Since its arrival at Edinburgh the singular discovery has been made that the gilt silver casing of the crosier had been constructed for the purpose of inclosing an older staff-head of cast bronze. This has been taken out of its concealment, and is now exhibited alongside the silver one. The surface of this older crosier is divided into panels by raised ridges ornamented with niello. These panels correspond in number, shape, and size to the silver plaques now on the external casing, and they are pierced with rivet-holes which also correspond with the position of the pins by which the plaques are fastened. It is thus clear that when the old crosier was incased, it was first stripped of its ornamental plaques of filigree-work, which were again used in making up the external covering so far as they were available. Such of them as had been either entirely absent, or so much worn as to require redecoration, were renewed in a style so different from the original workmanship, as to demonstrate that it is a mere imitation of an art with which the workman was unfamiliar. This establishes two distinct phases in the history of the crosier, and suggests that at some particular period, a special occasion had arisen for thus glorifying the old relic with a costly enshrinement. What that occasion was may be inferred from some considerations connected with its public history.
We know nothing of the history of St Fillan's foundation during the first five centuries, in which the founder's staff passed through the hands of his various successors as the symbol of office of the abbot of Glendochart. But in the time of King William the Lion, we find that the office had become secularised, and the abbot appears as a great lay lord, ranking after the Earl of Athole, and appointed alternatively with him as the holder of the assize, in all cases of stolen cattle in that district of Scotland. Whether he held the crosier in virtue of his office we cannot tell; but the likelihood is that it was when the office was first usurped by a layman, that the crosier was placed by the last of the true successors of St Fillan in the custody of a 'dewar' or hereditary keeper, with the dues and privileges which we afterwards find attached to this office. Such an arrangement was not uncommon in connection with similar relics of the ancient Celtic church. We thus find the dewar of the Cogerach of St Fillan in possession of the lands of Eyich in Glendochart in 1336. In process of time the official title of dewar became the family surname of Dewar; and we have a curious instance of the Celtic form of the patronymic in a charter granted in 1575 by Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy to Donald Mac in Deora vic Cogerach.
The inquiry is naturally suggested why a relic with such associations, intrinsically so valuable, and always so highly venerated, should have been allowed to remain in the possession of laymen, and to be kept in their private dwellings, often no better than turf cottages in the glen. The crosier was splendid enough to have graced the processional ceremonials of the highest dignitary of the Church, and thus to have been a coveted acquisition to the richest monastery in the land. That it was so coveted may be fairly inferred from the fact that on the 22d April 1428, John de Spens of Perth, Bailie of Glendochart, summoned an inquest of the men of Glendochart to hold inquisition regarding the authority and privileges of 'a certain relick of St Felane called the Coygerach.' Of the fifteen summoned, three were Macnabs, deriving their origin from the son of a former abbot; three were of the clan Gregor; and one was named Felan, after the saint. Their verdict sets forth that the Coygerach was in the rightful possession of the deoire, because the office of bearing it had been given hereditarily by the successor of St Fillan to a certain progenitor of Finlay, the deoire at the time of the inquest; that the privileges pertaining to the office had been enjoyed and in use since the days of King Robert Bruce; and that when cattle or goods were stolen or taken by force from any inhabitant of the glen, and they were unable to follow them from fear or feud, the dewar was bound to follow the cattle or goods wherever they might be found throughout the kingdom.
We hear no more of the rights of the Cogerach till 1487, when the dewar sought the sanction of the royal prerogative to aid him in holding his charge with all its ancient rights. In that year, King James III. issued letters of confirmation under the Privy Seal, in favour of Malice Doire, who, as the document sets forth, 'has had a relic of St Felan called the Quigrich in keeping of us and our progenitors since the time of King Robert Bruce, and of before, and has made no obedience or answer to any person spiritual or temporal in any thing concerning it, in any other way than is contained in the auld infeftment granted by our progenitors.' The object was to establish the rights of the Crown in the relic, as distinguished from the rights of the Church; and we may presume that the royal infeftment to which it refers may have been granted by Bruce on the occasion when the old crosier was glorified by incasement in a silver shrine, in token of the king's humble gratitude to God and St Fillan for the victory of Bannockburn.
We find traces of the dewars and their lands in charters down to the time of Queen Mary. The Reformation deprived them of their living, and converted the relic, of which they were the keepers, into a 'monument of idolatry,' fit only to be consigned to the crucible. Still they were faithful to their trust, although instead of emolument it could only bring them trouble. In the succeeding centuries their fortunes fell to a low ebb indeed. In 1782 a passing tourist saw the Quigrich in the house of Malice Doire, a day-labourer in Killin. His son, a youth of nineteen, lay in an outer apartment at the last gasp of consumption; and the traveller was so moved by concern for the probable fate of the Quigrich, in the prospect of the speedy death of the heir to this inestimable possession, that he wrote an account of the circumstances, and transmitted it, with a drawing of the crosier, to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. At that time the Society could not have acquired it; but fortunately their intervention was not necessary for its preservation. On the failure of the older line, by the death of this youth, the relic passed into the hands of a younger brother of Malice Doire's. His son removed to Glenartney, where the Quigrich was again seen by Dr Jamieson, and was described by him in his edition of Barbour's Bruce. Archibald Dewar removed from Glenartney to Balquhidder, where he rented a sheep-farm; but having suffered heavy losses at the close of the French war in 1815, he emigrated to Canada, where he died, aged seventy-five.
His son, Alexander Dewar, the last of the hereditary dewars of the Crosier, is a hale old man of eighty-eight, in comfortable circumstances, the patriarch of a new race of Dewars, rejoicing in upwards of thirty grandchildren, and nephews and nieces innumerable. It is in consequence of his desire to see the ancient relic returned to Scotland before he dies, and placed in the National Museum at Edinburgh, 'there to remain in all time coming for the use, benefit, and enjoyment of the Scottish nation,' that the Society of Antiquaries has been enabled, partly by purchase and partly by his donation, to acquire the Quigrich, the most remarkable of all existing relics associated with the early history of the Scottish nation.
It was five centuries old before the light of authentic record reveals it in 1336 in possession of the dewar Cogerach, and since then it can be traced uninterruptedly in the line of the Dewars for five hundred and forty years. 'Its associations with the Scottish monarchy,' says Dr Daniel Wilson, 'are older than the Regalia, so sacredly guarded in the castle of Edinburgh; and its more sacred memories carry back the fancy to the primitive missionaries of the Christian faith, when the son of St Kentigerna, of the royal race of Leinster, withdrew to the wilderness of Glendochart, and there initiated the good work which has ever since made Strathfillan famous in the legendary history of the Scottish Church.'
[COUSIN DICK.]
Mr and Mrs Woodford were enjoying a confidential matrimonial chat over their tête-à-tête dessert, and discussing at some length the antecedents and probable future of a cousin, Mr Richard Broughton, who had lately dropped down on them, not from the clouds, but from a Liverpool express train. This gentleman had in his youth been 'crossed in love.' Always a musical enthusiast, he had become attached to an amiable girl, a young concert-singer, who was the main stay of her mother—the widow of a captain in the army—and some younger sisters; and having himself not yet made a fair start in life, the elders of both families rose up in arms against the alliance.