FOLKLORE OF SCOTTISH LOCHS
AND SPRINGS.

FOLKLORE OF SCOTTISH LOCHS AND SPRINGS.

BY
JAMES M. MACKINLAY, M.A., F.S.A.Scot.

GLASGOW: WILLIAM HODGE & Co.
1893.

PREFATORY NOTE.

No work giving a comprehensive account of Well-worship in Scotland has yet appeared. Mr. R. C. Hope’s recent volume, “Holy Wells: Their Legends and Traditions,” discusses the subject in its relation to England. In the following pages an attempt has been made to illustrate the more outstanding facts associated with the cult north of the Tweed. Various holy wells are referred to by name; but the list makes no claim to be exhaustive.

J. M. M.

4 Westbourne Gardens,
Glasgow, December, 1893.

CONTENTS.

Among the works consulted are the following, the titles being given in alphabetical order:—

A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland. By John MacCulloch, M.D. 1819.

A Description of the Western Islands. By M. Martin. Circa 1695.

A Handbook of Weather Folklore. By the Rev. C. Swainson, M.A.

A Historical Account of the belief in Witchcraft in Scotland. By Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.

A Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland. By Robert Heron. 1799.

Ancient Legends: Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland. By Lady Wilde.

An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. By John Jamieson, D.D.

Annals of Dunfermline and Vicinity. By Ebenezer Henderson, LL.D.

Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Scotland. By Rev. Charles Cordiner. 1780.

Archæological Sketches in Scotland: Districts of Kintyre and Knapdale. By Captain T. P. White.

A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII. By Thomas Pennant.

A Tour in Scotland, MDCCLXIX. By Thomas Pennant.

Britannia; or, A Chorographical Description of the Flourishing Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Islands adjacent, from the Earliest Antiquity. By William Camden. Translated from the edition published by the Author in MDCVII. Enlarged by the latest discoveries by Richard Gough. The second edition in four volumes. 1806.

Celtic Heathendom. By Professor John Rhys.

Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban. By William Forbes Skene.

Churchlore Gleanings. By T. F. Thiselton Dyer.

Daemonologie in Forme of a Dialogve. Written by the High and Mightie Prince James, by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland; Defender of the Faith. 1603.

Descriptive Notices of some of the Ancient Parochial and Collegiate Churches of Scotland. By T. S. Muir.

Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution. By Robert Chambers, LL.D.

Ecclesiological Notes on some of the Islands of Scotland. By T. S. Muir.

English Folklore. By the Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, M.A.

Essays in the Study of Folk Songs. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco.

Ethnology in Folklore. By G. L. Gomme.

Folklore.

Folklore Journal.

Folklore of East Yorkshire. By John Nicholson.

Folklore of Shakespeare. By Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, M.A. Oxon.

Folklore; or, Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within this Century. By James Napier, F.R.S.E.

Gairloch in North-west Ross-shire: Its Records, Traditions, Inhabitants, and Natural History. By John H. Dixon.

Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline. By Rev. Peter Chalmers, A.M.

Kalendars of Scottish Saints. By the late Alexander Penrose Forbes, Bishop of Brechin.

Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London. Burt’s Letters. 1754.

List of Markets and Fairs now and formerly held in Scotland. By Sir James David Marwick, LL.D.

Memorabilia Domestica; or, Parish Life in the North of Scotland. By the late Rev. Donald Sage, A.M., Minister of Resolis.

New Statistical Account of Scotland. Circa 1845.

Notes and Queries.

Notes on the Folklore of the North-east of Scotland. By the Rev. Walter Gregor.

Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders. By William Henderson.

Observations on Popular Antiquities, including the whole of Mr. Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares. By John Brand, A.M.

Old Glasgow: The Place and the People. By Andrew MacGeorge.

Old Scottish Customs, Local and General. By E. J. Guthrie.

Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland. Edited by Francis H. Groome.

Peasant Life in Sweden. By L. Lloyd.

Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. By John Brand, M.A.

Popular Romances of the West of England. By Robert Hunt, F.R.S.

Popular Tales of the West Highlands. By J. F. Campbell.

Pre-historic Annals of Scotland. By Daniel Wilson, LL.D.

Pre-historic Man. By Daniel Wilson, LL.D.

Primitive Culture. By Edward B. Tylor, D.C.L.

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Old Series, 1851–1878; New Series, 1878–1891.

Rambles in the Far North. By R. Menzies Fergusson.

Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland; or, The Traditional History of Cromarty. By Hugh Miller.

Scotland in Early Christian Times. By Joseph Anderson, LL.D.

Scotland in Pagan Times: The Bronze and Iron Ages. By Joseph Anderson, LL.D.

Scotland in the Middle Ages. By Professor Cosmo Innes.

Social Life in Scotland. By Charles Rogers, LL.D.

Statistical Account of Scotland. By Sir John Sinclair. Circa 1798.

The Antiquary.

The Archæological Journal. Published under the direction of The Council of the Royal Archæological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in connection with the Calendar. Edited by R. Chambers.

The Darker Superstitions of Scotland. By John Graham Dalyell. 1834.

The Early Scottish Church: Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Centuries. By the Rev. Thomas M’Lauchlan.

The Every-Day Book. By William Hone.

The Folklore of Plants. By T. F. Thiselton Dyer.

The Gentleman’s Magazine Library—Manners and Customs. Edited by G. L. Gomme, F.S.A.

The Gentleman’s Magazine Library—Popular Superstitions. Edited by G. L. Gomme, F.S.A.

The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. By J. G. Frazer, M.A.

The History of St. Cuthbert. By Charles, Archbishop of Glasgow.

The History of St. Kilda. By the Rev. Kenneth Macaulay, minister of Ardnamurchan. 1769.

The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, including Rivers, Lakes, Fountains, and Springs. By R. C. Hope, F.S.A.

The Origin of Civilisation. By Sir J. Lubbock, Bart.

The Past in the Present. By Arthur Mitchell, M.D., LL.D.

The Popular Rhymes of Scotland. By Robert Chambers. 1826.

The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland. By William Grant Stewart.

The Surnames and Placenames of the Isle of Man. By A. W. Moore, M.A.

Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore (chiefly Lancashire and the North of England). By Charles Hardwick.

Tree and Serpent Worship. By James Fergusson, D.C.L., F.R.S.

’Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe: The Natural History, Legends, and Folklore of the West Highlands. By the Rev. Alexander Stewart, LL.D.

Unique Traditions, chiefly of the West and South of Scotland. By John Gordon Barbour.

Wayfaring in France. By E. H. Barker.

Weather-lore: A Collection of Proverbs, Sayings, and Rules concerning the Weather. By R. Inwards, F.R.A.S.

Witch, Warlock, and Magician. By W. H. Davenport Adams.

FOLKLORE OF SCOTTISH LOCHS AND SPRINGS.

CHAPTER I.

Worship of Water.

Archaic Nature-worship—Deification of Water Metaphors—Divination by Water—Persistence of Paganism—Shony—Superstitions of Sailors and Fishermen—Sea Serpent—Mer-folk—Sea Charms—Taking Animals into the Sea—Rescuing from Drowning—Ancient Beliefs about Rivers—Dead and Living Ford—Clay Image—Dunskey—Lakes—Dow Loch—St. Vigeans—St. Tredwell’s Loch—Wells of Spey and Drachaldy—Survival of Well-worship—Disappearance of Springs—St. Margaret’s Well—Anthropomorphism of Springs—Celtic Influence—Cream of the Well.

In glancing at the superstitions connected with Scottish lochs and springs, we are called upon to scan a chapter of our social history not yet closed. A somewhat scanty amount of information is available to explain the origin and growth of such superstitions, but enough can be had to connect them with archaic nature-worship. In the dark dawn of our annals much confusion existed among our ancestors concerning the outer world, which so strongly appealed to their senses. They had very vague notions regarding the difference between what we now call the Natural and the Supernatural. Indeed all nature was to them supernatural. They looked on sun, moon, and star, on mountain and forest, on river, lake, and sea as the abodes of divinities, or even as divinities themselves. These divinities, they thought, could either help or hurt man, and ought therefore to be propitiated. Hence sprang certain customs which have survived to our own time. Men knocked at the gate of Nature, but were not admitted within. From the unknown recesses there came to them only tones of mystery.

In ancient times water was deified even by such civilised nations as the Greeks and Romans, and to-day it is revered as a god by untutored savages. Sir John Lubbock, in his “Origin of Civilisation,” shows, by reference to the works of travellers, what a hold this cult still has in regions where the natives have not yet risen above the polytheistic stage of religious development. Dr. E. B. Tylor forcibly remarks, in his “Primitive Culture,” “What ethnography has to teach of that great element of the religion of mankind, the worship of well and lake, brook and river, is simply this—that what is poetry to us was philosophy to early man; that to his mind water acted not by laws of force, but by life and will; that the water-spirits of primæval mythology are as souls which cause the water’s rush and rest, its kindness and its cruelty; that, lastly, man finds in the beings which, with such power, can work him weal and woe, deities with a wider influence over his life, deities to be feared and loved, to be prayed to and praised, and propitiated with sacrificial gifts.”

In speaking of inanimate objects, we often ascribe life to them; but our words are metaphors, and nothing more. At an earlier time such phrases expressed real beliefs, and were not simply the outcome of a poetic imagination. Keats, in one of his Sonnets, speaks of

“The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round Earth’s human shore.”

Here he gives us the poetical and not the actual interpretation of a natural phenomenon.

We may, if we choose, talk of the worship of water as a creed outworn, but it is still with us, though under various disguises. Under the form of rites of divination practised as an amusement by young persons, such survivals often conceal their real origin. The history of superstition teaches us with what persistence pagan beliefs hold their ground in the midst of a Christian civilisation. Martin, who visited the Western Islands at the close of the seventeenth century, found how true this was in many details of daily life. A custom connected with ancient sea-worship had been popular among the inhabitants of Lewis till about thirty-years before his visit, but had been suppressed by the Protestant clergy on account of its pagan character. This was an annual sacrifice at Hallow-tide to a sea god called Shony. Martin gives the following account of the ceremony:—“The inhabitants round the island came to the church of St. Mulvay, having each man his provision along with him; every family furnished a peck of malt, and this was brewed into ale; one of their number was picked out to wade into the sea up to the middle, and, carrying a cup of ale in his hand, standing still in that posture, cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you’ll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground the ensuing year,’ and so threw the cup of ale into the sea. This was performed in the night-time.”

Sailors and fishermen still cherish superstitions of their own. Majesty is not the only feature of the changeful ocean that strikes them. They are keenly alive to its mystery and to the possibilities of life within its depths. Strange creatures have their home there, the mighty sea serpent and the less formidable mermen and mermaidens. Among the Shetland islands mer-folk were recognised denizens of the sea, and were known by the name of Sea-trows.

These singular beings dwelt in the caves of ocean, and came up to disport themselves on the shores of the islands. A favourite haunt of theirs was the Ve Skerries, about seven miles north-west of Papa-Stour. They usually rose through the water in the shape of seals, and when they reached the beach they slipped off their skins and appeared like ordinary mortals, the females being of exceeding beauty. If the skins could be snatched away on these occasions, their owners were powerless to escape into the sea again. Sometimes these creatures were entangled in the nets of fishermen or were caught by hooks. If they were shot when in seal form, a tempest arose as soon as their blood was mingled with the water of the sea. A family living within recent times was believed to be descended from a human father and a mermaid mother, the man having captured his bride by stealing her seal’s skin. After some years spent on land this sea lady recovered her skin, and at once returned to her native element. The members of the family were said to have hands bearing some resemblance to the forefeet of a seal.

“Of all the old mythological existences of Scotland,” remarks Hugh Miller, in his “Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,” “there was none with whom the people of Cromarty were better acquainted than with the mermaid. Thirty years have not yet gone by since she has been seen by moonlight sitting on a stone in the sea, a little to the east of the town; and scarcely a winter passed, forty years earlier, in which she was not heard singing among the rocks or seen braiding up her long yellow tresses on the shore.”

The magical power ascribed to the sea is shown in an Orcadian witch charm used in the seventeenth century. The charm had to do with the churning of butter. Whoever wished to take advantage of it watched on the beach till nine waves rolled in. At the reflux of the last the charmer took three handfuls of water from the sea and carried them home in a pail. If this water was put into the churn there would be a plentiful supply of butter. Sea water was also used for curative purposes, the patient being dipped after sunset. This charm was thought to savour strongly of the black art. Allusion has been made above to the rising of a storm in connection with the wounding of a sea-trow in Shetland. According to an Orcadian superstition, the sea began to swell whenever anyone with a piece of iron about him stept upon a certain rock at the Noup Head of Westray. Not till the offending metal was thrown into the water did the sea become calm again. Wallace, a minister at Kirkwall towards the end of the seventeenth century, mentions this belief in his “Description of the Isles of Orkney,” and says that he offered a man a shilling to try the experiment, but the offer was refused. It does not seem to have occurred to him to make the experiment himself.

Among the ancient Romans the bull was sacred to Neptune, the sea god, and was sacrificed in his honour. In our own country we find a suggestion of the same rite, though in a modified form, in the custom prevailing at one time of leading animals into the sea on certain festivals. In the parish of Clonmany in Ireland it was formerly customary on St. Columba’s Day, the ninth of June, to drive cattle to the beach and swim them in the sea near to where the water from the Saint’s well flowed in. In Scotland horses seem at one time to have undergone a similar treatment at Lammas-tide. Dalyell, in his “Darker Superstitions of Scotland,” mentions that “in July, 1647, the kirk-session of St. Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh, resolved on intimating publicly ‘that non goe to Leith on Lambmes-day, nor tak their horses to be washed that day in the sea.’ ”

A belief at one time existed that it was unlucky to rescue a drowning man from the grasp of the sea. This superstition is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in “The Pirate,” in the scene where Bryce the pedlar warns Mordaunt against saving a shipwrecked sailor. “Are you mad,” said the pedlar, “you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?” We discover the key to this strange superstition in the idea entertained by savages that the person falling into the water becomes the prey of the monster or demon inhabiting that element; and, as Dr. Tylor aptly remarks, “to save a sinking man is to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water-spirit—a rash defiance of deity which would hardly pass unavenged.”

Folklore thus brings us face to face with beliefs which owe their origin to the primitive worship of the sea. It also allows us to catch a glimpse of rivers, lakes, and springs as these were regarded by our distant ancestors. When we remember that, according to a barbaric notion, the current of a stream flows down along one bank and up along the other, we need not be surprised that very crude fancies concerning water at one time flourished in our land.

Even to us, with nineteenth-century science within reach, how mysterious a river seems, as, in the quiet gloaming or in the grey dawn, it glides along beneath overhanging trees, and how full of life it is when, swollen by rain, it rushes forward in a resistless flood! How much more awe-inspiring it must have been to men ignorant of the commonest laws of Nature! Well might its channel be regarded as the home of a spirit eager to waylay and destroy the too-venturesome passer-by. Rivers, however, were not always reckoned the enemies of man, for experience showed that they were helpful, as well as hurtful, to him. The Tiber, for instance, was regarded with reverence by the ancient inhabitants of Rome. Who does not remember the scene in one of Macaulay’s Lays, where, after the bridge has been hewn down to block the passage of Lars Porsena and his host, the valiant Horatius exclaims—

“O Tiber! father Tiber!

To whom the Romans pray;

A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,

Take thou in charge this day?”

Then with his harness on his back he plunges headlong into the flood, and reaches the other side in safety.

In Christian art pagan symbolism continued long to flourish. Proof of this bearing on the present subject is to be found in a mosaic at Ravenna, of the sixth century, representing the baptism of Christ. The water flows from an inverted urn, held by a venerable figure typifying the river god of the Jordan, with reeds growing beside his head, and snakes coiling around it.

