It would be unpardonable to write anything about Comrie without making allusion to the earthquakes which have made it famous. In the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in the year 1794, the Rev. Mr M'Diarmid, minister of the parish, gives an account of the first recorded earthquake in the district. During the autumn of 1789 loud noises, unaccompanied by any concussion, were heard by the inhabitants of Glenlednock; but on the 5th of November of that year they were alarmed by a loud rumbling noise, accompanied with a severe shock of earthquake, which was felt over a tract of country of more than twenty miles in extent. The Rev. Mr Mackenzie, successor to Mr M'Diarmid, writing in 1838, in the last Statistical Account, says that "at and after the time of the last Statistical Account the earthquakes were so frequent and violent, and accompanied with such noises, as to occasion great alarm, especially one which occurred on a Sabbath while the congregation was assembled." The year 1839, however, was the time of the great earthquakes. Writing in 1842 in the last Statistical Account, the Rev. John Ferguson, minister of Monzievaird, says:—"At this time they began to be frequently felt, nearly 20 shocks being occasionally experienced in 24 hours. The most violent one happened about ten o'clock on the evening of 23d October, 1839. The shock seemed to pass along through the parish of Monzievaird from north-west to south-east. For a second or two every house for miles around the village of Comrie was shaken from top to bottom; and while the motion was passing away to the eastward it was accompanied by a tremendous noise like the roar of 100 pieces of ordnance discharged at once and gradually dying away in the distance. This earthquake was partially felt throughout a great part of Scotland, as far as Inverness, Dunbar, Berwick, and the banks of Loch Awe. In this neighbourhood it was very alarming. Several individuals fainted, and most of the inhabitants of the village of Comrie spent the whole night in the streets, or in the churches, which were very properly opened for prayer. Many stone dykes were thrown down, walls of houses rent, and chimney-stalks shattered, the stones being frequently shifted from their places, but no serious damage was sustained. The shocks have again diminished both in frequency and violence since the autumn of 1839." Another severe shock occurred in November, 1846, but from that date they have decreased both in number and intensity. The cause of these subterranean commotions is in this as in similar cases a matter of conjecture, but there is good cause for thankfulness that they have hitherto been attended with no serious damage to life or property.
The Session records of some parishes in Scotland are of some historical value, but this is not so with those of Comrie. Beyond the perpetual reiteration of cases of discipline and doles to the poor, there is little to be found in them to throw light upon the Christian life and work of the parish. So meagrely kept were these records that until the year 1829 the Christian name and surname of the Moderator and Clerk never appear in the minutes—not even the Secession of 1843 is recorded, though the minister left the church with a great majority of the congregation to worship upon Tomachessock. The only exception to what we have just stated, perhaps, is a minute of Kirk-Session dated 17th November, 1772, recording the honour due to Patrick Campbell, Esq. of Monzie, then deceased, and the Rev. Robert Menzies, minister of the parish, for the active and benevolent part they took in the building of the Dalginross Bridge over the Earn. The bridge was built in 1756 at a cost of £230.
The Parish Church was erected in 1805, and holds 1044 sitters. The manse was built in 1784, and an addition was made to it in 1822. A new church was built in St. Fillans in connection with the Church of Scotland in 1878, and in March, 1895, it was endowed and erected into a parish quoad sacra under the old name of Dundurn. It is curious to note how the land has been changing hands during the last 180 years. In 1715, the heritors were the Earl of Perth, Duke of Athole, the proprietors of Aberuchill, Lawers, Monzie, Cultabraggan, Ardvoirlich, Comrie, Strowan, Drummond-Ernoch, and Balmacuin. At present they are the Earl of Ancaster, Marquis of Breadalbane, and the proprietors of Ardvoirlich, Dunira, Aberuchill, Strowan, Lawers, Dalchonzie, and Drumearn.
ON THE BANKS OF THE DEVON
By Rev. E. B. SPEIRS, B.D., Glendevon
Seeing that "St. Serf's Bridge" still spans the Devon at one part within the parish of Glendevon, and that the good Saint did not himself build the bridge, but, following a common practice, baptised and made Christian what was a Pagan structure, reared in this instance by the Imperial legionaries, it might be permissible for the local historian to go back at least to the times of the Roman occupation. After describing the camp and the Roman road which still exist in the mind's eye of the antiquaries, he might then go on to tell of holy St. Servan's feats in the way of detecting sheep-stealers by making them, like Speed under the influence of Proteus' reasoning, cry "Baa," or relate some such pretty human story as that of how he turned water into wine for the sake of a sick monk, or unfold the thrilling tale of how he fought the Dovan dragon, as Wyntoun sings, or at least says:—
"In Dovyn of devotyoune
And prayere, he slew a fell Dragoune,
Quhare he was slayne, that place wes ay
The Dragownys Den cald to this day."[1]
The more exact methods of writing history now in vogue, however, almost compel the chronicler to begin with the first certain mention of Glendevon in accredited records, and that belongs to the year 1521. On the eleventh of July of that year an interesting ceremony was gone through down at Cambuskenneth, on the banks of the Forth. Abbot Mylne, a man both of culture and character, who to a genuine love of letters added a love of art and architecture, and who was ultimately the first President of the Court of Session, had re-built the great altar, the chapter-house, and part of the cloister of his Abbey, and had laid out two new cemeteries. In order to signalise these notable additions and restorations he invited the Bishop of Dunblane to conduct a consecration and dedication service. The Bishop was directly assisted in this solemn function by three of his principal clergy—his archdeacon, George Newton; John Chesholme, prebendary of Kippane; and "Jacobus Wilson, prebandarius de Glendowane." John Tulydaf, warder of the Minorites of "Striueling" (Stirling), preached on the efficacy of dedication after the celebration of the Mass, and amongst those present were the "noble and powerful" Lord John Erskin, Jacobus Haldene of Glenegges (Gleneagles), Knight, and various others of the local clergy, nobility, and gentry, together with a large concourse of people from the surrounding district. The official account of what took place on this high day when Glendowane, Glendovan, Glenduen, or Glendevon, first emerges into the light of history, is duly signed by Jacobus Blakwood, presbyter of the Diocese of Dunblane, public notary by apostolic authority, who was on the spot and saw everything properly done.