Adamnan, Columba’s biographer, became abbot of Iona in 679, and died there in 704. There are wells to him at Dull, in Perthshire, and at Forglen in Banffshire. His name occurs in Scottish topography, but shortened, and under various disguises. In the form of St. Oyne he has a well in Rathen parish, Aberdeenshire, where there is a mound—probably an ancient fortified site—also called St. Oyne’s. About six miles north-east of Kingussie, in Inverness-shire, is the church of the quoad sacra parish of Inch, on a knoll projecting into the loch of the same name. The knoll is called Tom Eunan, i.e., the hill of Adamnan, to whom the church was dedicated. Within the building is still to be seen a fine specimen of the four-cornered bronze bell used in the early Celtic church. According to a local tradition it was once carried off, but kept calling out, “Tom Eunan! Tom Eunan!” till brought back to its home. We find that Adamnan and Columba were associated together in the district. An annual gathering, at one time held there in honour of the latter, was named Feil Columcille, i.e., Columba’s Fair, and was much resorted to. Women usually appeared on the occasion in white dresses in token of baptism. An old woman, who died in 1882, at the age of ninety, was in the habit of showing the white dress worn by her in her young days at the fair. It finally served her as a shroud. Adamnan visited the Northumbrian court when Egfrid was king. His errand was one of peace-making; for he went to procure the release of certain Irish captives who had been made prisoners by Egfrid, During his stay in Northumbria he became a convert to the Roman view as against the Celtic in the two burning questions of that age, viz., the time for holding Easter, and the nature of the tonsure. Though he did not get his friends in Scotland to see eye to eye with him on these points, he seems to have been generally popular north of the Tweed. Eight churches at least were dedicated to him, mainly in the east country between Forvie, in Aberdeenshire, and Dalmeny, in West Lothian. One of these dedications was at Aboyne. Skeulan Well there contains Adamnan’s name in a corrupted form.
Kieran, belonging like Columba to the sixth century, was also like him from Ireland. He selected a cave some four miles from Campbeltown as his dwelling-place, and there led the life of an ascetic. He died in 543 in his thirty-fourth year. Pennant thus describes the cave:—“It is in the form of a cross, with three fine Gothic porticoes for entrances, … had formerly a wall at the entrance, a second about the middle, and a third far up, forming different apartments. On the floor is the capital of a cross and a round basin cut out of the rock, full of fine water, the beverage of the saint in old times, and of sailors in the present, who often land to dress their victuals beneath this shelter.” This basin is more minutely described by Captain T. P. White in his “Archæological Sketches in Scotland.” He says, “There is a small basin, nearly oval in shape, neatly scooped out of a block, two feet long by one and a half wide, which exactly underlies a drip of water from the roof of the cave. The water supply is said never to have failed and always to keep the little basin full. Tradition calls it the saint’s font or holy well.” Kieran is commemorated in Kinloch-Kilkerran, the ancient name of the parish of Campbeltown. The word means literally the head of the loch of Kieran’s cell. On one occasion Kieran dropped his book of the Gospels into a lake. Sometime after it was recovered in an uninjured state through the instrumentality of a cow. The cow went into the water to cool itself, and brought out the volume attached to its hoof. Another bovine association is connected with the building of St. Kieran’s Church on a hill at Errigall-keroge, in County Tyrone, Ireland. The saint had an ox which, during the day, drew the materials for the building, and in the evening was slaughtered to feed the workmen. The bones were thrown each evening into a well at the foot of the hill, and, morning by morning, the accommodating animal appeared ready for the day’s work. The well is still held to be miraculous. There is a spring dedicated to Kieran at Drumlithie, in Glenbervie parish, Kincardineshire, and another at Stonehaven, in the same county. There is one in Troqueer parish, Kirkcudbrightshire, locally known as St. Jergon’s or St. Querdon’s Well, these names being simply an altered form of Kieran.
Bridget or Bride, an Irish saint, was popular in Scotland. She received baptism from Patrick, and died in 525 after a life of great sanctity. She was celebrated as a worker of miracles. She made a cow supply an enormous quantity of milk to satisfy the wants of three thirsty bishops who came to visit her. She also cured diseases. On one occasion two men suffering from leprosy came to her to be healed. She made the sign of the cross over water, and told them to wash in it. One of the two did so and was instantly restored to health; but, refusing to help the other, he at once became leprous again, while his companion was as suddenly made whole. On another occasion she used the sign of the cross to stay a company bent on the capture of a maiden who had sought refuge in the saint’s nunnery. Perhaps her most wonderful miracle was the hanging of her gown on a sunbeam, a somewhat unusual cloak-peg, and one that, from the nature of the case, had not to be sought in a dark press. Her principal monastery was at Kildare, so named after the oak (dair) under whose shade her cell was built. Adjoining St. Bride’s Churchyard in London is a spring dedicated to the saint, and popularly styled Bride’s Well. The palace built in the immediate neighbourhood went by the name of Bridewell. It was handed over by Edward VI. to the city of London as a workhouse and place of correction. At a later date the name became associated with other houses used for a similar purpose. “Hence it has arisen,” remarks Chambers in his “Book of Days,” “that the pure and innocent Bridget, the first of Irish nuns, is now inextricably connected in our ordinary national parlance with a class of beings of the most opposite description.” There are fully a dozen wells in Scotland bearing her name. These are chiefly to be found in the counties of Wigtown, Dumfries, Peebles, Lanark, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Perth, Fife, and Aberdeen. A monastery was founded in Bridget’s honour at Abernethy, in Perthshire, probably in the eighth century, and she had churches on the mainland and among the Western Islands. A curious superstition connected with Bridget has survived to the present time, at least in one of these islands. It has to do with a certain magical flower styled torranain, that must be plucked during the influx of the tide, and is of virtue to protect cows from the evil eye, and to make them give a plentiful supply of milk. The Rev. Dr. Stewart, in his “’Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe,” quotes the incantation associated with it forwarded to him by a correspondent in Uist. The following is one of the stanzas:—
“Let me pluck thee, Torranain!
With all thy blessedness and all thy virtue.
The nine blessings came with the nine parts.
By the virtue of the Torranain.
The hand of St. Bride with me
I am now to pluck thee.”
A saint who could give efficacy to a spell was quite the sort of person to be entrusted with the custody of springs.