In our own country healing virtue was attributed to water taken from what was called a dead and living ford, i.e., a ford where the dead were carried and the living walked across. The same belief was entertained with regard to the water of a south-running stream. The patient had to go to the spot and drink the water and wash himself in it. Sometimes his shirt was taken by another, and, after being dipped in the south-running stream, was brought back and put wet upon him. A wet shirt was also used as a Hallowe’en charm to foretell its owner’s matrimonial future. The left sleeve of the shirt was to be dipped in a river where “three lairds’ lands met.” It was then to be hung up overnight before the fire. If certain rules were attended to, the figure of the future spouse would appear and turn the sleeve in order to dry the other side. In the Highlands the water of a stream was used for purposes of sorcery till quite lately. When any one wished evil to another he made a clay image of the person to be injured, and placed it in a stream with the head of the image against the current. It was believed that, as the clay was dissolved by the water, the health of the person represented would decline. The spell, however, would be broken if the image was discovered and removed from the stream. In the counties of Sutherland and Ross the practice survived till within the last few years. Near Dunskey, in the parish of Portpatrick, Wigtownshire, is a stream which, at the end of last century, was much resorted to by the credulous for its health-giving properties. Visits were usually paid to it at the change of the moon. It was deemed specially efficacious in the case of rickety children, whose malady was then ascribed to witchcraft. The patients were washed in the stream, and then taken to an adjoining cave, where they were dried.

In modern poetry a river is frequently alluded to under the name of its presiding spirit. Thus, in “Comus,” Milton introduces Sabrina, a gentle nymph,

“That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream,”

and tells us that

“The shepherds at their festivals

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,

And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.”

Lakes have always held an important place in legendary lore. Lord Tennyson has made us familiar with the part played by the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romance. Readers of the Idylls will recollect it was she who gave to the king the jewelled sword Excalibur, and who, on the eve of his passing, received it again. The wounded Arthur thus addresses Sir Bedivere:—

“Thou rememberest how,

In those old days, one summer morn, an arm

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

Holding the sword—and how I row’d across

And took it, and have worn it, like a king.”

Scottish lochs form a striking feature in the landscape, and must have been still more fitted to arrest attention in ancient times when our land was more densely wooded than it is now. Dr. Hugh Macmillan, in his “Holidays on High Lands,” alludes to the differences in the appearance of our lochs. “There are moorland tarns,” he says, “sullen and motionless as lakes of the dead, lying deep in sunless rifts, where the very ravens build no nests, and where no trace of life or vegetation is seen—associated with many a wild tradition, accidents of straying feet, the suicide of love, guilt, despair. And there are lochs beautiful in themselves and gathering around them a world of beauty; their shores fringed with the tasselled larch; their shallows tesselated with the broad green leaves and alabaster chalices of the water-lily, and their placid depths mirroring the crimson gleam of the heather hills and the golden clouds overhead.”

Near the top of Mealfourvounie, in Inverness-shire, is a small lake at one time believed to be unfathomable. How this notion arose it is difficult to say, for when soundings were taken the depth was found to be inconsiderable. In the parish of Penpont, Dumfriesshire, about a mile to the south of Drumlanrig, is a small sheet of water called the Dow, or Dhu Loch, i.e., Black Loch. Till towards the end of last century the spot was much frequented for its healing water. A personal visit was not essential. When a deputy was sent he had to bring a portion of the invalid’s clothing and throw it over his left shoulder into the loch. He then took up some water in a vessel which he carefully kept from touching the ground. After turning himself round sun-ways he carried the water home. The charm would be broken if he looked back or spoke to anyone by the way. Among the people of the district it was a common saying, when anyone did not respond to the greeting of a passer-by, that he had been at the Dow Loch. Pilgrimages to the loch seem to have been specially popular towards the close of the seventeenth century, for in the year 1695 the Presbytery of Penpont consulted the Synod of Dumfries about the superstitious practices then current. The Synod, in response to the appeal, recommended the clergy of the district to denounce from their pulpits such observances as heathenish in character. There were persons still alive in the beginning of the present century who had seen the offerings, left by the pilgrims, floating on the loch or lying on its margin. To the passer-by, ignorant of the superstitious custom, it might seem that a rather untidy family washing was in progress.

The Church of St. Vigeans, in Forfarshire, is well known to antiquaries in connection with its interesting sculptured stones. An old tradition relates that the materials for the building were carried by a water-kelpie, and that the foundations were laid on large bars of iron. Underneath the structure was said to be a deep lake. The tradition further relates that the kelpie prophesied that an incumbent of the church would commit suicide, and that, on the occasion of the first communion after, the church would sink into the lake. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the minister of the parish did commit suicide, and so strong was the superstition that the sacramental rite was not observed till 1736. In connection with the event several hundred people took up a position on a neighbouring rising ground to watch what would happen. These spectators have passed away, but the church remains.

St. Tredwell’s Loch in Papa-Westray, Orkney, was at one time very famous, partly from its habit of turning red whenever anything striking was about to happen to a member of the Royal Family, and partly from its power to work cures. On a small headland on the east of the loch are still to be seen the ruins of St. Tredwell’s Chapel, measuring twenty-nine feet by twenty-two, with walls fully four feet in thickness. On the floor-level about thirty copper coins were found some years ago, the majority of them being of the reign of Charles the Second. At the door of the chapel there was at one time a large heap of stones, made up of contributions from those who came to pay their vows there. Mr. R. M. Fergusson, in his “Rambles in the Far North,” gives the following particulars about the loch:—“In olden times the diseased and infirm people of the North Isles were wont to flock to this place and get themselves cured by washing in its waters. Many of them walked round the shore two or three times before entering the loch itself to perfect by so doing the expected cure. When a person was engaged in this perambulation nothing would induce him to utter a word, for, if he spoke, the waters of this holy loch would lave his diseased body in vain. After the necessary ablutions were performed they never departed without leaving behind them some piece of cloth or bread as a gift to the presiding genius of the place. In the beginning of the eighteenth century popular belief in this water was as strong as ever.”

Superstitions had a vigorous life last century. Pennant, who made his first tour in Scotland in 1769, mentions that the wells of Spey and Drachalday, in Moray, were then much visited, coins and rags being left at them as offerings. Nowadays holy wells are probably far from the thoughts of persons living amid the stir and bustle of city life, but in rural districts, where old customs linger, they are not yet forgotten. In the country, amidst the sights and sounds of nature, men are prone to cherish the beliefs and ways of their forefathers. Practices born in days of darkness thus live on into an era of greater enlightenment. “The adoration of wells,” remarks Sir Arthur Mitchell in his “Past in the Present,” “may be encountered in all parts of Scotland from John o’ Groats to the Mull of Galloway,” and he adds, “I have seen at least a dozen wells in Scotland which have not ceased to be worshipped.” “Nowadays,” he continues, “the visitors are comparatively few, and those who go are generally in earnest. They have a serious object which they desire to attain. That object is usually the restoration to health of some poor little child—some ‘back-gane bairn.’ Indeed the cure of sick children is a special virtue of many of these wells. Anxious mothers make long journeys to some well of fame, and early in the morning of the 1st of May bathe the little invalid in its waters, then drop an offering into them by the hands of the child—usually a pebble, but sometimes a coin—and attach a bit of the child’s dress to a bush or tree growing by the side of the well. The rags we see fastened to such bushes have often manifestly been torn from the dresses of young children. Part of a bib or little pinafore tells the sad story of a sorrowing mother and a suffering child, and makes the heart grieve that nothing better than a visit to one of these wells had been found to relieve the sorrow and remove the suffering.” Mr. Campbell of Islay bears witness to the same fact. In his “Tales of the West Highlands” he says, “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 and trees at the edge of the ‘Witches’ well.’ ”

A striking testimony to the persistence of faith in such wells is borne by Mr. J. R. Walker in volume v. (new series) of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” where he describes an incident that he himself witnessed about ten years ago on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Mr. Walker writes, “While walking in the Queen’s Park about sunset, I casually passed St. Anthony’s Well, and had my attention attracted by the number of people about it, all simply quenching their thirst, some probably with a dim idea that they would reap some benefit from the draught. Standing a little apart, however, and evidently patiently waiting a favourable moment to present itself for their purpose, was a group of four. Feeling somewhat curious as to their intention I quietly kept myself in the background, and by-and-by was rewarded. The crowd departed and the group came forward, consisting of two old women, a younger woman of about thirty, and a pale sickly-looking girl—a child three or four years old. Producing cups from their pockets, the old women dipped them in the pool, filled them, and drank the contents. A full cup was then presented to the younger woman and another to the child. Then one of the old women produced a long linen bandage, dipped it in the water, wrung it, dipped it in again, and then wound it round the child’s head, covering the eyes, the youngest woman, evidently the mother of the child, carefully observing the operation and weeping gently all the time. The other old woman not engaged in this work was carefully filling a clear glass bottle with the water, evidently for future use. Then, after the principal operators had looked at each other with an earnest and half solemn sort of look, the party wended its way carefully down the hill.”

Agricultural improvements, particularly within the present century, have done much to abolish the adoration of wells. In many cases ancient springs have ceased to exist through draining operations. In the parish of Urquhart, Elginshire, a priory was founded in 1125. Towards the end of last century the site was converted into an arable field. The name of Abbey Well, given to the spring whence the monks drew water, long kept alive the memory of the priory; but in recent times the well itself was filled up. St. Mary’s Well, at Whitekirk, in Haddingtonshire, has also ceased to be, its water having been drained off. Near Drumakill, in Drymen parish, Dumbartonshire, there was a famous spring dedicated to St. Vildrin. Close to it was a cross two feet and a half in height, with the figure of the saint incised on it. About thirty years ago, however, the relic was broken up and used in the construction of a farmhouse, and not long after, the well itself was drained into an adjoining stream. In the middle ages the spring at Restalrig, near Edinburgh, dedicated to St. Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore, was a great attraction to pilgrims. The history of the well is interesting. There is reason to believe that it was originally sacred to the Holy Rood; and tradition connects it with the fountain that gushed out at the spot where a certain hart suddenly vanished from the sight of King David I. Mr. Walker, in the volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” already referred to, throws out the suggestion that the well may have had its dedication changed in connection with the translation of Queen Margaret’s relics about 1251, on the occasion of her canonization. With regard to the date of the structure forming the covering of the well, Mr. Walker, as an architect, is qualified to give an opinion, and from an examination of the mason marks on it he is inclined to think that the building was erected about the same time as the west tower of Holyrood Abbey Church, viz., about 1170. The late Sir Daniel Wilson, in his “Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time,” gives the following account of the structure, which, however, he by mistake describes as octagonal instead of hexagonal:—“The building rises internally to the height of about four and a half feet, of plain ashlar work, with a stone ledge or seat running round seven of the sides, while the eighth is occupied by a pointed arch which forms the entrance to the well. From the centre of the water which fills the whole area of the building, pure as in the days of the pious queen, a decorated pillar rises to the same height as the walls, with grotesque gurgoils, from which the water has originally been made to flow. Above this springs a beautifully groined roof, presenting, with the ribs that rise from corresponding corbels at each of the eight angles of the building, a singularly rich effect when illuminated by the reflected light from the water below. A few years since, this curious fountain stood by the side of the ancient and little frequented cross-road leading from the Abbeyhill to the village of Restalrig. A fine old elder tree, with its knotted and furrowed branches, spread a luxuriant covering over its grass-grown top, and a rustic little thatched cottage stood in front of it, forming altogether a most attractive object of antiquarian pilgrimage.” The spot, however, was invaded by the North British Railway Company, and a station was planted on the site of the elder tree and the rustic cottage, the spring and its Gothic covering being imbedded in the buildings. Some years later the water disappeared, having found another channel. The structure was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt above St. David’s Spring, on the north slope of Salisbury Crags, where it still stands.

In cases like the above, man interfered with nature and caused the disappearance of venerated springs. But it was not always so. In the parish of Logierait, in Perthshire, there was a spring that took the matter into its own hands, and withdrew from public view. This was the spring called in Gaelic Fuaran Chad, i.e., Chad’s Well. An annual market used to be held close by in honour of the saint, on the 22nd August. The spring was gratified and bubbled away merrily. The market, however, was at length discontinued. In consequence Fuaran Chad took offence, and sent in its resignation. In one instance, at least, the belief in the efficacy of a spring survived the very existence of the spring itself. This was so in the case of a healing well near Buckie, in Banffshire, filled up some years ago by the tenant on whose farm it was situated. So great was its fame that some women whose infants were weakly went to the spot and cleared out the rubbish. Water again filled the old basin, and there the infants were bathed. While being carried home they fell asleep, and the result was in every way to the satisfaction of the mothers.

Certain characteristics of water specially recommended it as an object of worship in primæval times. Its motion and force suggested that it had life, and hence a soul. Men therefore imagined that by due attention to certain rites it would prove a help to them in time of need. What may be called the anthropomorphism of fountains has left traces on popular superstitions. The interest taken by St. Tredwell’s Loch in the national events has been already alluded to, and other examples will be noticed in future chapters.

One point may be mentioned here, viz., the power possessed by wells of removing to another place. St. Fillan’s Spring, at Comrie, in Perthshire, once took its rise on the top of the hill Dunfillan, but tradition says that it quitted its old site for the present one, at the foot of a rock, a quarter of a mile further south. In the article on Comrie in the “Old Statistical Account of Scotland,” the well is described as “humbled indeed, but not forsaken.” A more striking instance of flitting is mentioned by Martin as having occurred in the Hebrides. In his account of Islay, he says, “A mile on the south-west side of the cave Uah Vearnag is the celebrated well Toubir-in-Knahar, which, in the ancient language, is as much as to say, ‘the well has sailed from one place to another’; for it is a received tradition of the vulgar inhabitants of this isle, and the opposite isle of Colonsay, that this well was first at Colonsay until an impudent woman happened to wash her hands in it, and that immediately after, the well, being thus abused, came in an instant to Islay, where it is like to continue, and is ever since esteemed a catholicon for diseases by the natives and adjacent islanders.” Perhaps the instance that puts the greatest strain on credulity is that of the spring dedicated to St. Fergus on the hill of Knockfergan, in Banffshire. Tradition reports that this spring came in a miraculous manner from Italy, though how it travelled to its quiet retreat in Scotland we do not know. There must have been some special attraction about the well, for a market known as the Well-Market used to be held beside it every year. On one occasion a fight took place about a cheese. In consequence the market was transferred to the neighbouring village of Tomintoul, where it continues to be held in August, under the same name.

In his “Romances of the West of England,” the late Mr. Robert Hunt puts in a plea for the preservation of holy wells and other relics of antiquity, though he allows “that it is a very common notion amongst the peasantry that a just retribution overtakes those who wilfully destroy monuments, such as stone circles, crosses, wells, and the like,” and he mentions the case of an old man who altered a holy well at Boscaswell, in St. Just, and was drowned the following day within sight of his house. Mr. Hunt is speaking of Cornish wells; but the same is doubtless true of those north of the Tweed. Springs that can fly through the air and go through certain other wonderful performances can surely be trusted to look after themselves.

In hot Eastern lands, fountains were held in special reverence. This was to be expected, as their cooling waters were there doubly welcome. In accounting for the presence of the cult in the temperate zones of Europe, we do not need to trace it to the East as Lady Wilde does in her “Ancient Legends of Ireland.” “It could not have originated,” she says, “in a humid country … where wells can be found at every step, and sky and land are ever heavy and saturated with moisture. It must have come from an Eastern people, wanderers in a dry and thirsty land, where the discovery of a well seemed like the interposition of an angel in man’s behalf.” In our own land there are no districts where well-worship has held its ground so firmly as those occupied by peoples of Celtic blood, such as Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Scottish Highlands. A curious instance of the survival of water-worship among our Scottish peasantry was seen in the custom of going at a very early hour on New-Year’s morning to get a pailful of water from a neighbouring spring. The maidens of the farm had a friendly rivalry as to priority. Whoever secured the first pailful was said to get the flower of the well, otherwise known as the ream or cream of the well. On their way to the spring the maidens commonly chanted the couplet—

“The flower o’ the well to our house gaes,

An’ I’ll the bonniest lad get.”

This referred to the belief that to be first at the well was a good omen of the maiden’s matrimonial future. It is a far cry from archaic water-worship to this New-Year’s love charm, but we can traverse in thought the road that lies between.

CHAPTER II.

How Water became Holy.

Change from Paganism to Christianity—Columba—Spirits of Fountains—Hurtful Wells—Stone Circles—Superstitions regarding them—Standing Stones and Springs—Innis Maree—Maelrubha—Influence of early Saints—Names of Wells—Stone-coverings—Sacred Buildings and Springs—Privilege of Sanctuary—Some Examples—Freedstoll—Preceptory of Torphichen and St. John’s Well—Cross of Macduff and Nine-wells.

