Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 33, Vol. I, August 16, 1884

No. 33.—Vol. I.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1884.
In the biographies of the saints of the early Celtic Church it is frequently recorded that towards the close of their lives they left their monasteries and sought the seclusion of some lonely island or mountain solitude, in order to pass the evening of their days in undisturbed devotion and freedom from worldly cares. Joceline in his Life of St Kentigern also records that it was his custom to retire to a cave during Lent, so that, ‘removed from the strife of tongues and the tumults of this world, he might hide himself in God.’ Such retreats, whether they were used for periodical and temporary seclusion or for permanent retirement, were called in the ecclesiastical language of the day Deserta ; and the frequent occurrence of this term in the topography of Scotland and Ireland—in its modern form of Dysart or Disert—shows how common the custom must once have been. Sometimes the recluse erected a habitation for himself of stones and turf, as St Cuthbert did in the island of Farne; but frequently he chose the shelter of a natural cavern or crevice in the rocks, as St Cuthbert is also said to have done at Weem in Perthshire. As the veneration for the memory of the saint increased with lapse of time, the sites of such hermitages naturally became places of pilgrimage, and troops of devotees were drawn to visit them by rumours of special benefits accruing to pilgrims of weak health, or peace of mind procured by the performance of special vows. In consequence of the peculiar prevalence of this mode of retirement in the primitive Celtic Church, cave-hermitages must have been exceedingly numerous in Scotland. But the thoroughness of the breach which the Church of the Reformation made with the traditions and especially with the superstitious practices of the past, has obliterated most of the traces of this early devotion; and it is only in a few isolated and exceptional cases that any of its associations have survived to our day.