Bygone Church Life in Scotland

by Unknown

Some saints’ wells were believed to have the power of foretelling whether the patients on whose behalf they were invoked would recover,—a superstition which may be traced to Greek paganism of a time thousands of years before the Christian era. St. Andrew’s Well, at Shadar, in the island of Lewis, was reputed to possess this power. A vessel filled with water from the spring was taken to the patient’s abode, and a small wooden dish placed on the surface. If this turned towards the east, it was held to denote that the patient would recover; but if in the opposite direction that he would die. “I am inclined,” says Mr Gomme, “to connect this with the vessel or cauldron so frequently occurring in Celtic tradition, and which Mr Nutt has marked as ‘a part of the gear of the oldest Celtic divinities,’ perhaps of divinities older than the Celts.” The Virgin’s Well, near the ancient church of Kilmorie, in Wigtonshire, was also reputed to possess this power. If the patient on behalf of whom the prophetic power of the well was sought would recover, the water flowed freely; but in the contrary case it failed to well up.

Votive offerings have been mentioned as made to the saints to whom wells were dedicated, and thus became holy. At Montblairie, in Banffshire, shreds of linen and woollen were hung on the bushes beside a consecrated well, and farthings and halfpence were thrown into the water. Miller, in his “Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,” notices a similar custom as practised in the vicinity of Cromarty, his native town. He says, “It is not yet twenty years since a thorn, which formed a little canopy over the spring of St. Bennet, used to be covered anew every season with little pieces of rag, left on it as offerings to the saint by sick people who came to drink of the water.”

St. Wallach’s Bath, in Strathdeveron, is a cavity in the rock, about three feet in depth, into which water flows from a spring several yards higher up, the overflow trickling over the edge into the stream, about four feet below. Down to the beginning of the present century, large numbers of weakly children used to be brought to this bath to be strengthened by immersion in it, and some small article of the child’s clothing was hung on a neighbouring tree. The spring was resorted to for the cure of sore eyes, and pins were offered to the Saint, being left in a hollow of a stone beside the well. At the end of May, which was the season for the visit, the hollow was often full of pins. Sir Arthur Mitchell, describing the holy well on Innis Maree in a communication to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, says, “Near it stands an oak tree, which is studded with nails. To each of these was originally attached a piece of the clothing of some patient who had visited the spot. There are hundreds of nails, and one has still fastened to it a faded ribbon. Two bone buttons and two buckles we also found nailed to the tree. Countless pennies and halfpennies are driven edgeways into the wood.” A more recent visitor, surprised at finding what appeared to be a silver coin fixed in the tree, took the trouble to examine it, and found it spurious.

Coins were more usually, however, thrown into the well, and Mr Patrick Dudgeon, who in 1870 had the well of St. Querdon, in Troqueer parish, Kirkcudbrightshire, cleaned out, observes in an article contributed to the transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History Society, that several hundreds of coins were found at the bottom—nearly all being the smallest copper coins, dating from the reign of Elizabeth to that of George III., but chiefly Scottish issues of James VI., Charles I., and Charles II. He mentions also having been told by old residents that they remembered seeing rags and ribbons hung on the bushes around the well.

Dr Macgeorge, describing St. Thenew’s Well, in his “Old Glasgow,” states, “It was shaded by an old tree, which drooped over the well, and which remained until the end of the last century. On this tree the devotees who frequented the well were accustomed to nail, as thank-offerings, small bits of tin-iron—probably manufactured for that purpose by a craftsman in the neighbourhood—representing the parts of the body supposed to have been cured by the virtues of the sacred spring, such as eyes, hands, feet, ears, and others.”

Pilgrimages to saints’ wells were a well-observed custom until they were, after the Reformation, prohibited both by the Church and Parliament. In an Act of 1581, allusion is made to the perverse inclination to superstition, “through which the dregs of idolatry yet remain in divers parts of the realm by using of pilgrimage to some chapels, wells, crosses, and such other monuments of idolatry, as also by observing of the festal days of the Saints sometime named their patrons in setting forth of bon-fires, singing of carols within and about kirks at certain seasons of the year.” In accordance with this enactment, the Kirk Session of Falkirk, in 1628, ordered several persons who had made a pilgrimage to a holy well to appear in church on three appointed Sundays, clad in the garb of penitents. A warning was also issued that persons doing the like in future would be fined in addition to the penance, and in default, would be put in ward and fed on bread and water only for eight days.

In the following year, the Privy Council made an order “that commissioners cause diligent search at all such parts and places where this idolatrous superstition is used, and to take and apprehend all such persons of whatsomever rank and quality whom they shall deprehend going in pilgrimage to chapels and wells, or whom they shall know themselves to be guilty of that crime, and to commit them to ward, until measures be adopted for their trial and punishment.” But though pilgrimages in bodies were checked, individual visits to holy wells continued. In 1630, the Kirk Session of Aberdeen fined a woman for sending her child to be washed in St. Fittack’s Well, in the parish of Nigg, on the opposite side of the Dee, and she and her nurse were ordered to acknowledge the offence before the session.

In course of time, such “offences” came to be regarded more leniently. Fines gradually ceased to be inflicted, and penance to be enjoined. In three cases entered in the Kirk Session records of Airth, in Stirlingshire, in 1757, the persons cited were merely admonished. But old customs have wonderful vitality, and holy wells are still frequented. Sir Arthur Mitchell remarks, in “The Past in the Present,” that he has seen at least a dozen wells “which have not ceased to be worshipped,” though he adds that the visitors are now comparatively few. Mr Campbell of Islay says, in his “Tales of the West Highlands,” “Holy healing wells are common all over the Highlands, and people still leave offerings of pins and nails and bits of rag, though few would confess it. There is a well in Islay where I myself have, after drinking, deposited copper caps amongst a hoard of pins and buttons and similar gear placed in chinks in the rocks.”

Some of the wells once resorted to by great numbers of persons have disappeared in consequence of changes of the surface. The growth of towns, railways, agricultural improvements, have each had their part in the obliteration of spots formerly deemed sacred. The Pilgrims’ Well, at Aberdour, in Fifeshire, which for centuries attracted crowds, is now filled up. The like end has come to the Abbot’s Well at Urquhart, in Elginshire. St. Mary’s Well at Whitekirk, in Haddingtonshire, has also ceased to exist, the water having been drained off. Near Drumakill, in the parish of Drymen, Dumbartonshire, there was once a famous spring dedicated to St. Vildrin, and near it was a cross, with a figure of the Saint upon it in relief. Between thirty and forty years ago the cross was broken up, and the fragments used in the construction of a farm-house; and shortly afterwards the spring was drained into a stream.

There was formerly a holy well beside the lonely cross-road from Abbeyhill to Restalrig, near Edinburgh, and in the middle ages it attracted a great number of pilgrims. It appears to have been originally dedicated to the Holy Rood, but it afterwards became known as St. Margaret’s Well, and Mr Walker thinks that the dedication may have been changed in connection with the translation of Queen Margaret’s remains in 1251, on the occasion of her canonisation. There was a small Gothic building over the spring until the North British Railway Company acquired possession of the site and built a station upon it. The covering was then taken down, stone by stone, and rebuilt above St. David’s spring, on the northern slope of Salisbury Crags. The water of St. Margaret’s Well found another channel, and thus one more of Scotland’s holy wells ceased to exist.