We come next to ask how water became holy in the folklore sense of the word. Fortunately we get a glimpse of springs at the very time when they passed from pagan to Christian auspices. The change made certain differences, but did not take away their miraculous powers. We get this glimpse in the pages of Adamnan, St. Columba’s biographer, who narrates an incident in connection with the saint’s missionary work among the Picts in the latter half of the sixth century. Adamnan tells us of a certain fountain “famous among the heathen people, which the foolish men, having their senses blinded by the devil, worshipped as God. For those, who drank of this fountain, or purposely washed their hands or feet in it, were allowed by God to be struck by demoniacal art, and went home either leprous or purblind, or at least suffering from weakness or other kind of infirmity. By all these things the pagans were seduced and paid divine honour to the fountain.” Columba made use of the popular belief in the interests of the new faith, and blessed the fountain in the name of Christ in order to expel the demons. He then took a draught of the water and washed his hands and feet in it, to show that it could no longer do harm. According to Adamnan the demons deserted the fountain, and many cures were afterwards wrought by it. In Ireland more than a century earlier, St. Patrick visited the fountain of Findmaige, called Slan. Offerings were wont to be made to it, and it was worshipped as a god by the Magi of the district.

It is difficult to determine exactly from what standpoint our pagan ancestors regarded wells. The nature-spirits inhabiting them, styled demons by Adamnan, were malignant in disposition, if we judge by the case he mentions; but we must not therefore conclude that they were so in every instance. Perhaps it is safe to infer that most of them were considered favourable to man, or the reverse, according as they were or were not propitiated by him. Even in modern times, some springs have been regarded as hurtful. The well of St. Chad, at Lichfield, for instance, causes ague to anyone drinking its water. Even its connection with the saint has not removed its hurtful qualities. In west Highland Folk-Tales allusion is made to poison wells, and such are even yet regarded with a certain amount of fear. In the article on the parish of Kilsyth in the “Old Statistical Account of Scotland,” it is stated that Kittyfrist Well, beside the road leading over the hill to Stirling, was believed to be noxious. Successive wayfarers, when tired and heated by their climb up hill, may have drunk injudiciously of the cold water, and thus the superstition may have originated.

Stone circles have given rise to much discussion. They are perhaps best known by their popular name of Druidical temples. Whatever were the other purposes served by them, there is hardly any doubt that they were primarily associated with interments. Dr. Joseph Anderson has pointed out that a certain archæological succession can be traced. Thus we find first, burial cairns minus stones round them, then cairns plus stones, and finally, stones minus cairns. At one time there was a widely-spread belief that men could be transformed into standing stones by the aid of magic. This power was attributed to the Druids. There are also traditions of saints thus settling their heathen opponents. When speaking of the island of Lewis, Martin says, “Several other stones are to be seen here in remote places, and some of them standing on one end. Some of the ignorant vulgar say that they were men by enchantment turned into stones. Such monoliths are still known to the Gaelic-speaking inhabitants of Lewis as Fir Chreig, i.e., false men. We learn from the “New Statistical Account of Scotland” that the two standing stones at West Skeld, in Shetland, were believed by the islanders to have been originally wizards or giants. Close to the roadside on Maughold Head, in the Isle of Man, stands an ancient runic cross. A local tradition states that the cross was once an old woman, who, when carrying a bundle of wool, cursed the wind for hindering her on her journey, and was petrified in consequence.

With superstitions thus clinging to standing-stones it is not to be wondered that springs in their neighbourhood should have been regarded with special reverence. In the “Old Statistical Account of Scotland” allusion is made to Tobir-Chalaich, i.e., Old Wife’s Well, situated near a stone circle in the parish of Keith, Banffshire, and to another well not far from a second circle in the same parish. The latter spring ceased to be visited about the middle of last century. Till then offerings were left at it by persons seeking its aid. The writer of the article on the island of Barry, Inverness-shire, in the same work, says, “Here, i.e., at Castle-Bay, there are several Druidical temples. Near one of these is a well which must have been once famous for its medicinal quality, as also for curing and preventing the effects of fascination. It is called Tobbar-nam-buadh or the Well of Virtues.” Under the heading “Beltane,” in “Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary,” the following occurs:—“A town in Perthshire, on the borders of the Highlands, is called Tillie (or Tullie) Beltane, i.e., the eminence or rising ground of the fire of Baal. In the neighbourhood is a Druidical temple of eight upright stones, where it is supposed the fire was kindled. At some distance from this, is another temple of the same kind, but smaller, and near it a well still held in great veneration. 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.” Gallstack Well, at Drumlanrig, in Dumfriesshire, is near a group of standing stones. From examples like the above, we may infer that some mysterious connection was supposed to exist between standing stones and their adjacent wells. In the Tullie Beltane instance indeed, stones and well were associated together in the same superstitious rite.

A striking instance of Christianity borrowing from paganism is to be seen in the reverence paid to the well of Innis Maree, in Loch Maree, in Ross-shire. This well has been famous from an unknown past. It is dedicated to St. Maelrubha, after whom both loch and island are named. Maelrubha belonged to the monastery of Bangor, in Ireland. In the year 673, at the age of thirty-one, he settled at Applecrossan, now Applecross, in Ross-shire, and there founded a church as the nucleus of a conventual establishment. Over this monastery he presided for fifty-one years, and died a natural death in 722. A legend, disregarding historical probabilities, relates that he was slain by a band of pagan Norse rovers, and that his body was left in the forest to be devoured by wild beasts. His grave is still pointed out in Applecross churchyard, the spot being marked by a pillar slab with an antique cross carved on it. For centuries after his death he was regarded as the patron saint, not only of Applecross, but of a wide district around. Pennant, who visited Innis Maree in 1772, thus describes its appearance: “The shores are neat and gravelly; the whole surface covered thickly with a beautiful grove of oak, ash, willow, wicken, birch, fir, hazel, and enormous hollies. In the midst is a circular dike of stones, with a regular narrow entrance, the inner part has been used for ages as a burial-place, and is still in use. I suspect the dyke 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. A stump of a tree is shown as an altar, probably the memorial of one of stone; but the curiosity of the place is the well of the saint; of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy.” Whatever Pennant meant by Druidical, there is reason to believe that the spot was the scene of pre-Christian rites. In the popular imagination the outlines of Maelrubha’s character seem to have become mixed up with those of the heathen divinity worshipped in the district. Two circumstances point to this. Firstly, as Sir Arthur Mitchell remarks in the fourth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” “The people of the place speak often of the God Mourie instead of St. Mourie, which may have resulted from his having supplanted the old god.” Secondly, as the same writer shows, by reference to old kirk session records, it was customary in the parish to sacrifice a bull to St. Mourie. This was done on the saint’s day, the 25th of August. The practice was still in existence in the latter half of the 17th century, and was then denounced as idolatrous.

We thus see that the sacredness of springs can be traced back through Christianity to paganism, though there is no doubt that in some instances it took its rise from association with early saints. In deciding the question of origin, however, care must be taken, for, as already indicated, the reverence anciently paid to wells led to their selection by the early missionaries. The holy wells throughout the land keep alive their names. An excellent example of a saint’s influence on a particular district is met with in the case of St. Angus, at Balquhidder, in Perthshire. In his “Notes in Balquhidder” in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” vol. ix. (new series), Mr. J. Mackintosh Gow remarks, “Saint Angus, the patron saint of the district, is said to have come to the glen from the eastward, and to have been so much struck with its marvellous beauty that he blessed it. The remains of the stone on which he sat to rest are still visible in the gable of one of the farm buildings at Easter Auchleskine, and the turn of the road is yet called ‘Beannachadh Aonghais’ (Angus’s blessing). At this spot it was the custom in the old days for people going westward to show their respect for the saint by repeating, ‘Beannaich Aonghais ann san Aoraidh’ (Bless Angus in the oratory or chapel), at the same time reverently taking off their bonnets. The saint, going west, had settled at a spot below the present kirk, and near to a stone circle, the remains of which, and of the oratory, persons now living remember to have seen.” After alluding to another stone circle in a haugh below the parish church manse, Mr. Gow mentions that this haugh is the stance of the old market of Balquhidder, long a popular one in the district. It was held on the saint’s day in April and named Feill-Aonghais, after him. In the immediate neighbourhood there is a knoll called “Tom Aonghais,” i.e., Angus’s hillock. In the grounds of Edinchip there is a curing well called in Gaelic, “Fuaran n’druibh chasad,” i.e., the Whooping-cough Well, beside the burn “Alt cean dhroma.” “It is formed of a water-worn pot hole in the limestone rock which forms the bed of the burn, and is ten or twelve inches in diameter at the top and six inches deep. There must be a spring running into the hollow through a fissure, as no sooner is it emptied than it immediately refills, and contains about two quarts of water. The well can easily be distinguished by the large moss-covered boulder, round and flat, like a crushed ball, and about seven feet in diameter, which overshadows it, and a young ash tree of several stems growing by its side.” This well was famous for the cure of whooping-cough, and children were brought to it till within recent years. The water was given in a spoon made from the horn of a living cow. When the patients could not visit the spring in person, a bottleful of the healing liquid was taken to their homes, and there administered. The district round the lower waters of Loch Awe, now comprising the united parishes of Glenorchy and Inishail was held to be under the patronage of Connan. There is a well at Dalmally dedicated to him. According to a local tradition he dwelt beside the well and blessed its water.

In addition to springs named after particular saints, there are some bearing the general appellation of Saints’ Wells or Holy Wells. There are Holy Rood and Holy Wood Wells, also Holy Trinity and Chapel Wells. There are likewise Priors’, Monks’, Cardinals’, Bishops’, Priests’, Abbots’, and Friars’ Wells. Various springs have names pointing to no ecclesiastical connection whatever. To this class belong those known as Virtue Wells, and those others named from the various diseases to be cured by them. On the Rutherford estate, in the parish of West Linton, Peeblesshire, there is a mineral spring called Heaven-aqua Well. Considering the name, one might form great expectations as to its virtues. There is much force in the remarks of Dr. J. Hill Burton, in his “Book Hunter.” He says, “The unnoticeable smallness of many of these consecrated wells makes their very reminiscence and still semi-sacred character all the more remarkable. The stranger in Ireland, or the Highlands of Scotland, hears rumours of a distinguished well, miles on miles off. He thinks he will find an ancient edifice over it, or some other conspicuous adjunct. Nothing of the kind. He has been lured all that distance, over rock and bog, to see a tiny spring bubbling out of the rock, such as he may see hundreds of in a tolerable walk any day. Yet, if he search in old topographical authorities, he will find that the little well has ever been an important feature of the district; that century after century it has been unforgotten; and, with diligence he may perhaps trace it to some incident in the life of the saint, dead more than 1200 years ago, whose name it bears.” There are a few wells with a more or less ornamental stone covering, such as St. Margaret’s Well, in the Queen’s Park, Edinburgh, and St. Michael’s Well, at Linlithgow. St. Ninian’s Well, at Stirling, and also at Kilninian, in Mull; St. Ashig’s Well, in Skye; St. Peter’s Well, at Houston, in Renfrewshire; Holy Rood Well, at Stenton, in Haddingtonshire; and the Well of Spa, at Aberdeen, also belong to this class.

As already indicated, standing stones and the wells near them were associated together in the same ritual act. A curious parallelism can be traced between this practice and one connected with Christian places of worship. Near the Butt of Lewis are the ruins of a chapel anciently dedicated to St. Mulvay, and known in the district as Teampull-mòr. The spot was till quite lately the scene of rites connected with the cure of insanity. The patient was made to walk seven times round the ruins, and was then sprinkled with water from St. Ronan’s Well hard by. In Orkney it was believed that invalids would recover health by walking round the Cross-kirk of Wasbister and the adjoining loch in silence before sunrise. In some instances sacred sites were walked round without reference to wells, and, in others, wells without reference to sacred sites. But when the two were neighbours they were often included in the same ceremony. In the early days when Christianity was preached, the structures of the new faith were occasionally planted close to groups of standing stones, and it may be assumed that in some instances, at least, the latter served to supply materials for building the former. Even in our own day it is not uncommon for Highlanders to speak of going to the clachan, i.e., the stones, to indicate that they are going to church. The reverence paid to the pagan sites was thus transferred to the Christian, and any fountain in the vicinity received a large share of such reverence.

In former times, both south and north of the Tweed, churches and churchyards were regarded with special veneration as affording an asylum to offenders against the law. In England the Right of Sanctuary was held in great respect during Anglo-Saxon times, and after the Norman Conquest laws were passed regulating the privileges of such shelters. When a robber or murderer was pursued, he was free from capture if he could reach the sacred precincts. But he had to enter unarmed. His stay there was only temporary. After going through certain formalities he was allowed to travel, cross in hand, to some neighbouring seaport to quit his country for ever. In the reign of Henry VIII., however, a statute was passed forbidding criminals thus to leave their native land on the ground that they would disclose state secrets, and teach archery to the enemies of the realm. In the north of England, Durham and Beverley contained noted sanctuaries. In various churches there was a stone seat called the Freedstoll or Stool of Peace, on which the criminal, when seated, was absolutely safe. Such a seat, dating from the Norman period, is still to be seen in the Priory Church at Hexham, where the sanctuary was in great request by fugitives from the debatable land between England and Scotland. The only other Freedstoll still to be found in England is in Beverley Minster. The Right of Sanctuary was formally abolished in England in the reign of James I., but did not cease to be respected till much later. Such being the regard in the middle ages for churches and their burying-grounds, it is easy to understand why fountains in their immediate neighbourhood were also reverenced. Several sanctuaries north of the Tweed were specially famous. In his “Scotland in the Middle Ages,” Professor Cosmo Innes remarks, “Though all were equally sacred by the canon, it would seem that the superior sanctity of some churches, from the relics presented there, or the reverence of their patron saints, afforded a surer asylum, and thus attracted fugitives to their shrines rather than to the altars of common parish churches.” The churches of Stow, Innerleithen, and Tyningham were asylums at one time specially favoured. The church on St. Charmaig’s Island, in the Sound of Jura—styled also Eilean Mòr or the Great Island—was formerly a noted place of refuge among the Inner Hebrides. So much sanctity attached to the church of Applecross that the privileged ground around it extended six miles in every direction. In connection with his visit to Arran, Martin thus describes what had once been a sanctuary in that island: “There is an eminence of about a thousand paces in compass on the sea-coast in Druim-cruey village, and it is fenced about with a stone wall; of old it was a sanctuary, and whatever number of men or cattle could get within it were secured from the assaults of their enemies, the place being privileged by universal consent.” The enclosure was probably an ancient burying-ground.

The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights of Rhodes, and also as the Hospitallers, received recognition in Scotland as an Order about the middle of the twelfth century. They had possessions in almost every county, but their chief seat was at Torphichen, in Linlithgowshire, where the ruins of their preceptory can still be seen. This preceptory formed the heart of the famous sanctuary of Torphichen. In the graveyard stands a stone, resembling an ordinary milestone with a Maltese cross carved on its top. All the ground enclosed in a circle, having a radius of one mile from this stone, formed a sanctuary for criminals and debtors. Other four stones placed at the cardinal points showed the limits of the sanctuary on their respective sides. At some distance to the east of the preceptory is St. John’s Well, “to which,” the writer of the article in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland” says, “the Knights of St. John used to go in days of yore for a morning draught;” and he adds, “whether its virtues were medicinal or of a more hallowed character tradition can not exactly inform us, but still its waters are thought to possess peculiar healing powers, if not still rarer qualities which operate in various cases as a charm.” Perhaps no Scottish sanctuary has been more talked about than the one at Holyrood Abbey, intended originally for law-breakers in general, but latterly for debtors only. De Quincey found a temporary home within its precincts. Through recent legislation, chiefly through the Debtors (Scotland) Act of 1880, the sanctuary has been rendered unnecessary, and its privileges, though never formally abolished, have accordingly passed away.

