And the craz’d brain restore.”
It is not, however, a well, but a pool, in the river Fillan, about two miles lower down than Tyndrum. To correctly estimate the reverence paid to this sacred pool, we must glance at the influence, exerted by Fillan on the district during his life-time, and afterwards by means of his relics. The saint flourished in the early eighth century. He was born in Ireland. His father was Ferodach, and his mother was Kentigerna, daughter of a prince of Leinster. She afterwards came to Scotland and led the life of a recluse, on Inch Cailleach, an island in Loch Lomond. According to the Aberdeen Breviary, Fillan was born with a stone in his mouth, and was at once thrown into a lake where he was ministered to by angels for a year. He was then taken out and baptised by Bishop Ybarus, and at a later date received the monastic habit from Muna, otherwise called Mundus. Devoting himself to solitary meditation he built a cell close to Muna’s monastery. On one occasion, a servant went to call him to supper, and looking through a chink in the wall, saw the saint busy writing, his uplifted left hand throwing light over the book in lieu of a candle. Whatever may be thought of the incident, few will deny its picturesqueness. In competent hands it might be made the subject of a striking picture. Fillan afterwards went to Lochalsh, where he dedicated a church to his uncle Congan, the founder of the monastery of Turriff, in Aberdeenshire. We next find Fillan in the principal scene of his missionary work, viz., in Glendochart, in that portion of the glen anciently called Siracht, and now Strathfillan. This area formed a separate parish till 1617, but was then united to the parish of Killin. Fillan arrived with seven serving clerics, and tradition says that he built his church at a spot miraculously pointed out to him. The neighbourhood was, and is full of interest. “Glendochart,” writes Mr. Charles Stewart in “An Gaidheal,” “is not celebrated for terrific mountain scenery like Glencoe or the Coolins, but has a grandeur of a different character. Lofty mountains, clothed, here in heather, there in green; cloudy shadows frequently flitting across their sides, and serried ridges of multiplied lines and forms of varied beauty, and along their sides strangely shaped stones and boulders of rocks deposited by the ancient glaciers. Along the strath there are stretches of water, its course broken occasionally by lochs; sometimes wending its way slowly and solemnly through green meadows, and anon rushing along as at the celebrated bridge of Dochart, at Killin, with fire and fury.”
The same writer mentions that three spots, where Fillan was wont to teach the natives of the Strath, are still pointed out, viz., at the upper end of Glendochart, where the priory was afterwards built, halfway down the glen at Dun-ribin, and at the lower end at Cnoc-a-bheannachd, i.e., Hill of the Blessing, near Killin. Fillan instructed the people in agriculture, and built mills for grinding corn. Out of compliment to him, the mill at Killin was idle on his festival, (Jan. 9th), as late as the middle of the present century. Indeed there was a superstition in the district that it would not be lucky to have it working on that day. Fillan also instituted fairs for the sale and barter of local produce. His fair is still held at Killin in January. The miraculous element in his history did not end with his life. He seems to have died somewhere about Lochearn, and his body was brought back to Glendochart, by way of Glen Ogle. When the bearers reached the point where Glendochart opens upwards and downwards, a dispute arose as to the destination of their burden. Some wished the saint’s body to be buried at Killin and others at Strathfillan. Behold a marvel! When they could not agree, they found that instead of one coffin there were two, and so each party was satisfied.
Robert Bruce’s fight with the followers of Macdougall of Lorne took place near St. Fillan’s Church, at a spot, afterwards named Dalrigh or the King’s Field. On that occasion, an earnest prayer was addressed to the saint of the district, and through his intercession victory came to Bruce. So at least runs the legend. After his success at Bannockburn, the King in gratitude founded St. Fillan’s Priory, in Strathfillan, and endowed it with the neighbouring lands of Auchtertyre, and with the sheep-grazing of Bein-mhannach or the Monk’s Mountain, in Glenlyon. Indeed, if tradition speaks truth, Bruce had a double reason to be grateful to Fillan, for the victory at Bannockburn, was attributed to the presence in the Scottish camp, of a relic of the saint, said to be an arm-bone set in silver. The relic, however, as Dr. John Stuart shows, in the twelfth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” was probably his Coig-gerach or pastoral staff, popularly, but erroneously called his Quigrich. It is said to have been kept at Auchlyne, in a chapel called Caipal-na-Faraichd, and when the chapel was burnt to have been rescued by a person, either then, or afterwards, called Doire or Dewar, whose descendants became its custodiers. The subsequent history of the relic is curious. In 1782 it was at Killin in the keeping of Malice Doire. In 1818 it was taken to Canada, where it remained for some sixty years. Through the patriotic zeal of Sir Daniel Wilson it was then sent back to Scotland, and now forms one of the treasures in the National Museum of Antiquities, at Edinburgh.
