——“When the workmen were engaged in erecting the ancient church of Old Deer, in Aberdeenshire, upon a small hill called Bissau they were surprised to find that the work was impeded by supernatural obstacles. At length the Spirit of the River was heard to say:
“It is not here, it is not here,
That ye shall build the church of Deer;
But on Taptillery,
Where many a corpse shall lie.”
“The site of the edifice was accordingly transferred to Taptillery, an eminence at some distance from where the building had been commenced.”
As to the origin of these legends or traditions of the mysterious removal of churches, it is not easy to arrive at a correct explanation. Some writers are of the opinion that they contain a record, imaginative and exaggerated, of real incidents connected with the history of the churches to which each of them belongs, and that they are in most cases reminiscences of an older church which once actually stood on another site. Others see in these stories traces of the antagonism, in remote times, between peoples holding different religious beliefs, and the steps taken by one party to seize and appropriate the sacred spots of the other.
That some of these tales have had their origin in primitive times, even anterior to Christianity, is probable.