In a pass of the Ochils, near Newburgh, overlooking Strathearn, is a block of freestone three and a half feet high, four and a half feet long, and nearly four feet broad at the base. This formed the pedestal of the celebrated cross of Macduff, and is all that remains of that ancient monument. The shaft of the cross was destroyed at the time of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century. In former days the spot was held to be a privilege and liberty of girth. When anyone claiming kinship to Macduff, Earl of Fife, within the ninth degree committed slaughter in hot blood and took refuge at the cross, he could atone for his crime by the payment of nine cows and a colpindach or year-old cow. Those who could not make good their kinship were slain on the spot. Certain ancient burial mounds, at one time to be seen in the immediate neighbourhood, were popularly believed to be the graves of those who thus met their death, and a local superstition asserted that their shrieks could be heard by night. A fountain, known as the Nine Wells, gushes out not far from the site of the cross, and in it tradition says that the manslayer who was entitled to claim the privilege of sanctuary washed his hands, thereby freeing himself from the stain of blood.

CHAPTER III.

Saints and Springs.

Columba’s Miracle—His Wells—Deer—Drostan’s Springs—His Relics—His Fairs—His Connection with Caithness—Urquhart—Adamnan—His Wells—Tom Eunan—Feil Columcille—Adamnan’s Visit to Northumbria—His Church Dedications—Kieran—His Cave—Campbeltown—Book of the Gospels—Kieran’s Church at Errigall-keroge—His Wells—Bridget—Her Legend—Bridewell—Bridget’s Wells—Abernethy—Torranain—Ninian—His Influence—His Cave—Candida Casa—Ninian and Martin—Ninian’s Springs—St. Martin’s Well—Martinmas—Martin of Bullion’s Day—Bullion Well—Kentigern—Fergus—Arbores Sancti Kentigerni—His Wells—Thanet Well—St. Enoch’s Well—Cuthbert—His Wells and Bath—His Career—Palladius—His Miracle—Paldy’s Well and Paldy’s Fair—His Chapel—Ternan—His Wells—Church of Arbuthnot—Brendan—Bute—Kilbrandon Sound—Well at Barra—Boyndie and Cullen—Machar—His Cathedral and Well—Tobar-Mhachar—Constantine—Govan—Kilchouslan Church—St. Cowstan’s Well—Serf—Area of his Influence.

The annals of hagiology are full of the connection between saints and springs. On one occasion a child was brought to Columba for baptism, but there was no water at hand for the performance of the rite. The saint knelt in prayer opposite a neighbouring rock, and rising, blessed the face of the rock. Water immediately gushed forth, and with it the child was baptised. Adamnan, who tells the story, says that the child was Lugucencalad, whose parents were from Artdaib-muirchol (Ardnamurchan), where there is seen even to this day a well called by the name of St. Columba. There are many wells in Scotland named after him. As might be expected, one of these is in Iona. Almost all are along the west coast and in the Hebrides. The name of Kirkcolm, in Wigtownshire, signifies the Church of Columba. The parish contains a fountain dedicated to him, known as Corswell or Crosswell, from which the castle headland and lighthouse of Corsewall have derived their name. A certain amount of sanctity still clings to the fountain. Macaulay, in his “History of St. Kilda” published in 1764, describes a spring there called by the inhabitants Toberi-Clerich, the cleric in question being, according to him, Columba. “This well,” he says, “is below the village, … and gushes out like a torrent from the face of a rock. At every full tide the sea overflows it, but how soon that ebbs away, nothing can be fresher or sweeter than the water. It was natural enough for the St. Kildians to imagine that so extraordinary a phenomenon must have been the effect of some supernatural cause, and one of their teachers would have probably assured them that Columba, the great saint of their island and a mighty worker of miracles, had destroyed the influence which, according to the established laws of nature, the sea should have had on that water.” This spring resembles one in the parish of Tain, in Ross-shire, known as St. Mary’s Well. The latter is covered several hours each day by the sea, but when the tide retires its fresh, sweet water gushes forth again.

According to an old tradition, Drostan, a nephew of Columba, accompanied the latter when on a journey from Iona to Deer in Buchan, about the year 580, and was the first abbot of the monastery established there. The name of the place, according to the “Book of Deer,” was derived from the tears (in Gaelic, der or deur, a tear), shed by Drostan on the departure of his uncle. In reality, the name comes from the Gaelic dair, signifying an oak. There are five springs dedicated to Drostan. They are all in the east country, between Edzell and New Aberdour. At the latter place his relics were preserved, and miracles of healing were wrought at his tomb. The spring near Invermark Castle is popularly known as Droustie’s Well. A market, called St. Drostan’s Fair, is still held annually at Old Deer in December. Insch, in Aberdeenshire, has also a St. Drostan’s Fair. Drostan was reverenced in Caithness, where he was tutelar saint of the parishes of Halkirk and Canisbay. In “The Early Scottish Church” the Rev. Dr. M’Lauchlan mentions that Urquhart in Inverness-shire, was called Urchudain, Maith Dhrostan, i.e., St. Drostan’s Urquhart.

Adamnan, Columba’s biographer, became abbot of Iona in 679, and died there in 704. There are wells to him at Dull, in Perthshire, and at Forglen in Banffshire. His name occurs in Scottish topography, but shortened, and under various disguises. In the form of St. Oyne he has a well in Rathen parish, Aberdeenshire, where there is a mound—probably an ancient fortified site—also called St. Oyne’s. About six miles north-east of Kingussie, in Inverness-shire, is the church of the quoad sacra parish of Inch, on a knoll projecting into the loch of the same name. The knoll is called Tom Eunan, i.e., the hill of Adamnan, to whom the church was dedicated. Within the building is still to be seen a fine specimen of the four-cornered bronze bell used in the early Celtic church. According to a local tradition it was once carried off, but kept calling out, “Tom Eunan! Tom Eunan!” till brought back to its home. We find that Adamnan and Columba were associated together in the district. An annual gathering, at one time held there in honour of the latter, was named Feil Columcille, i.e., Columba’s Fair, and was much resorted to. Women usually appeared on the occasion in white dresses in token of baptism. An old woman, who died in 1882, at the age of ninety, was in the habit of showing the white dress worn by her in her young days at the fair. It finally served her as a shroud. Adamnan visited the Northumbrian court when Egfrid was king. His errand was one of peace-making; for he went to procure the release of certain Irish captives who had been made prisoners by Egfrid, During his stay in Northumbria he became a convert to the Roman view as against the Celtic in the two burning questions of that age, viz., the time for holding Easter, and the nature of the tonsure. Though he did not get his friends in Scotland to see eye to eye with him on these points, he seems to have been generally popular north of the Tweed. Eight churches at least were dedicated to him, mainly in the east country between Forvie, in Aberdeenshire, and Dalmeny, in West Lothian. One of these dedications was at Aboyne. Skeulan Well there contains Adamnan’s name in a corrupted form.

Kieran, belonging like Columba to the sixth century, was also like him from Ireland. He selected a cave some four miles from Campbeltown as his dwelling-place, and there led the life of an ascetic. He died in 543 in his thirty-fourth year. Pennant thus describes the cave:—“It is in the form of a cross, with three fine Gothic porticoes for entrances, … had formerly a wall at the entrance, a second about the middle, and a third far up, forming different apartments. On the floor is the capital of a cross and a round basin cut out of the rock, full of fine water, the beverage of the saint in old times, and of sailors in the present, who often land to dress their victuals beneath this shelter.” This basin is more minutely described by Captain T. P. White in his “Archæological Sketches in Scotland.” He says, “There is a small basin, nearly oval in shape, neatly scooped out of a block, two feet long by one and a half wide, which exactly underlies a drip of water from the roof of the cave. The water supply is said never to have failed and always to keep the little basin full. Tradition calls it the saint’s font or holy well.” Kieran is commemorated in Kinloch-Kilkerran, the ancient name of the parish of Campbeltown. The word means literally the head of the loch of Kieran’s cell. On one occasion Kieran dropped his book of the Gospels into a lake. Sometime after it was recovered in an uninjured state through the instrumentality of a cow. The cow went into the water to cool itself, and brought out the volume attached to its hoof. Another bovine association is connected with the building of St. Kieran’s Church on a hill at Errigall-keroge, in County Tyrone, Ireland. The saint had an ox which, during the day, drew the materials for the building, and in the evening was slaughtered to feed the workmen. The bones were thrown each evening into a well at the foot of the hill, and, morning by morning, the accommodating animal appeared ready for the day’s work. The well is still held to be miraculous. There is a spring dedicated to Kieran at Drumlithie, in Glenbervie parish, Kincardineshire, and another at Stonehaven, in the same county. There is one in Troqueer parish, Kirkcudbrightshire, locally known as St. Jergon’s or St. Querdon’s Well, these names being simply an altered form of Kieran.

Bridget or Bride, an Irish saint, was popular in Scotland. She received baptism from Patrick, and died in 525 after a life of great sanctity. She was celebrated as a worker of miracles. She made a cow supply an enormous quantity of milk to satisfy the wants of three thirsty bishops who came to visit her. She also cured diseases. On one occasion two men suffering from leprosy came to her to be healed. She made the sign of the cross over water, and told them to wash in it. One of the two did so and was instantly restored to health; but, refusing to help the other, he at once became leprous again, while his companion was as suddenly made whole. On another occasion she used the sign of the cross to stay a company bent on the capture of a maiden who had sought refuge in the saint’s nunnery. Perhaps her most wonderful miracle was the hanging of her gown on a sunbeam, a somewhat unusual cloak-peg, and one that, from the nature of the case, had not to be sought in a dark press. Her principal monastery was at Kildare, so named after the oak (dair) under whose shade her cell was built. Adjoining St. Bride’s Churchyard in London is a spring dedicated to the saint, and popularly styled Bride’s Well. The palace built in the immediate neighbourhood went by the name of Bridewell. It was handed over by Edward VI. to the city of London as a workhouse and place of correction. At a later date the name became associated with other houses used for a similar purpose. “Hence it has arisen,” remarks Chambers in his “Book of Days,” “that the pure and innocent Bridget, the first of Irish nuns, is now inextricably connected in our ordinary national parlance with a class of beings of the most opposite description.” There are fully a dozen wells in Scotland bearing her name. These are chiefly to be found in the counties of Wigtown, Dumfries, Peebles, Lanark, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Perth, Fife, and Aberdeen. A monastery was founded in Bridget’s honour at Abernethy, in Perthshire, probably in the eighth century, and she had churches on the mainland and among the Western Islands. A curious superstition connected with Bridget has survived to the present time, at least in one of these islands. It has to do with a certain magical flower styled torranain, that must be plucked during the influx of the tide, and is of virtue to protect cows from the evil eye, and to make them give a plentiful supply of milk. The Rev. Dr. Stewart, in his “’Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe,” quotes the incantation associated with it forwarded to him by a correspondent in Uist. The following is one of the stanzas:—

“Let me pluck thee, Torranain!

With all thy blessedness and all thy virtue.

The nine blessings came with the nine parts.

By the virtue of the Torranain.

The hand of St. Bride with me

I am now to pluck thee.”

A saint who could give efficacy to a spell was quite the sort of person to be entrusted with the custody of springs.

Ninian, popularly called Ringan, devoted his life mainly to missionary work among the Picts of Galloway, although he extended his influence as far north as the Tay. He seems to have been honoured in Aberdeenshire, if we may judge by a fresco, representing him, discovered about thirty years ago in the pre-Reformation Church of Turriff, and regard was had for him as far north as the Shetland Isles. Even the Scot abroad did not forget him. Chalmers, in his “Caledonia,” says that, “in the church of the Carmelite Friars of Bruges in Flanders, the Scottish nation founded an altar to St. Ninian, and endowed a chaplain who officiated at it.” A cave by the sea in the parish of Glasserton, in Wigtownshire, was his favourite retreat. This cave was explored about ten years ago, and several stones, marked with incised crosses, were discovered. Ninian brought masons from France, and at Whithorn built Candida Casa—the first stone church in Scotland. It was in course of construction in the year 397. Ninian then heard of the death of Martin of Tours, and to the latter the new church was dedicated. These two saints are found side by side in the matter of church dedications. Thus, Martin was patron of Ulbster, in Caithness: not far off was a church to Ninian. Strathmartin, in Forfarshire, was united in 1799 to the parish of Mains, the latter claiming Ninian as its tutelar saint. Sinavey Spring, in Mains parish, near the site of the ancient Castle of Fintry, is believed to represent St. Ninian’s name in a corrupted form. His springs are numerous, and have a wide range from the counties of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright to those of Forfar and Kincardine. There is a well to him near Dunnottar Castle, in the last-mentioned county. In the island of Sanda, off the Kintyre coast, is a spring named after him. It had a considerable local celebrity in former times. St. Ninian’s Well in Stirling is a familiar spot in the district. There is a well sacred to Martin in the Aberdeenshire parish of Cairnie. Martinmas (November 11th) came long ago into our land as a church festival. It still remains with us as a familiar term-day.

An incident in Martin’s biography has a bearing on our subject, through the connection between the name of the festival commemorating it and certain of our place-names. In Scotland, the fourth of July used to be known as Martin of Bullion’s Day, in honour of the translation of the saint’s body to a shrine in the cathedral of Tours. There is some uncertainty about the origin of the term Bullion, though, according to the likeliest etymology, it is derived from the French bouiller, to boil, in allusion to the heat of the weather at that time of the year. There is an old proverb that if the deer rise up dry and lie down dry on Martin of Bullion’s Day, there will be a good gose-harvest, i.e., an early and plentiful one. An annual fair was appointed to be held at Selkirk and in Dyce parish, Aberdeenshire, in connection with the festival. There are traces of both Martin and Bullion in Scottish topography. In Perthshire there is the parish of St. Martin’s, containing the estate of St. Martin’s Abbey. Some miles to the east is Strathmartin in Forfarshire, already alluded to, and not far from it in the same county we find Bullionfield in the parish of Liff and Benvie. It is probable that these names are in some way connected together. In Ecclesmachan parish in Linlithgowshire, there is, as far as we know, no trace of Martin in any dedication of chapel or spring; but Bullion is represented. There is a spring of this name issuing from the trap rocks of the Tor Hill. It is a mineral well. The water is slightly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen. In former times it was much resorted to by health-seekers, but it is now neglected.

Ninian consecrated a graveyard beside the Molendinar at Cathures, now Glasgow. About a hundred years later Kentigern, otherwise Mungo, bishop of the Strathclyde kingdom, brought to this cemetery from Carnock the body of Fergus, an anchorite, on a cart drawn by two wild bulls. Over the spot where Fergus was buried was built, at a later date, the crypt of what was to have been the south transept of the cathedral, had that portion of the structure ever been reared. The crypt is now popularly called Blackadder’s Aisle, though, as Dr. Andrew MacGeorge points out in his “Old Glasgow,” it ought to be called Fergus’ Isle. It was so named in a minute of the kirk-session in 1648, and an inscription in long Gothic letters on a stone in the roof of the aisle tells the same tale. Kentigern took up his abode on the banks of the Molendinar, and gathered round him a company of monks, each dwelling in a separate hut. In the twelfth century the spot was surrounded by a dense forest, and in 1500 the “Arbores sancti Kentigerni” were landmarks in the district. Kentigern’s Well, now in the lower church of the cathedral, must, from the very fact of its inclusion within the building, have been deemed sacred before the cathedral was reared. Other examples of wells within churches are on record, though not in Scotland. There is a spring in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. The cathedrals of Carlisle, Winchester, and Canterbury, and the minsters of York and Beverley, as well as one of two English parish churches, either now have or once had wells within their walls. The Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer gives several examples in his “Church Lore Gleanings,” and remarks, “Such wells may have been of special service in Border churches, which, like the cathedral of Carlisle, served as places of refuge for the inhabitants in case of sudden alarm or foray.”