[2] The name of Prebendary Wilson occurs in several documents both before and after this, all of which have reference to matters connected either with Cambuskenneth or Dunblane. He gets prominent mention in a paper dated from Cambuskenneth, June, 1530, in which he is styled "Canonicus Dunblanensis," heading a list of "venerable and discreet" gentlemen, including Alanus Balward, vicar of Kalender, and Andreas Sym, vicar of Cumry, but we cannot trace him further down than March of the following year. It is clear from this that Glendevon was attached to the "Kirk of Dunblane," and that the Parish Church was served from there, not, it is to be hoped, in the slovenly fashion characteristic of these times, when the stipend was too often fought for by different teind hunters in the shape of the bishop of the diocese and the abbot of some neighbouring monastery, a state of things to which Prebendary Wilson himself bears witness. There is something almost pathetic in the thought that less than forty years after that dedication service in which the Prebendary of Glendevon took part, these additions were to be pulled to pieces by the savage mob which wrecked, amongst other religious houses, the stately monastery on the Links of the Forth; and it is just possible that the great destroyer—spiritually at least—of what Canon Wilson helped to build up was in his parish in 1556. At any rate a spot is still pointed out on the glebe where, according to tradition, John Knox preached. We know from his own statement[3] that he spent some time in the early part of the summer of that year at Castle Campbell—which is only some four or five miles distant—"whare he taught certane dayis"; so it is at least not utterly improbable that he may have come through Glenquey past the Maiden's Well, and visited a possible congregation in Glendovan, exhorting them to "prayaris, to reading of the Scriptures, and mutuall conference unto such tyme as God should give unto them grettar libertie."[4]
The second direct mention of Glendevon in public records is of a somewhat unsavoury order, and affords a rather curious illustration of the beliefs of the people of Scotland in the seventeenth century. John Brughe, one of the most notorious necromancers and wizards of his day, was tried at Edinburgh on November 24th, 1643, for practising sorcery and other unholy arts, and amongst the charges brought against him was that he had met Satan thrice "in the kirkyeard of Glendovan at quhilkis tymes ther was taine up thrie severall dead corps, ane of thame being of ane servand man named Johne Chrystiesone; the uther corps, tane up at the Kirk of Mukhart, the flesch of the quhilk corps was put above the byre and stable-dure headis" of certain individuals in order to destroy their cattle.[5] John's object in collecting Glendovan "muild" was, according to this indictment, not a beneficent one; but it is to be remembered to his credit that he used the powdered bones of the dead and other materials, notably "ane inchantit stane of the bignes of a dow egg,"[6] for the healing of man and beast, and we are told that for curing a number of oxen afflicted with the murrain by administering a pint of one of his patent medicines, accompanied with the invocation, "God put thame in their awin place," repeated thrice, he got "ellevin od schillings, with twa peckis of meill and thrie tailyeis of beiff." In those days, when not only human nature but Nature herself lay under the black shadow of one of the foulest of superstitions, the fair banks of the Devon were much frequented by the devil, who had whole "covins" of witches and wizards in his service, so that it is not surprising to hear that John was frequently in his company. "That John Brughe had been with the devil at the Rumbling Brigs and elsewhere was affirmed by Katherine Mitchell to be of veritie, at the tyme of hir criminall tryell at Culrose, and immediately befoir hir executione, the said John Brughe being confronted with hir at the tyme."[7] We can claim this renowned empiric not only for the Glendevon district, but in a sense for the Presbytery, since it was alleged against him that he had got his uncanny knowledge "from a wedow woman, named Neane Nikclerith, of threescoir years of age, quha wis sister dochter to Nik Neveding, that notorious infamous witche in Monzie, quha for her sorcerie and witchecraft was brunt fourscoir of yeir since or thereby." Spite of all he had done for the "bestiall," and all the testimonials he had from patients whom he had cured of their "seiknessis" by enchanted drinks, Glendovan and Mukhart mould, and sympathetic conjuring of "sarkis, coller bodies, beltis, and utheris pertaining als weill to men as to wemen," John was found guilty and condemned to be strangled and burned. These were the real Dark Ages, when intimations were frequently made from the Glendevon and other pulpits that the minister and session would be glad to receive information against suspected witches, and when the common pricker who pricked poor witches "with lang preins of thrie inches" to discover the marks of Satan, was specially busy in the vale of Devon, where in a record year no less than sixteen of the local "covin" were burned. In the Roll of Fugitives from kirk discipline drawn up by the Synod of Perth and Stirling in 1649, Glendevon was represented by a warlock, "Mart. Kennard, suspect of witchcraft," but of his fate we know nothing. In this connection it may be remarked that though the "Kirkyeard of Glendovan," immortalised by John Brughe's ghoulish visit, contains no epitaphs, humorous or otherwise, it possesses a "Plague Stone," a large rough slab, under which lie those who died of what is vaguely called the Plague (1645?), and the lifting of which was duly guarded against by a solemn curse pronounced over it on whoever would dare to remove it, for two hundred years ago a curse could break bones or "ryve the saull out of ye."