been the Caledonians who checked the progress of the legions of Rome. Very little reliable help can be found regarding this question in the extant annals of the Gael. In general it may be held that this race of Finn came from the shores of the Baltic to North Britain, and that they were not unrelated to the ancient Norse. Recently a new theory has been adopted by some, like Mr Campbell of Islay, whose views are entitled to much respect. They argue that the existence of the Féinne is only a myth—part and parcel of an old world system, not unconnected with the classical and oriental—a system of which we have the same with variations in the Militia of Ireland, and in the Knights of the Round Table of the ancient British. It is held that Fingal and King Arthur are the same personages; that Graine, the faithless wife of Fingal is the same as the faithless Guinevere, the spouse of Arthur; and that the unhallowed love of Diarmad and Graine has a suggestive similitude in that of Sir Launcelot and Guinevere. On the other hand, it is argued that the similarity of these relations, however systematic in appearance, may still be adequately explained by the fact that human nature is much the same in all lands and amongst all races; that this symbolic theory does not seem to be supported by the well-grounded conviction of the people in whose traditions the memory of the heroes of the Féinne has been handed down to us; that it is not at all probable that the names of merely fictitious heroes would live in the topography of a hundred hills, like the name of Finn; that it does not find support in the more philosophic theory regarding the heroes of ancient peoples—that all the mythological characters are only exaggerations of real ones; that human nature is never satisfied with the barely mythic and unreal, and that the patriotic and other affections never derive sustenance from false and unbelievable characters.