Besides his well in the cathedral, Kentigern had another dedicated to him at Glasgow, close to Little St. Mungo’s Church, in the immediate neighbourhood of the trees already mentioned. There are fully a dozen wells sacred to him north of the Tweed. As might be expected, these are almost all to be found in the counties south of the Forth and Clyde, and particularly in those to the west of that district. There is one in Kincardineshire, at Kinneff, locally known as Kenty’s Well. Under the name of St. Mongah’s Well there is a spring dedicated to him in Yorkshire at Copgrove Park four miles from Boroughbridge. A bath close by, supplied with water from this spring, was formerly much frequented by invalids of all ages, who remained immersed for a longer or shorter time in its intensely cold water. Other wells to Kentigern are to be met with in the north of England. The parish of Crossthwaite in Cumberland has its church dedicated to him. The spot was the thwaite or clearing in the wood where he set up his cross. Thanet Well, in Greystoke parish in the same county, is believed to have derived its name from Tanew or Thenew, Kentigern’s mother, familiar to the citizens of Glasgow as St. Enoch. St. Enoch’s Well, close to St. Enoch’s Square in that burgh, used to be a favourite resort of health-seekers. It has now no existence.

Cuthbert, besides a well at St. Boswell’s, in Roxburghshire, had a bath in Strath Tay, a rock-hewn hollow full of water where he periodically passed several hours in devotion. This famous Northumbrian missionary was born about 635, and spent his early boyhood as a shepherd on the southern slopes of the Lammermoors. He lived for thirteen years as a monk in the monastery of Old Melrose, situated two miles east from the present Melrose on a piece of land almost surrounded by the Tweed. On the death of Boisil, Cuthbert was appointed prior. He afterwards became bishop of Lindisfarne. During his stay at Melrose he visited the land of the Niduarian Picts, in other words the Picts of Galloway, and left a record of his journey in the name of Kirkcudbright, i.e., the Church of Cuthbert. Various other churches were dedicated to him in the south of Scotland and in the north of England. A well-known Edinburgh parish bears his name. He was honoured as far south as Cornwall. St. Cuby’s Well, locally called St. Kilby’s, between Duloe and Sandplace in that county is believed to have been dedicated to him.

There is a good deal of uncertainty about the history of Palladius. He is believed to have been a missionary from Rome to the Irish in the fifth century, and to have suffered martyrdom for the faith. It is recorded of him that on one occasion, by removing some turf in the name of the Holy Spirit, he caused a spring to gush forth to supply water for baptism. He is popularly associated with Kincardineshire, though there is reason to believe that he had no personal connection with the district. A spring in Fordoun parish is locally known as Paldy’s Well, and an annual market goes by the name of Paldy’s or Paddy’s Fair. A chapel was dedicated to him there, and received his relics, brought thither by his disciple Terrananus, whose name is still preserved in Banchory-Ternan, and who seems to have belonged to the district. Ternan has a well at Banchory-Devenick, and another at Kirkton-of-Slains, in Buchan. The old church of Arbuthnot was dedicated to him. It was for this church that the Missal, Psalter, and Office of the Virgin, now in the possession of Viscount Arbuthnot, were written and illuminated towards the end of the fifteenth century, these being the only complete set of Service-Books of a Scottish Church that have come down to us from pre-Reformation times.

Brendan of Clonfert in Ireland, visited several of the Western Isles during the first half of the sixth century, and various churches were afterwards dedicated to him there. He is connected also with Bute. The name Brandanes, applied to its inhabitants, came from him, and he bids fair to be remembered in the name of Kilbrandon Sound, between Arran and Kintyre. He was patron of a well in the island of Barra and was tutelar saint of Boyndie and Cullen in Banffshire; but we are not aware that any well at either of these places was called after him.

A curious legend is related to account for the origin of the See of Aberdeen. According to it Machar or Macarius, along with twelve companions, received instructions from Columba to wander over Pictland, and to build his cathedral-church where he found a river making a bend like a bishop’s staff. Such a bend was found in the Don at Old Aberdeen. St. Machar’s Cathedral, built beside it, keeps alive the saint’s memory. In the neighbouring grounds of Seton is St. Machar’s Well. Though now neglected, it was honoured in former times, and its water was used at baptisms in the cathedral. Under the name of Mocumma or Mochonna, Macarius appears as one of the followers of Columba on his memorable voyage from Ireland to Iona. He is said to have visited Pope Gregory the Great at Rome, and to have been for a time bishop of Tours. In Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, is a well sacred to him called Tobar-Mhachar, pronounced in the district Tobar-Vacher.

Constantine, known also by his other names of Cowstan, Chouslan, and Cutchou, was a prince of Cornwall in the sixth century, and was acquainted with Columba and Kentigern. He relinquished his throne and crossed over to Ireland, where he turned monk. At a later date he came to the west of Scotland, and founded a monastery at Golvedir, believed to be Govan, near Glasgow, and, according to Fordun, became its abbot. Kilchouslan Church, on the north side of Campbeltown Bay, Kintyre, was built in his honour. In its graveyard there is, or was till quite lately, a round stone about the size of a grinding stone. In the centre is a hole large enough to let the hand pass through. There is a tradition that if a man and woman eloped, and were able to join hands through this hole before being overtaken by their kinsfolk they were free from further pursuit. In the spring of 1892 an interesting find of old coins was made in the same graveyard. These consisted of groats and half-groats, some of English and some of Scottish coinage, the earliest belonging to the reign of Edward II. of England. According to Martin, the well of St. Cowstan at Garrabost, in Lewis, was believed never to boil any kind of meat, though its water was kept over the fire for a whole day. This well is on a steep slope at the shore. Not far off once stood St. Cowstan’s Chapel, but its site is now under tillage.

Serf or Servanus, who flourished during the latter half of the seventh century, was connected with the district north of the Firth of Forth, particularly with Culross, and the island named after him in Loch Leven, where he founded a monastery. At Dysart, Serf had a cave, and in it tradition says that he held a discussion with the devil. The name of Dysart indeed, comes from this desertum or retreat. Serf had a cell at Dunning, in Strathearn, where he died in the odour of sanctity. He had also some link with the parish of Monzievaird, where the church was dedicated to him, and where a small loch still goes by the name of St. Serf’s Water. There is a well sacred to him at Alva. St. Shear’s Well, at Dumbarton, retains his name in an altered form. Early last century this spring was put to a practical purpose, as arrangements were then made to lead its water across the Leven by pipes to supply the burgh.

CHAPTER IV.

More Saints and Springs.

Ronan—Dow Well—Influence on Topography—Ronan’s Springs—Pol Ronan and Feill Ronan—Fergus—His Well in Banffshire—Glamis—His Relics—His Wells at Montrose and Wick—Helen—St. Helen’s Kirk—Her Springs—Her connection with Britain—Her Wells and Churches in England—Welsh Traditions—St. Abb’s Well—Ebba—Aidan—His Wells—Boisil—His Springs—St. Boswell’s Fair—Bathan—Abbey St. Bathan’s—His Well there—Boniface—His Well and Fair at Rosemarkie—Catherine of Alexandria—Her Legend—Her Wells—Various other Dedications—Lawrence—His Wells—St. Lawrence’s Fair—His Church Dedications—Laurencekirk—Margaret—Her connection with Queensferry and Forfar—Her Wells at Edinburgh—Her Cave and Spring at Dunfermline—Wells dedicated to various Characters in Sacred Story.

In any notice of early saints Ronan must not be forgotten, especially when we remember that perhaps no spring, thanks to Sir Walter Scott, is so familiar to the general reader as St. Ronan’s Well. It has been commonly identified with the mineral well at Innerleithen, in Peeblesshire for long held in much favour in cases of eye and skin complaints, and also for the cure of dyspepsia. The spring is situated a short distance above the town on the skirt of Lee Pen. The writer of the article on Innerleithen parish in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland” says that this spring “was formerly called the ‘Dow-well’ from the circumstance that, long before the healing virtues of the water were discovered, pigeons from the neighbouring country resorted to it.” The name, however, is more probably derived from the Gaelic dhu or dubh, signifying black. This is all the more likely when we remember that the ground around was wet and miry before the spring was put into order, and the present pump-room built, in 1826. We find marks of Ronan in Scottish topography. In Dumbartonshire is Kilmaronock, meaning, literally, the Church of my little Ronan; Kilmaronog near Loch Etive has the same signification. Dr. Skene refers to these two dedications, and adds, “Ronan appears to have carried his mission to the Isles. He has left his trace in Iona, where one of the harbours is Port Ronan. The church, afterwards the parish church, was dedicated to him, and is called Teampull Ronaig, and its burying-ground, Cladh Ronan. Then we find him at Rona, in the Sound of Skye, and another Rona, off the coast of Lewis; and, finally, his death is recorded in 737 as Ronan, abbot of Cinngaradh or Kingarth, in Bute.” Ronan is patron of various springs. There is one sacred to him near Kilmaronock, another in the Aberdeenshire parish of Strathdon, and another, already referred to, beside Teampull Mòr, in the Butt of Lewis. The parish of Strowan, now joined to that of Monzievaird, has a well to the saint. This was to be expected, since the name of the parish is merely an altered form of St. Rowan or Ronan. About a hundred yards above the bridge of Strowan, there is a deep pool in the river Earn, called Pol-Ronan, and a piece of ground hard by was formerly the site of the yearly gathering known as Feill-Ronan or St. Ronan’s Fair.

The parish of St. Fergus, in Buchan, known till the year 1616 as Langley, commemorates an Irish missionary of the eighth century, who led a roving life, if we can believe the tradition, that he evangelised Caithness, Buchan, Strathearn, and Forfarshire, as well as attended an Ecclesiastical Council at Rome. The legend that his well in Kirkmichael parish, Banffshire, was at one time in Italy may be connected with his visit to Rome. Concerning this spring, the Rev. Dr. Gregor gives the following particulars:—“Fergan Well is situated on the south-east side of Knock-Fergan, a hill of considerable height on the west side of the river Avon, opposite the manse of Kirkmichael. The first Sunday of May and Easter Sunday 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.” Fergus died at Glamis, and his relics soon began to work cures. His head was carried off to the monastery of Scone, and was so much esteemed in later times that, by order of James IV., a silver case was made for it. His cave and well are to be seen at Glamis. There is a spring dedicated to him near Montrose, and there is another at Wick.

Various other saintly personages have left traces of their names in holy wells. Chalmers, in his “Caledonia,” mentions that the ancient church of Aldcamus, in Cockburnspath parish, Berwickshire, was dedicated to Helen, mother of Constantine, and that its ruins were known as St. Helen’s Kirk. A portion of the building still stands. To the north of it is a burying-ground; but, curiously enough, as Mr. Muir points out in his “Ancient Churches of Scotland,” the spot does not appear ever to have been used for purposes of sepulture. We do not know surely of any spring to Helen in the immediate neighbourhood, but there is one at Darnick, near Melrose. Another is in Kirkpatrick-Fleming parish, Dumfriesshire. Perhaps the best known is St. Helen’s Well, beside the highway from Maybole to Ayr, about two-and-a-half miles from the former town. It was much resorted to on May Day for the cure of sickly children. On Timothy Pont’s map, of date 1654, there is a “Helen’s Loch” marked a little to the south-west of Camelon, in Stirlingshire. Some writers have attempted to claim Helen as a native of Britain, and Colchester and York have, for different reasons, been fixed on as her birth-place. The circumstance that Constantine was proclaimed Emperor at the latter town, on the death there of his father, Constantius Chlorus, probably gave rise to the tradition. Anyhow, Helen seems to have been held in high honour in England. In an article in the “Archæological Journal” for December, 1891, Mr. Edward Peacock mentions that there are at least fifteen wells named after her south of the Tweed. He adds, “there are many churches dedicated to the honour of St. Helen in England, but they are very irregularly distributed. None seems to occur in Cumberland, Westmoreland, or Essex. The rest of the English shires, for which we have authentic information, give the following results:—Devonshire, three; Durham, two; Kent, one; Lincolnshire, twenty-eight; Northumberland, three; Nottinghamshire, fifteen; Yorkshire, thirty-two.” Helen’s name occurs in Welsh legends; but, as Mr. Peacock observes, “early history is so much distorted in them, that, if we did not know of her from more authentic sources, we might well believe Helen to have been a mere creation of the fervid Keltic imagination.” As far as is known there are neither wells nor church dedications to her in the Principality.

At Ayton, in Berwickshire, we find St. Abb’s Well, recalling Abb or Æbba, who, in the seventh century, presided over a monastery on the headland still bearing her name, and in whose honour the priory at Coldingham was founded by Edgar, son of Malcolm Canmore, some four centuries and a half later. Her monastery on the headland was founded by Aidan, who was sent from Iona to the North of England in response to a request from King Oswald, of Bernicia, for a missionary to preach Christianity to his pagan subjects. This was about the year 635. Aidan made the island of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, his head-quarters. It is still known as Holy Island. Aidan has not been forgotten in the matter of wells. There are four to him, viz., at Menmuir and at Fearn, in Forfarshire; at Balmerino, in Fife; and at Cambusnethan, in Lanarkshire. This last, called St. Iten’s Well, was noted for the cure of asthma and skin-disease.

Boisil, abbot of the monastery of Old Melrose, about the middle of the seventh century, still lives in the name of the Roxburghshire village and parish of St. Boswell’s. There is a spring in the parish bearing the name of The Well-brae Wall. Boswell’s own spring is popularly styled the Hare-well. Not far from both is St. Boswell’s Burn, a tributary of the Tweed. The local fair held on July 18th, in honour of the saint, used to be a notable one in the border counties, and was frequented by large numbers of gipsies who set up booths for the sale of their wares.

Bathan, who flourished in the early seventh century, had to do with Shetland, and with the region about the Whittadder, in Berwickshire. Abbey St. Bathans, in the latter county, is named after him. His well is on one of the haughs beside the river, not far from the ruined nunnery. Its water is believed never to freeze.

Boniface belonged to the same century. He is said to have preached Christianity at Gowrie, in Pictavia, and afterwards at Rosemarkie, in the Black Isle, where he died at the age of eighty, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. A well and a fair at Rosemarkie still keep alive his memory.

The fame of Catherine of Alexandria travelled to Scotland at a comparatively early period. This holy maiden was noted for her learning. Indeed she was so wise that Maxentius the Emperor called her a “second Plato.” The Emperor’s compliments, however, stopped there, for he ordered her to be executed on account of her contempt for paganism. The wheel, her usual attribute in art, was not the instrument of her martyrdom, as it was miraculously destroyed. She met her death by being beheaded, and, immediately thereafter, her body was carried by angels to Mount Sinai. These and other legendary incidents must have conduced to make the saint popular. St. Catherine’s Balm-well, at Liberton, Mid-Lothian, had a high reputation for curing skin-disease. Martin speaks of a well to St. Catherine on the south coast of Eigg, reckoned by the islanders a specific in all kinds of disease. He gives the following account of its dedication by Father Hugh, a priest, and of the respect paid to the spring in consequence:—“He (the priest) obliged all the inhabitants to come to this well, 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,—of 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.” In the south-west of Scotland, Catherine has, or had, three wells, viz., at Stoneykirk, at Low Drumore, and at Old Luce, opposite the Abbey. In the north-east there are three, viz., at Fyvie, Aberdeenshire; and in Alvah parish, Banffshire; and at Banff itself. At Shotts, in Lanarkshire, the fountain by the roadside immediately below the parish church is, or at least was, locally known as Cat’s or Kate’s Well—a contraction of the Saint’s name—reminding one of the Kate Kennedy celebration at St. Andrews University, which originated in connection with the gift of a bell by Bishop Kennedy in honour of the saint. The ruins of Caibeal Cairine, i.e., Catherine’s Chapel, are in Southend parish, Kintyre, and two farms called North and South Carine are in the immediate neighbourhood. Captain White, when exploring the district, sought for St. Catherine’s Well in the adjoining glen, but failed to find it. A chapel to the saint once stood in the quondam town of Kincardine in the Mearns. Its graveyard alone remains. St. Catherine’s Fair, held at Kincardine till the year 1612, was then transferred to the neighbouring Fettercairn. There is perhaps no place-name more familiar to visitors to Inveraray than St. Catherine’s, on the opposite shore of Loch Fyne. It was in St. Catherine’s Aisle, within the parish church of Linlithgow, that James IV. saw the mysterious apparition that warned him to beware of Flodden. At Port-Erin, in the Isle of Man, is a spring close to the beach, and on a stone beside it in old lettering, can be read the piece of advice:—

“St. Catherine’s Well,

Keep me clean.”