The sanctity of Fillan thus distilled like a fertilising dew over the district of Glendochart. We need not, therefore, be surprised that, in days darker than our own, a thriving crop of superstitions was the result. It is certainly a striking testimony to the enduring influence of the saint, that the pool, believed to have been blessed by him, retained its fame till within the memory of persons still living. Possibly the pool was reverenced even before his time. Towards the end of last century, as many as two hundred persons were brought annually to the spot. The time selected was usually the first day of the quarter, (O.S.), and the immersion took place after sunset. The patients, with a rope tied round their waist, were thrown from the bank into the river. This was usually done thrice. According to previous instructions, they picked up nine stones from the bottom of the stream. After their dip they walked three times round three cairns in the immediate neighbourhood, and at each turn added a stone to the cairn. An English antiquary, who visited the spot in 1798, writes, “If it is for any bodily pain, fractured limb or sore, that they are bathing, they throw upon one of these cairns that part of their clothing which covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds upon and make it into paste with these waters, and afterwards give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, nightcaps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters, and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their halfpence.”
After the ceremony at the cairns the patient was led to the ruins of St. Fillan’s Chapel, about half a mile away, and there tied to a stone with a hollow in it, large enough to receive the body, the unfortunate person being fastened down to a wooden framework. The patient was then covered with hay, and left in this condition all night. As at Struthill, if the bonds were found loose in the morning, he or she would recover; but if not, the case was counted hopeless, or at least doubtful. As the writer of the article on the parish, in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland,” shrewdly observes, “The prospect of the ceremony, especially in a cold winter evening, might be a good test for persons pretending insanity.” At the time when he wrote, viz., in 1843, the natives of the parish had ceased to believe in the efficacy of the holy pool, but it was still visited by invalids from a distance. It was usual, after the fastening process already described, to place St. Fillan’s bell on the head of the patient by way of helping on the cure. This bell is quadrangular in shape. Its size and appearance are thus described by Dr. Joseph Anderson in his “Scotland in Early Christian Times”: “It is an elegant casting of bronze, stands twelve inches high and measures nine by six inches wide at the mouth. The ends are flat, the sides bulging, the top rounded. In the middle of the top is the loop-like handle, terminating where it joins the bell in two dragonesque heads with open mouths.” The bell weighs eight pounds fourteen ounces. In the fifteenth century the relic seems to have been held in special honour, for it graced the coronation of James IV. in 1488. After the Reformation, it was locked up for some time, to prevent its use for the superstitious purpose alluded to above. But, as a rule, it lay on a tombstone in the Priory graveyard, protected only by the reverence paid to it in the district. There was a belief that, if carried off, it would return of its own accord, ringing all the way. In 1798 this belief was put to a severe test, for in that year the English antiquary, already quoted, removed the relic. “In order,” he says, “to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the ridiculous story of St. Fillan’s bell, I carried it off with me, and mean to convey it, if possible, to England. An old woman, who observed what I was about, asked me what I wanted with the bell, and I told her that I had an unfortunate relation at home out of his mind, and that I wanted to have him cured. ‘Oh, but,’ says she, ‘you must bring him here to be cured, or it will be of no use.’ Upon which I told her he was too ill to be moved, and off I galloped with the bell back to Tyndrum Inn.” The bell was taken to England. About seventy years later, its whereabouts was discovered, and it was sent back to Scotland. Like the crozier of the same saint, it is now in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh.
If we may believe a local tradition, the Holy Pool lost its miraculous virtue in the following manner, though, after what the English antiquary mentioned about its water being mixed with meal, and given to diseased cattle, we see no reason why it should have been so particular. A farmer who had a mad bull thought that, if the sacred water could heal human ills, it would be efficacious also in the case of the lower animals. So he plunged his infuriated beast into the stream. What was the effect on the bull we do not know: but since then the virtue has departed from the water. Except for a pleasure dip on a hot summer’s day, no one need now apply at the Holy Pool.
The unbroken reputation of such health resorts, for centuries, is certainly remarkable. Strathfillan kept up its fame for over a thousand years. At Gheel, in Belgium, for fully twelve hundred years, successive generations of lunatics sought relief at St. Dympna’s Well. We must not be too hard on the ages before our own; for, though in some respects dark, in other respects they had a good deal of light. Nevertheless, severe things might be said about them. From a present-day point of view, it might be argued that those, who took their insane friends to get cured in the manner described, required, like the patients themselves, a little rearrangement of their wits.