and the saint becoming impatient of his flattery, commanded him to begone from his cave, and never more to annoy any one in it. This prohibition apparently obtained for the cave a reputation as of a place for ever freed from the temptations of the Evil One, and it continued in consequence to be used as a chapel, and largely frequented by pilgrims down almost to the Reformation.
St Adrian’s Cave at Caiplie, also on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, consists of a cluster of contiguous cavities formed by the sea washing out the softer parts of the rock. The principal cavity bears obvious marks of artificial adaptation. It is somewhat irregular in shape, but large and lofty; and the foundation courses of a wall constructed across its entrance are still visible. Near the mouth of the cave, a kind of platform or seat is shaped in the rock, and a door cut through the rock communicates with a smaller cell on the south side. On the west side, a series of steps led up to a smaller cell, in the inner part of which was a kind of bench cut in the rock, which is said to have been the hermit’s bed. In front of the cave, five human skeletons were found, four of which were regularly buried east and west, the heads to the west, but without coffins. A considerable quantity of bones of oxen, sheep, and swine, and portions of deer-horns, were found mixed with the debris in front of the cave, evidently the refuse of the food of its occupants at some remote period. On the interior of the rocky walls of the cave, many pilgrim crosses are carved, some of the equal-armed form and surrounded with a border, but mostly of the Latin form. St Adrian, whose true name was probably Odran, is represented as having settled and laboured among the Pictish people of the east parts of Scotland. His settlement in the Firth of Forth is thus described by Wyntoun:
Adriane wyth hys cumpany
Togydder cam tyl Caplawchy,
Thare sum in to the Ile off May
Chesyd to byde to thare enday.
And some off thame chesyd be northe
In steddis sere the Wattyr off Forth.
At Pittenweem, St Monance, and other places along the coast as far as Fifeness, there are several caves which have pilgrim crosses and other symbols of archaic character carved upon their rocky walls. All of these seem at one time to have been occupied as places of retreat and devotion by saints or recluses of the early Celtic Church, and doubtless are the steddis sere (that is, the ‘several places’) referred to in Wyntoun’s narrative. At Fifeness is the cave of Constantine, king of the Scots, who, after a reign of forty years, exchanged the sceptre for the pilgrim’s staff, and ‘died in the house of the Apostle;’ that is, of St Andrew. At St Andrews itself is the cave of St Rule, or rather what remains of it, for it has been much destroyed within the last half-century. Sir Walter Scott describes the palmer in Marmion as bound to fair St Andrews:
Within the ocean cave to pray,