Lawrence is represented by various springs, viz., by one in Kirkcudbrightshire, at Fairgirth; by one in Elginshire, at New Duffus; and by two in Aberdeenshire, at Kinnord; and at Rayne, where a horse market, called Lawrence Fair, is still held annually in August. Near the Fairgirth spring stand the ivy-clad ruins of St. Lawrence’s Chapel, at one time surrounded by a graveyard. The parish of Slamannan, in Stirlingshire, was anciently called St. Lawrence, its pre-Reformation church having been dedicated to him. An excellent spring, not far from the parish church, is known as St. Lawrence’s Well. There is reason to believe that all these dedications relate to Lawrence, who, about the middle of the third century, suffered at Rome, by being broiled over a slow fire, and in whose honour the Escurial in Spain was built in the form of a gridiron—the supposed instrument of his martyrdom. Laurencekirk, in Kincardineshire, anciently called Conveth, received its name, not from the martyr, but from Lawrence, archbishop of Canterbury, successor of Augustine, early in the seventh century. He is said to have visited the Mearns. The church of Conveth was named in his honour Laurencekirk. As far as we know, however, there is no spring to him in the district.

Margaret, queen and saint, wife of Malcolm Canmore, was a light amid the darkness of the eleventh century. Indeed she was a light to many later centuries. The secret of her beneficial influence lay in her personal character, and she undoubtedly did much to recommend civilisation to a barbarous age. At the same time it must not be forgotten that through her English training she was unable to appreciate either the speech or the special religious institutions of her Scottish subjects, and that, accordingly, the changes introduced by her were not all reforms. When sketching her influence on the history of her time, the Rev. Dr. M’Lauchlan, in his “Early Scottish Church,” observes, “She was somewhat unwillingly hindered from entering a monastery by her marriage with Malcolm, and the latter repaid the obligation by unbounded devotion to her and readiness to fall in with all her schemes. She was brought up in the Anglo-Saxon Church, as that Church was moulded by Augustine and other emissaries of Rome, and was in consequence naturally opposed to many of the peculiarities of the Scottish Church, which was still without diocesan bishops, and had many things in its forms of worship peculiar to itself.” Dunfermline was Malcolm’s favourite place of residence, and many were the journeys made by his wife between it and Edinburgh. The names of North and South Queensferry, where she crossed the Forth, tell of these royal expeditions. Malcolm and Margaret were associated with the town of Forfar. Local topography has still its King’s Muir, and its Queen’s Well to testify to the fact; and on the Inch of Forfar Loch, where Margaret had a residence, an annual celebration was long held in her honour. She had a spring at Edinburgh Castle, described as “the fountain which rises near the corner of the King’s Garden, on the road leading to St. Cuthbert’s Church.” St. Margaret’s Well—once at Restalrig, now in the Queen’s Park—has already been referred to. At Dunfermline there is a spring in a cave where, according to tradition, she spent many an hour in pious meditation. The cave is about seven feet in height, fully eight in breadth, and varies in depth from eight to eleven. “This cave,” remarks the Rev. Peter Chalmers in his “History of Dunfermline,” “is situated at a short distance north from the Tower Hill, and from the mound crossing the ravine on which part of the town stands. There is at present a small spring well at the bottom, the water of which rises at times and covers the whole lower space; but anciently, it is to be presumed, there was none, or at least it must have been covered, and prevented from overflowing the floor, which would either have been formed of the rock or have been paved.” A considerable amount of rubbish accumulated in the cave, but this was removed in 1877. “During the process of clearing out the cave,” remarks Dr. Henderson in his “Annals of Dunfermline,” “two stone seats or benches were discovered along the base of the north and south sides, but there were no carvings or devices seen on them. Near the back of the cave a small sunk well was found, but it is now covered over with a stone flag.”

Several Scripture characters have wells named after them. St. Matthew has springs at Kirkton, Dumfriesshire, and at Roslin, Midlothian. St. Andrew’s name is attached to wells at Sandal, in Kintyre; at North Berwick, in East Lothian; at Shadar, in Lewis; and at Selkirk—this last having been uncovered in 1892, after remaining closed, it is believed, for fully three hundred years. A spring at St. Andrews, called Holy Well, is understood to have been dedicated either to Andrew or to Regulus. St. Paul has springs at Fyvie and at Linlithgow; St. Philip is patron of one in Yarrow parish, Selkirkshire; St. James has one at Garvock, in Aberdeenshire; St. Thomas has three—at Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire; at Crieff, in Perthshire; and near Stirling; and St. John has a considerable number of springs. Some of these are to the Evangelist, and some to the Baptist. It is often difficult to know to which of the two the patronage of a given well should be ascribed. Of the four chapels along the east wall of the lower church of Glasgow Cathedral, the one next to St. Mungo’s Well was dedicated in pre-Reformation times to St. John the Evangelist. It would have been more appropriately dedicated to the Baptist. St. John’s Wells are to be found at Moffat, in Dumfriesshire; at Logie Coldstone, in Aberdeenshire; near Fochabers, in Elginshire; at Inverkeithing, Balmerino; and Falkland, in Fife; at Kinnethmont, and in New Aberdour, in Aberdeenshire; at Marykirk, in Kincardineshire; at Kirkton of Deskford, at Ordiquhill, and also near the old church of Gamrie, in Banffshire; at Stranraer, in Wigtownshire; at Dunrobin, in Sutherland; and elsewhere. There are more than a dozen wells to St. Peter. These are to be found mainly in counties in the south-west, and in the north-east. In the latter district there is a well at Marnoch, in Banffshire, called Petrie’s Well.

St. Anne, the reputed mother of the Virgin, presided over wells at Ladykirk, in Berwickshire; near the old church of St. Anne, in Dowally parish, Perthshire; and at Glass, on the Deveron. The Virgin herself was specially popular as the patroness of fountains. There are over seventy dedicated to her under a variety of names, such as, St. Mary’s Well, Maria Well, &c. The town of Motherwell, in Lanarkshire, was so called after a famous well to the Virgin. Tobermory, in Mull—literally, Well of Mary—was originally a fountain. A village was built beside it, in 1788, as a fishing centre for the British Fisheries’ Company. A curious legend about the now ivy-clad ruins of the church of St. Mary in Auchindoir parish, Aberdeenshire, is thus referred to by Mr. A. Jervise in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” vol. viii. (old series):—“According to tradition, it was originally proposed to rebuild the church at a place called Kirkcairns (now Glencairns) to the south of Lumsden village, and but for the warning voice of the Virgin, who appears to have been a good judge both of locality and soil, the kirk would have been placed in an obscure sterile district. Besides being in the neighbourhood of good land, fine views of the upper part of Strathbogie and of the surrounding hills are obtained from the present site …. St. Mary’s Well is about a hundred yards to the west.”

If Michael the Archangel did not fold his wings over any Scottish wells, he at least gave name to several. There is a St. Michael’s Spring in Kirkmichael parish, Banffshire, and another at Dallas in Elginshire. In both cases, the ancient church was dedicated to him. Culsalmond, in Aberdeenshire, and Applegarth, in Dumfriesshire, have, and Edinburgh once had, a St. Michael’s Well. The best known is probably the one at Linlithgow, with its quaint inscription—“Saint Michael is kinde to straingers.” Mr. J. R. Walker—to whose list of Holy Wells in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” vol. v. (new series), we have been indebted for various useful hints—remarks, “The building covering this well dates only from 1720 …. It is conjectured that the statue was taken from the Cross-well when restored about that date and placed here to represent St. Michael, who is the patron saint of Linlithgow Church …. With the exception of the statue, which is undoubtedly of much earlier date than 1720, the structure shows the utter absence of architectural knowledge—especially Gothic—characteristic of the last century in Scotland. Michael was tutelar saint, not only of the church, but also of the burgh of Linlithgow. In the town Arms he is represented with outspread wings, standing on a serpent whose head he is piercing with a spear. He was also the guardian of the burgh of Dumfries. At Inverlussa, in North Knapdale parish, Argyllshire, may be seen the ancient chapel and burying-ground of Kilmichael. A well in the immediate neighbourhood is dedicated, not to the archangel, but to some local ecclesiastic, whose name is now forgotten. In reference to this spring, Captain White says, “Trickling out from under a rock, is the Priest’s Well (Tobar-ant-Sagairt), famous, like many another spring of so-called holy water, for its miraculous healing virtues. I believe the country people have by no means lost their faith in its powers.” The extent of the archangel’s popularity in Scotland is shown by his impress on topography. Among place-names we find at least three Kilmichaels, and there are five parishes called Kirkmichael, respectively in the counties of Dumfries, Ayr, Perth, Ross and Cromarty, and Banff. A chapel is said to have been dedicated to him at a very early date on the top of the Castle Rock at Edinburgh. Another once stood in the demesne of Lovat, where was founded, about 1232, a Priory for French monks, who were so struck with the beauty of the spot that they called it Beau-lieu, now Beauly. Far west, in the outer Hebrides, he had faithful votaries. On the island of Grimisay, close to North Uist, a chapel styled Teampull Mhicheil was built in his honour towards the close of the fourteenth century. It was the work of Amie, otherwise Annie, wife of John of Isla, first Lord of the Isles, and was used by her as an oratory when prevented by rough weather from crossing the Minch to visit her friends in Lorne. That the archangel should have had wells named after him is therefore not surprising.

CHAPTER V.

Stone Blocks and Saints’ Springs.

Stone Beds and Chairs—Cave Life—Dwarfie Stone—Stone Boats—Balthere—His Corpse—His Well and Cradle—Marnan—His Influence on Topography—His Head—St. Marnan’s Chair and Well—Muchricha—Cathair Donan—St. Donan’s Well—Patrick—His Wells—St. Patrick’s Vat—Quarry at Portpatrick—Columbanus—Mark of his Hand—Kentigern’s Chair and Bed—His connection with Aberdeenshire—The Lady’s Bed—Thenew—Columba’s Bed and Pillow—Holy Island—Traces of Molio—St. Blane’s Chapel—Kilmun—Inan—St. Innian’s Well—Tenant’s Day—St. Inan’s Chair and Springs—Kevin—Print of Virgin’s Knee—Traces of Columba at Keil—St. Cuthbert’s Stane—St. Madron’s Bed—Mean-an-Tol—Morwenna—St. Fillan’s Chair—St. Fillan’s Spring—Water for Sore Eyes—The Two Fillans—Their Dedications—Queen Margaret’s Seat—St. Bonnet’s Spring—The Fairies’ Cradle—The Pot o’ Pittenyoul—Church of Invergowrie—Greystane—Cadger’s Bridge—Wallace’s Seat and Well.

Beds and Chairs of stone are connected with various early saints, and as such relics are often associated with holy wells, some notice of these may not be without interest. We have already seen that cave life was rather popular among these early missionaries. Anything of a rocky nature was therefore quite in line with their ascetic ways. Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands, famous for its wild scenery, and specially for the pillar of rock popularly styled The Old Man, contains a curious monument of antiquity in the shape of a large block of sandstone called The Dwarfie Stone, hollowed out long ago by some unknown hand. The chamber, thus excavated, contains two beds hewn out of the stone, one of them having a pillow of the same hard material. On the floor of the chamber is a hearth where a fire had evidently burned, and in the roof is a hole for the escape of the smoke. Legend reports that a giant and his wife abode within; but the hollow space was more probably the retreat of some hermit—perhaps, of more than one, seeing there are two couches; though, possibly, one of the supposed couches may have been a table and the other a bed. Perhaps the anchorite had his spring whither he wandered daily to slake his thirst; but, as far as we know, there is no tradition regarding any holy well in the neighbourhood.

Martin, in connection with his visit to Orkney, refers to a stone in the chapel of Ladykirk, in South Ronaldshay, called St. Magnus’s Boat. The stone was four feet in length, and tapered away at both ends; but its special feature was the print of two human feet on the upper surface. A local tradition affirmed that when St. Magnus wanted on one occasion to cross the Pentland Firth to Caithness he used this stone as his boat, and that he afterwards carried it to Ladykirk. According to another tradition, the stone served in pre-Reformation times for the punishment of delinquents, who were obliged to stand barefooted upon it by way of penance. There is a St. Magnus’s Well, not in South Ronaldshay, however, but at Birsay, in the mainland of Orkney. When Conval crossed from Ireland to Scotland, in the seventh century, he, too, made a block of stone do duty as a boat. It found a resting-place beside the river Cart, near Renfrew, and was known as Currus Sancti Convalli. By its means miraculous cures were wrought on man and beast. A rock at the mouth of Aldham Bay, in Haddingtonshire, is known as St. Baudron’s Boat, and tradition says that he crossed on it from the Bass, where he had a cell. This saint—called also Balthere and Baldred—founded the monastery of Tyningham, and died early in the seventh century. He must have been popular in the district, for, if we can believe an old legend, the parishioners of the churches of Aldham, Tyningham, and Prestonkirk tried to get possession of his relics. To satisfy their demands his body was miraculously multiplied by three, and each church was thus provided with one. Near Tantallon Castle is St. Baldred’s Well, and a fissure in the cliff at Whitberry, not far from the mouth of the Tyne, is known as St. Baldred’s Bed or Cradle.

Marnan or Marnoch, besides giving name to the town of Kilmarnock, in Ayrshire, and to the Island of Inchmarnoch, off Bute, is remembered in the name of the Banffshire parish of Marnoch, where he laboured as a missionary in the seventh century. His head was kept as a revered relic in the church of Aberchirder, and solemn oaths were sworn by it. Use was also made of it for therapeutic purposes. It was periodically washed, and the water was given to the sick for the restoration of their health. This was not an isolated case. Bede tells us, that after Cuthbert’s death, some of the water in which his body was washed, was given to an epileptic boy along with some consecrated earth, and brought about a cure. A stone, called St. Marnan’s Chair, is, or was till lately, to be seen at Aberchirder; and a spring, near the parish manse, bears the saint’s name. About a mile and a half from the church of Aboyne, in Aberdeenshire, is St. Muchricha’s Well, and beside it is a stone marked with a cross. At one time, this stone was removed. According to a local tradition, it was brought back by Muchricha, the guardian of the well, who seemed unwilling to lose sight of the lost property. In the parish of Kildonan, Sutherland, two or three blocks of stone, placed in the form of a seat, went by the name of Cathair Donan, i.e., Donan’s Chair. In his cille or church, Donan taught the truths of Christianity; and, seated in his cathair, he administered justice to the people of the district. There is a St. Donan’s Well in Eigg, the island where the saint and his companion clerics were murdered by the natives early in the seventh century.

Patrick, the well-known missionary of Ireland, was reverenced also in Scotland. There is a well dedicated to him in the parish of Muthill, Perthshire, and close to it once stood a chapel, believed to have borne his name. From the article on Muthill parish, in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland,” we learn that in former times the inhabitants of the district held the saint’s memory “in such veneration that, on his day, neither the clap of the mill was heard nor the plough seen to move in the furrow.” There is a well dedicated to him in Dalziel parish, Lanarkshire. About sixty yards from St. Patrick’s temple, in the island of Tyree, is a rock, with a hollow on the top, two feet across and four feet deep, known to the islanders as St. Patrick’s Vat. At any rate it was so named at the end of last century. In a quarry at Portpatrick, Wigtownshire, used in connection with the harbour works, once flowed a spring dedicated to the saint. On the rock below were formerly to be seen certain marks, said, by tradition, to be the impression made by his knees and left hand.

Columban or Columbanus, belonged, like Columba, to the sixth century. Ireland was also his native land. When he left it he travelled, not north like Columba, but south, and sought the sunny lands of France and Italy. In the latter country he founded the monastery of Bobbio among the Apennines. A writer in the “Antiquary” for 1891 remarks, in connection with a recent visit to this monastery, “I was taken to see a rock on the summit of a mountain called La Spanna, near the cave to which the saint is said to have retired for prayer and meditation. The impression of the saint’s left hand is still shown upon the face of this rock. The healing power of the patron’s hand is believed by the peasantry of the surrounding country to linger still in the hollow marking, and many sufferers, climbing to this spot, have found relief from laying their hand within its palm.”

