Bygone Church Life in Scotland

by Unknown

Saints and Holy Wells.

By Thomas Frost.

Among the results of the preaching of the Gospel to the ignorant and superstitious in the early ages of the Church there must, unfortunately, be included a considerable mixture of pagan beliefs and customs with the new religion, some of which have survived even to our own time. The sacred character ascribed to a great number of wells or springs both in England and Scotland may be traced back, in numerous instances, to pagan rites observed at them in pre-Christian ages. Some of these, as at Drumlanrig, in Dumfries county, and at Tully Beltane, in the Highlands of Perthshire, have near them a circle of stones, resembling those supposed to be associated with Druidism; and of the latter, Jamieson says in his “Scottish Dictionary,”—“On Beltane morning, superstitious people go to this well and drink of it, then they make a procession round it, as I am informed, nine times; after this, they, in like manner, go round the temple,” as he calls the circle of upright stones.

In the little island in Loch Maree, in the county of Ross, is a well or spring traditionally associated with St. Maelrubha, who is said to have been a monk of the monastery of Bangor, in Ireland, and to have founded a church at Applecross, in the same county, in 673. Pennant, who visited Innis Maree in 1772, says:—“In the midst is a circular dike of stones,... I suspect the dike to have been originally Druidical, and that the ancient superstition of paganism had been taken up by the saint, as the readiest method of making a conquest over the minds of the inhabitants.” The probability of this appears from old Kirk Session records of an annual custom in Applecross of sacrificing a bull to “Mourie” on the saint’s day. This custom survived until the latter half of the seventeenth century, when it was denounced as idolatrous.

In the island of Lewis, one of the Hebrides, are the ruins of a chapel formerly dedicated to St. Mulvay, near which is a spring, the water of which was supposed to be of singular efficacy in curing diseases of the brain. The patient was made to walk seven times round the ruins, and was then sprinkled with water from the spring. In others of the Hebrides, and along the west coast, there are many wells named after St. Columba. Almost every well in Scotland is, indeed, named after some mediæval saint, many of them of only local fame, and very few having a place in the ecclesiastical kalendar. St. Ronan’s Well, from the association with it of Scott’s novel of that name, is the best known to the general reader. It has been identified with the mineral well at Innerleithen, in the county of Peebles, which long enjoyed good repute as a curative agent in diseases of the eye and the skin, and also in dyspepsia.

The church of St. Fergus, in Buchan, commemorates an Irish missionary of the eighth century, in whose memory a well in the parish of Kirkmichael, in Banffshire, is named. Concerning this spring, Dr Gregor, in his “Folk Lore of the North-east of Scotland,” says:—“Easter Sunday and the first Sunday in May were the principal Sundays for visiting it, and many from the surrounding parishes, who were affected with skin diseases or running sores, came to drink of its water, and to wash in it. The hour of arrival was twelve o’clock at night, and the drinking of the water and the washing of the diseased part took place before or at sunrise. A quantity of the water was carried home for future use. Pilgrimages were made up to the end of September, by which time the healing virtues of the water had become less. Such after-visits seem to have begun in later times.”

The best known of several wells named after St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, is beside the road from Maybole to Ayr, and about two miles and a half from the former place. It used formerly to be much resorted to on the 1st of May, for the benefit of sickly children. St. Iten’s Well, at Cambusnethan, in Lanarkshire, at one time was held in good repute as a cure for asthma and skin diseases. Martin, in a description of the Hebrides, written about 1695, mentions a well named after the same saint in the Isle of Eigg, which was regarded by the natives as a panacea for “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” He gives a curious, and in view of the connection of holy wells with pagan beliefs and customs, an interesting account of the dedication of this well by a priest called Father Hugh.

“He obliged all the people to come to this well,” he says, “and then employed them to bring together a great heap of stones at the head of the spring by way of penance. This being done, he said mass at the well, and then consecrated it; he gave each of the inhabitants a piece of wax candle, which they lighted, and all of them made the Dessil,—going round the well sun-ways, the priest leading them; and from that time it was accounted unlawful to boil any meat with the water of this well.”

St. Fillan’s Well, at the foot of a green hill in the parish of Comrie, was formerly much frequented on the 1st of May and the 1st of August by persons in quest of health, who walked or were carried three times round it, from east to west, following the course of the sun. This done, they drank of the water of the spring, deposited a white stone on the saint’s cairn, and departed, leaving some rag of linen or woollen as an offering.