In addition to his well beside the Molendinar, at Glasgow, Kentigern had a chair and bed, both of stone. Concerning the latter, Bishop Forbes, in his “Kalendars of Scottish Saints,” says, “Kentigern’s couch was rather a sepulchre than a bed, and was of rock, with a stone for a pillow, like Jacob. He rose in the night and sang psalms and hymns till the second cock-crowing. Then he rushed into the cold stream, and with eyes fixed on heaven he recited the whole psalter. Then, coming out of the water he dried his limbs on a stone on the mountain called Galath, and went forth for his day’s work.” Kentigern’s work took him beyond the limits of Strathclyde. He seems to have visited the uplands of Aberdeenshire. The church of Glengairn, a parish now incorporated with Tullich and Glenmuick, was probably founded by him. At any rate, it was dedicated to him. A tradition of his untiring zeal survived in Aberdeenshire down to the beginning of last century. According to a proverb then current, systematic beneficence was said to be “like St. Mungo’s work, which was never done.” The Isle of May, in the Firth of Forth, has, on one of its rocky sides, a small cave called The Lady’s Bed, containing a pool in its floor. As Mr. Muir points out in his “Ecclesiological Notes,” it is traditionally associated with Thenew, Kentigern’s mother, “who,” according to the legend, “after being cast into the sea at Aberlady, was miraculously floated to the May, and thence, in the same manner, to Culross, where she was stranded and gave birth to the saint.” Columba, when in Iona, had a stone slab as a bed, and a block of stone as a pillow. Adamnan mentions that, after the saint’s death, this pillow stone was placed as a monument over his grave.

Guarding Lamlash Bay, where Haco gathered his shattered fleet after the battle of Largs, in 1263, is Holy Island, known to the Norsemen as Melansay. In this island is a cave, at one time inhabited by the hermit Molio, and below it, near the beach, is his Holy Well, for centuries reckoned efficacious in the cure of disease. A large block of sandstone, flat on the top, with a series of recesses like seats cut round its margin, constitutes the saint’s chair and table combined. Molio was educated in Bute by his uncle Blane, to whom the now ruined St. Blane’s Chapel was dedicated. He afterwards went to Ireland, and was placed under Munna, who is still remembered in the name of Kilmun, on Holy Loch, in the Firth of Clyde.

Inan, probably the same as Finan, gave name to Inchinnan, in Renfrewshire, though the ancient church of the parish was dedicated, not to him, but to Conval. The church at Lamington, in Lanarkshire, was dedicated to Inan. St. Innian’s Well is in the parish. He is the patron saint of Beith, in Ayrshire. The annual fair held there in August is popularly called Tenant’s Day—Tenant being a corruption of St. Inan. St. Inan’s Well and St. Inan’s Chair keep his memory fresh in the district. Some particulars about them are given by Mr. Robert Love in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland”, vol. xi.:—“This chair is in the rocky hill-face at the west end of the Cuff hills, and from its elevated position a wide tract of country from south to north is overlooked. At the base of the hill, and distant from the chair some hundred yards, is a well called St. Inan’s Well, a double spring, which issues from the rock at two points close by each other, and which is almost unapproachable in respect of its abundance and purity. This chair is formed in part, possibly by nature, out of the rock of the hill. Its back and two sides are closed in, while, in front, to the west, it is open. The seat proper is above the ground in front about two feet two inches, is two feet four inches in breadth, and one foot four inches in depth backwards.” Visitors to the seven churches at Glendalough, in county Wicklow, Ireland, are usually shown St. Kevin’s Seat on a block of rock. As a proof of its genuineness the mark made by the saint’s leg and the impression of his fingers are duly pointed out by the local guide.

In Kirkmaiden parish, Wigtownshire, the print of the Virgin’s knee was at one time shown on a stone where she knelt in prayer. There was a chapel dedicated to her in the neighbourhood. In Southend parish, Kintyre, are the remains of St. Columba’s Chapel, standing in the ancient burying-ground of Keil. In his “Ecclesiological Notes” Mr. Muir observes, “Under an overhanging rock, close by on the roadside, is St. Columba’s Well, and on the top of a hillock, overlooking the west end of the burial ground there is a flat rock bearing on its top the impress of two feet, made, it seems, by those of the saint whilst he stood marking out and hallowing the spot on which his chapel should rest.” In Bromfield parish, Cumberland, is a piece of granite rock called St. Cuthbert’s Stane, and near it is a copious spring of remarkably pure water. Brand, in his “Popular Antiquities,” says that “this spring, probably from its having been anciently dedicated to the same St. Cuthbert, is called Helly Well, i.e., Haly or Holy Well.”

Mr. R. C. Hope, in his “Holy Wells,” refers to a block of stone near St. Madron’s Spring, in Cornwall, locally known as St. Madron’s Bed. We are told that “on it impotent folk reclined when they came to try the cold water cure.” In the same parish is a pre-historic relic in the form of a granite block with a hole in the centre of it. It is known in Cornish as Mean-an-Tol, i.e., the Stone of the Hole. Its name in English is The Creeping Stone. Sickly children were at one time passed through the hole a certain number of times, in the belief that a cure would follow. This superstitious custom recalls what was at one time done beside St. Paul’s Well, in the parish of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire. Close to the well were the ruins of an old church. One of its stones was supported on other two with a space below. It went by the name of The Shargar Stone—shargar signifying a weakly child. The stone, in this instance, got its name from the custom in the district of mothers passing their ailing children through the space below the stone, in the belief that whatever hindered their growth would thereby be removed. Mr. Hope recounts a tradition concerning Morwenstowe, in Devon, and its patron saint, Morwenna, to the effect that when the parishioners wished to build a church, Morwenna brought a large stone from the foot of the cliff to form the font. Feeling fatigued by the climb she laid down the stone to rest herself, and from the spot a spring gushed forth.

On the top of green Dunfillan, in the parish of Comrie, is a rocky seat known in the district as Fillan’s Chair. Here, according to tradition, the saint sat and gave his blessing to the country around. Towards the end of last century, and doubtless even later, this chair was associated with a superstitious remedy for rheumatism in the back. The person to be cured sat in the chair, and then, lying on his back, was dragged down the hill by the legs. The influence of the saint lingering about the spot was believed to insure recovery. St. Fillan’s Spring, at the hill-foot, has already been referred to, in connection with its mysterious change of site. It was much frequented at one time by old and young, especially on 1st May and 1st August. The health seekers walked or were carried thrice round the spring from east to west, following the course of the sun. The next part of the ritual consisted in the use of the water for drinking and washing, in throwing a white stone on the saint’s cairn, near the spring, and in leaving a rag as an offering before departing. In 1791 not fewer than seventy persons visited the spot at the dates mentioned. The writer of the article on Comrie in the “Old Statistical Account of Scotland” supplies these particulars, and adds, “At the foot of the hill there is a basin made by the saint on the top of a large stone, which seldom wants water, even in the greatest drought, and all who are distressed with sore eyes must wash them three times with this water.” Fillan, to whom Comrie parish is thus so much indebted, flourished about the sixth century, and must not be confounded with the other missionary of the same name, who dwelt more than a century later, in the straths of the Fillan and the Dochart, between Tyndrum and Killin. Concerning the former, Dr. Skene writes in his “Celtic Scotland”: “Fillan, called Anlobar or ‘the leper,’ whose day is 20th June, is said in the Irish calendar to have been of Rath Erenn in Alban, or the fort of the Earn in Scotland, and St. Fillans, at the east end of Loch Earn, takes its name from him; while the church of Aberdour, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, is also dedicated to him.” The other Fillan had his Chapel and Holy Pool halfway between Tyndrum and Crianlarich. He is also connected with Fife. At Pittenweem, in that county, his cave is to be seen, and in it is his holy well, supplied with water from crevices in the rock. At the mill of Killin, in Perthshire, once stood a block of stone, known as St. Fillan’s Chair. Close to the spot flows the Dochart, and some person or persons, whose muscles were stronger than their antiquarian instincts, sought not unsuccessfully to throw the relic into the river. The Renfrewshire parish of Killallan, united in 1760 to that of Houston, got its name from Fillan. Its ancient church, now ruined, was dedicated to him. Near the ruins, are a stone with a hollow in it and a spring, called respectively St. Fillan’s Seat and St. Fillan’s Well.

About two miles and a half to the south-east of Dunfermline, is a block of stone, believed to be the last remnant of a group of pre-historic Standing Stones. According to tradition, it was used by Queen Margaret, as a seat where she rested, when on her way to and from the ferry over the Forth. A farm in the immediate neighbourhood is called St. Margaret’s Stone Farm, after the block in question. In his “Annals of Dunfermline” Dr. Henderson says, “In 1856 this stone was removed to an adjacent site, by order of the road surveyor, in order to widen the road which required no widening, as no additional traffic was likely to ensue, but the reverse; it is therefore much to be regretted that the old landmark was removed. It is in contemplation to have the old stone replaced on its old site (as nearly as possible) and made to rest, with secure fixings, on a massive base or plinth stone.” Not far from the town of Cromarty is St. Bennet’s Spring, beside the ruins of St. Bennet’s Chapel. Close to the spot once stood a stone trough, termed The Fairies’ Cradle. Hugh Miller, in his “Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,” says that this trough was “famous for virtues derived from the saint, like those of the well. For, if a child was carried away by the fairies and some mischievous imp left in its place, the parents had only to lay the changeling in this trough, and, by some invisible process, their child would be immediately restored to them. The Fairies’ Cradle came to a sudden end about the year 1745. It was then broken to pieces by the parish minister, with the assistance of two of his elders, that it might no longer serve the purposes of superstition.”

The following, from the Rev. Dr. Gregor’s “Folklore of the North-East of Scotland,” has certainly nothing to do with a saint, but in other respects, has a bearing on the subject in hand:—“The Pot o’ Pittenyoul is a small but romantic rock-pool in a little stream called the ‘Burn o’ the Riggins,’ which flows past the village of Newmills of Keith. On the edge of the pool are some hollows worn away by the water and the small stones and sand carried down by the stream. These hollows to a lively imagination have the shape of a seat, and the story is, that the devil, at some far-back time, sat down on the edge of the pool and left his mark.” Probably at an equally distant date, the devil made his presence felt, further south, though in a different way. He had great objections to a church built at Invergowrie, in Perthshire, and, in order to knock it down, hurled a huge boulder across the Tay from the opposite coast of Fife. We are not aware that the stone struck the church. At any rate it can be seen in the grounds of Greystane, a property to which, according to local tradition, it gave name. Sir William Wallace, though never canonized, had certainly more of the saint about him than the last-mentioned personage. We find various traditions concerning him in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. His connection with Lanark is well known. At Biggar, he is said, by Blind Harry, to have defeated the English, who greatly outnumbered his forces. This battle took place on Biggar Moss. A few days before the fight, he entered the enemy’s camp, disguised as a cadger or pedlar, to discover the strength of the English army. Being pursued, he turned on his assailants while crossing a bridge over Biggar Water, a little to the west of the town. A foot-bridge there still goes by the name of The Cadger’s Bridge. A rock with a hollow in it, lying to the north of Vizzyberry, is locally styled Wallace’s Seat, and a spring near the spot is still known as Wallace’s Well.

CHAPTER VI.

Healing and Holy Wells.

Healing and Holy—Modern Health-resorts—King’s Ease—Poorhouse of Ayr—Muswell—St. Martin’s Chapel—Alum Wells—Petrifying Springs—Peterhead—Moss of Melshach—Well of Spa—Chapel Wells at Kirkmaiden—Medan—St. Catherine’s Balm Well—The Sciennes—St. Bernard’s Well—Non-mineral Wells—Early Saints—Water for Discipline—For Baptism—Burghead—Lough Shanan—Tobar-an-easbuig—Poetry and Superstition—Heljabrün—Trinity Hospital and Well—St. Mungo’s Well—Fuaran n’Gruarach—Spring in Athole—Fiddler’s Well—Water as a Prophylactic.

Healing and holy have an etymological kinship. The one is commonly associated with matters relating to the body, and the other with those relating to the soul. If the body is healed, it is said to be whole and its owner hale; and if the soul is healed, it is said to be holy. All these words have one idea in common, and hence we need not wonder that healing wells were, as a rule, reckoned holy wells, and vice versa. When speaking of the virtues of such wells, Mrs. Stone, in her “God’s Acre,” puts the point exactly, if somewhat quaintly, when she says, “Before chemistry was born, when medical science was little known, these medical virtues, so plainly and indisputably ostensible, were attributed to the beneficence of the saint or angel to whom the spring had been dedicated.” Many still go to Moffat, Bridge-of-Allan, and Strathpeffer to drink the waters, but probably, none of those health-seekers now rely on magic for a cure. It was quite otherwise in former times. Cures wrought at Lourdes are still believed, by many, to be due to the blessing of the water by the Virgin Mary.

Not far from the highway between Ayr and Prestwick once stood a lazar-house called King’s Ease or King’s Case, known in the sixteenth century as Kilcaiss. Its ruins were to be seen till well on in the present century. According to tradition, the hospital was founded for lepers by King Robert Bruce, who was himself afflicted with a disease believed to be leprosy. This was done as a thank-offering, for benefit received from the water of a neighbouring well. The spring was doubtless sacred to some saint, probably to Ninian, to whom the hospital was dedicated, and we can safely infer that the patron got the credit of the cure. To maintain the lepers the king gifted various lands to the hospital, among others, those of Robertlone, in Dundonald parish, and of Sheles and Spital-Sheles, in Kyle Stewart. The right of presentation to the hospital was vested in the family of Wallace of Craigie. At a later date the lands belonging to the charity passed into other hands. In the third volume of his “Caledonia,” published in 1824, Chalmers remarks, “The only revenue that remained to it was the feu-duties payable from the lands granted in fee-firm, and these, amounting to 64 bolls of meal and 8 marks Scots of money, with 16 threaves of straw for thatching the hospital, are still paid. For more than two centuries past the diminished revenue has been shared among eight objects of charity in equal shares of 8 bolls of meal and 1 mark Scots to each. The leprosy having long disappeared, the persons who are now admitted to the benefit of this charity are such as labour under diseases which are considered as incurable, or such as are in indigent circumstances.” In the time of Charles I., the persons enjoying the benefit of the charity lived in huts or cottages in the vicinity of the chapel. In 1787 the right of presentation was bought from the Wallaces by the burgh of Ayr, and the poorhouse there is thus the lineal descendant of King Robert’s hospital. Mr. R. C. Hope, in his “Holy Wells,” alludes to the interesting fact that Bruce had a free pass from the English king to visit Muswell, near London, close to the site of the Alexandra Palace. This well, dedicated to St. Lazarus, at one time belonged to the hospital order of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, and was resorted to in cases of leprosy. Bruce’s foundation at Ayr recalls another at Stony Middleton, in Derbyshire. The latter, however, was a chapel, and not a hospital. Tradition says that a crusader, belonging to the district, was cured of leprosy by means of the mineral water there, and that in gratitude he built a chapel and dedicated it to his patron saint, Martin.

In glancing at the history of holy wells, it is not difficult to understand why certain springs were endowed with mysterious properties. When there were no chemists to analyse mineral springs, anyone tasting the water would naturally enough think that there was something strange about it, a notion that would not vanish with the first draught. The wonder, too, would grow if the water was found to put fresh vigour into wearied frames. Alum wells, like the one in Carnwath parish, Lanarkshire, would, through their astringent qualities, arrest attention. A well at Halkirk, Caithness, must have been a cause of wonder, if we judge by the description given of it in the “Old Statistical Account of Scotland,” where we read, that “on its surface lies always a thin beautiful kind of substance, that varies like the plumage of the peacock displayed in all its glory to the rays of the sun.”

The petrifying power of certain springs would also tend to bring them into notice. There is a famous well of this kind near Tarras Water, in Canonbie parish, Dumfriesshire. In Kirkmaiden parish, Wigtownshire, is a dropping cave, known as Peter’s Paps. In former times it was resorted to by persons suffering from whooping-cough. The treatment consisted in standing with upturned face below the drop, and allowing it to fall into the open mouth. For more than two centuries and a half, the mineral waters of Peterhead have been famous for both internal and external use, though their fame is not now so great as formerly. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, they were spoken of as one of the six wonders of Buchan. The principal well is situated to the south of the town, and is popularly called the Wine Well. Its water is strongly impregnated with carbonic acid, muriate of iron, muriate of lime, and muriate of soda. The chalybeate spring in the Moss of Melshach, in Kennethmont parish, had at one time a considerable local reputation for the cure of man and beast. Clothes of the former and harness of the latter were left beside the well. Visits were paid to it in the month of May. Another Aberdeenshire health-resort formerly attracted many visitors, viz., Pannanich, near Ballater, with its four chalybeate springs. These are said to have been accidentally discovered, about the middle of last century, but were then probably only rediscovered. They were at first found beneficial in the case of scrofula, and were afterwards deemed infallible in all diseases. In his “Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Scotland,” Cordiner, under date 1776, writes: “In coming down these hilly regions, stopped the first night at ‘Pananach-lodge:’ an extensive building opposite to the strange rocks and pass of Bolliter. There, a mineral well and baths, whose virtues have been often experienced, are become much frequented by the infirm. The lodge, containing a number of bed-chambers, and a spacious public room, is fitted up for the accommodation of those who come to take the benefit of the waters. Goat whey is also there obtained in the greatest perfection.” Almost a century later, another visitor to the spot, viz., Queen Victoria, thus writes, in her “More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands”: “I had driven with Beatrice to Pannanich wells, where I had been many years ago. Unfortunately, almost all the trees which covered the hills have been cut down. We got out and tasted the water, which is strongly impregnated with iron, and looked at the bath and at the humble, but very clean, accommodation in the curious little old inn, which used to be very much frequented.” The Well of Spa, at Aberdeen, was more famous in former times than it is now. There are two springs, both of them chalybeate. The amount of iron in the water, however, diminished very considerably more than fifty years ago—a change due to certain digging operations in the neighbourhood. The present structure connected with the well was renovated in 1851. It was built in 1670 to replace an earlier one, repaired by George Jamieson, the artist, but soon afterwards completely demolished by the overflowing of the adjoining Denburn. The present building, according to Mr. A. Jervise, in the fourth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” “bears representations of the Scottish Thistle, the Rose of England, and the Fleur-de-lis of France, surmounting this inscription:—

‘As heaven gives me

So give I thee.’

Below these words is a carving of the rising sun, and the following altered quotation from Horace:—

‘Hoc fonte derivata Salus

In patriam populumque fluat.’

“It appears,” continues Mr. Jervise, “that the virtues of this Spa were early known and appreciated, for in 1615 record says that there was ‘a long wyde stone which conveyed the waters from the spring, with the portraicture of six Apostles hewen upon either side thereof.’ It is described as having then been ‘verie old and worne.’ ”

An unusual kind of holy well, viz., one, in which salt water takes the place of fresh, is to be found in the case of the Chapel Wells in Kirkmaiden parish, Wigtownshire, half way between the bays of Portankill and East Tarbet. About thirty yards to the north-west are the ruins of St. Medan’s Chapel, partly artificial and partly natural, a cave forming the inner portion. In days gone by, the spot was much frequented on the first Sunday of May (O.S.), called Co’ Sunday, after this cave or cove. Dr. Robert Trotter, who examined the chapel and the wells in 1870, gives the results of the observations in the eighth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” (new series). He says, “These wells—three natural cavities in a mass of porphyritic trap—are within the tide mark, and are filled by the sea at high water of ordinary tides. The largest is circular, five feet in diameter at the top, and four feet at one side, shelving down to five feet at the other, and is wider inside than at the top, something like a kailpot in fact, and it is so close to the edge of the rock that at one place its side is not two inches thick. The other wells almost touch it, and are about one foot six inches wide and deep respectively.” Sickly children were brought to be bathed, the time selected being just before sunrise. Dr. Trotter mentions that children are still brought occasionally, sometimes from long distances. The ceremony described to him by an eyewitness was as follows:—“The child was stripped naked, and taken by the spaul—that is, by one of the legs—and plunged headforemost into the big well till completely submerged; it was then pulled out, and the part held on by was dipped in the middle well, and then the whole body was finished by washing the eyes in the smallest one, altogether very like the Achilles and Styx business, only much more thorough. An offering was then left in the old chapel, on a projecting stone inside the cave behind the west door, and the cure was complete.”

Much uncertainty attaches to Medan or Medana, the tutelar saint of the spot. One legend makes her a contemporary of Ninian. According to another, she lived about one hundred years later. Dr. Skene thinks she is probably the same as Monenna, otherwise Edana, who is said to have founded churches in Galloway, and at Edinburgh, Stirling and Longforgan. Kirkmaiden parish, at one time called Kirkmaiden in Ryndis, is believed to be named after her, like the other parish known as Kirkmaiden in Farnes, now united to the parish of Glasserton. An incident in her history has a bearing on the present subject. According to the Aberdeen Breviary, she fled from her home in Ireland to escape from the importunities of a certain noble knight who sought to marry her. Accompanied by two handmaidens, she crossed to Galloway and took up her abode in the Rhinns. The knight followed her. When Medana saw him she placed herself along with her maidens on a rock in the sea. By a miracle, this rock became a boat, and she was conveyed over the water to Farnes. Again the knight appeared. This time Medana sought refuge among the branches of a tree, and, from this coign of vantage, asked her lover what it was that made him pursue her so persistently. “Your face and eyes,” replied the knight. Thereupon Medana plucked out her eyes and threw them down at the feet of her lover, who was so filled with grief and penitence that he immediately departed. On the spot where her eyes fell a spring of water gushed forth, and in it Medana washed her face, doubtless thereby restoring her sight. There is much to favour the view taken by Dr. Trotter: that “possibly the well was the original institution; the cave a shelter or dwelling for the genius who discovered the miraculous virtues of the water, and his successors; and the chapel a later edition for the benefit of the clergy, who supplanted the old religion by grafting Christianity upon it, St. Medana being a still later institution.”

St. Catherine’s Balm Well, at Liberton, near Edinburgh, is still considered beneficial in the treatment of cutaneous affections. The spring is situated on a small estate, called after it, St. Catherine’s. Peter Swave, who visited Scotland in 1535, on a political mission, mentions that near Edinburgh there was a spot in a monastery where oil flowed out of the ground. This was his way of describing the Balm Well. Bitumenous particles, produced by decomposition of coal in seams beneath, intermittently appear on the surface of the water. This curious phenomenon must have attracted attention at a very early period, and one can easily understand why the well was in consequence regarded with superstitious reverence. When speaking of this well, Brome, who visited Scotland about 1700, observes, “It is of a marvellous nature, for as the coal whereof it proceeds is very apt quickly to kindle into a flame, so is the oil of a sudden operation to heal all scabs and tumours that trouble the outward skin; and the head and hands are speedily healed by virtue of this oil, which retains a very sweet smell.” According to Boece, the fountain sprang from a drop of oil, brought to Queen Margaret of Scotland, from the tomb of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. The same writer mentions that Queen Margaret built a chapel to St. Catherine, in the neighbourhood of the spring. In 1504 an offering was made by James IV. in this chapel, described as “Sanct Kathrine’s of the oly, i.e., oily well.” The later history of the spring is thus referred to by Sir Daniel Wilson, in his “Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time”: “When James VI. returned to Scotland, in 1617, he visited the well, and commanded it to be enclosed with an ornamental building with a flight of steps to afford ready access to the healing waters; but this was demolished by the soldiers of Cromwell, and the well now remains enclosed with plain stone-work, as it was partially repaired at the Restoration.” About three miles to the north of the well, once stood the Convent of St. Catherine of Sienna—a religious foundation which gave name to the part of Edinburgh still called “The Sciennes.” What Sir Daniel Wilson describes as “an unpicturesque fragment of the ruins” served to the middle of the present century, and perhaps, even later, as a sheep-fold for the flocks pasturing in the adjoining meadow. Lord Cockburn, in his “Memorials of His Time,” mentions that in his boyhood, about 1785, “a large portion of the building survived.” Before the Reformation the nuns of this convent walked annually in solemn procession to the Balm Well. The saints to whom the convent and the spring were respectively dedicated were, of course, not identical, though bearing the same name. The coincidence of name, however, evidently led to these yearly visits. As it may be taken for granted that the two Catherines were on friendly terms, the pilgrimages doubtless proved a benefit to all who took part in them. At any rate, it is safe to assume that the health of the pilgrims would be the better, and not the worse, for their walk in the fresh country air.

In the valley below the Dean Bridge, Edinburgh, close to the Water of Leith, is the sulphur spring known as St. Bernard’s Well—traditionally connected with Bernard the Abbot of Clairvaux. In his “Journey through Scotland,” about 1793, Heron remarks: “The citizens of Edinburgh repaired eagerly to distant watering-places, without inquiring whether they might find medicinal water at home. But within these few years, Lord Gardenstone became proprietor of St. Bernard’s Well. His lordship’s philanthropy and public spirit suggested to him the possibility of rendering its waters more useful to the public. He has, at a very considerable expense, built a handsome Grecian edifice over the spring, in which the waters are distributed by a proper person, and at a very trifling price. His lordship’s endeavours have accomplished his purpose. The citizens of Edinburgh are now persuaded that these waters are salutary in various cases; and have, particularly, a singular tendency to give a good breakfasting appetite; in consequence of which, old and young, males and females, have, for these two or three last summers, crowded to pay their morning respects to Hygeia in the chapel which Lord Gardenstone has erected to her.” The last allusion is to a statue of Hygeia placed within the building on its erection, in 1789. The goddess of health, however, eventually showed signs of decrepitude; and, about a hundred years later, the original statue was replaced by one in marble through the liberality of the late Mr. William Nelson, who also restored the pump-room and made the surroundings more attractive.

Coming next to consider the case of springs not possessing medicinal qualities, in other words, such as have no taste save that of clear and sparkling water, we find here, too, many a trace of superstition. Springs of this kind were probably holy wells first, and then healing wells. We have already seen that, in a large number of instances, fountains became sacred through their connection with early saints. It usually happened that the Christian missionary took up his abode near some fountain, or river, whence he could get a supply of water for his daily needs. In later times the well or stream was endowed with miraculous properties. Water was also used for purposes of bodily discipline. It was a practice among some of the early saints to stand immersed in it while engaged in devotion. The colder the water, the better was it for the purpose. Special significance, too, was given to water through its connection with baptism, particularly when the rite was administered to persons who had only recently emerged from heathenism.

At Burghead, in Elginshire, is an interesting rock-cut basin supplied with water from a spring. Burghead is known to have been the site of an early Christian church, and Dr. James Macdonald believes that the basin in question was anciently used as a baptistery. All trace of it, and well-nigh all memory of it, had vanished till the year 1809. Extensive alterations were then in progress at the harbour, and a scarcity of water was felt by the workmen. A hazy tradition about the existence of a well, where the ground sounded hollow when struck, was revived. Digging operations were begun, and, at a depth of between twenty and thirty feet below the surface, the basin was discovered. We quote the following details from Dr. Macdonald’s article on the subject in the “Antiquary” for April, 1892:—“Descending into a hollow by a flight of twenty well-worn steps, most of them also hewn out of the solid rock, we come upon the reservoir. The dimensions of the basin or piscina are as follow—greatest breadth of the four sides, ten feet eight inches, eleven feet, ten feet ten inches, and ten feet seven inches respectively; depth, four feet four inches. One part of the smooth bottom had been dug up at the time of the excavations, either because it had projected above the rest, as if for some one to stand upon, or because it was thought that by doing so the capacity of the well and perhaps the supply of the water would be increased. Between the basin and the perpendicular sides of the reservoir a small ledge of sandstone has been left about two feet six inches in breadth. These sides measure sixteen feet three inches, sixteen feet seven inches, sixteen feet nine inches, and seventeen feet respectively; and the height from the ledge upwards is eleven feet nine inches. The angles, both of the basin and its rock walls, are well rounded. In one corner the sandstone has been left in the form of a semi-circular pedestal, measuring two feet nine inches by one foot ten inches, and one foot two inches in height; whilst in that diagonally opposite there is a circular hole, five inches in diameter and one foot four inches in depth. From the ledge, as you enter, two steps of irregular shape and rude workmanship lead down into the basin. The sides of the reservoir are fissured and rent by displacement of the strata; and portions of the rock, that have given way from time to time, have been replaced by modern masonry. The arched roof is also modern.” An Irish legend accounts for the origin of Lough-shanan, in County Clare, by connecting it with the baptism of Senanus, from whom it derived its name. “The saint, while still an infant, was miraculously gifted with speech and told his mother to pluck three rushes in a valley near her home. When this was done, a lake appeared, and in it Senanus was baptised according to a form of words prescribed by himself.”

In the eighth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” (new series), Sir Daniel Wilson gives an account of the ancient burying-ground of Kilbride, some three miles from Oban. “I had visited the venerable cemetery repeatedly,” he tells us, “and had carefully investigated its monuments, without heeding the sacred fountain which wells up among the bracken and grass, about a dozen yards from the gate of the churchyard, and flows in a stream down the valley. Yet, on inquiry, I learned that it was familiarly known as Tober-an-easbuig, i.e., The Bishop’s Well or The Holy Well. Here, as we may presume, the primitive missionary and servant of St. Bridget, by whom Christianity was introduced into the wild district of Lorne, baptised his first converts; and here, through many succeeding generations, the neophytes were signed with the sign of the cross, and taught the mystic significance of the holy rite.”

The thoughts suggested by the sight of a crystal spring are alluded to by Mr. Hunt in his “Romances of the West of England,” where he says, “The tranquil beauty of the rising waters, whispering the softest music, like the healthful breathing of a sleeping infant, sends a feeling of happiness through the soul of the thoughtful observer, and the inner man is purified by its influence, as the outer man is cleansed by ablution.” This is the poetic view; but the superstitious view is not far to seek.

In the “Home of a Naturalist,” Mrs. Saxby thus recounts a Shetland superstition of a gruesome kind:—“There is a fine spring well near Watlie, called Heljabrün, and the legend of it is this: A wandering packman (of the Claud Halcro class) was murdered and flung into Heljabrün. Its water had always been known to possess healing power, and, after becoming seasoned by the unfortunate pedlar’s remains, the virtue in the water became even more efficacious. People came from far and near to procure the precious fluid. All who took it away had to throw three stones or a piece of ‘white money’ into the well, and the water never failed to cure disease.”

On Soutra Hill, the most westerly ridge of the Lammermoors, once stood the hospital built by Malcolm IV., about 1164, for the reception of wayfarers. It was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Every vestige of the building was removed between forty and fifty years ago except a small aisle, appropriated in the seventeenth century by the Pringles of Beatman’s Acre as a burial vault. A short distance below the site of the hospital is a spring of pure water, locally known as Trinity Well. In former times it was much visited for its healing virtues. A similar reputation was for long enjoyed by St. Mungo’s Well, on the west side of St. Mungo’s Hill, in the parish of Huntly, Aberdeenshire. In Fortingall parish, Perthshire, on the hillside near the Old Castle of Garth, is a limpid spring called by the natives Fuaran n’ Gruarach, and also Fuaran n’ Druibh Chasad, signifying the Well of the Measles and the Well of the Whooping-Cough respectively. Mr. James Mackintosh Gow describes the locality in an article in the eighth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland” (new series). He says, “It was famous in the district for the cure of these infantile diseases, and nearly all I spoke to on the subject had themselves been taken to the well, or had taken their own children to drink the water; and when an epidemic of the maladies occurred my informant remarked on the curious and amusing spectacle the scene presented on a summer morning, when groups of children, with their mothers, went up the hill in procession. The last epidemic of whooping-cough occurred in 1882, when all the children of the neighbourhood were taken to the well.” Some forty yards higher up the slope than the well, is an earth-fast boulder of mica schist, having on one of its sides two natural cavities. The larger of these holds about a quart and is usually filled with rain water. “It was the custom,” Mr. Gow tells us, “to carry the water from the well (perhaps the well was at one time at the foot of the stone) and place it in the cavity, and then give the patients as much as they could take, the water being administered with a spoon made from the horn of a living cow, called a beodhare or living horn; this, it appears, being essential to effect a cure.” On the farm of Balandonich, in Athole, is a spring famous, till a comparatively recent period, for the cure of various maladies. A story is told in the district of a woman, unable to walk through rheumatism, having been brought in a wheel-barrow from her home four miles away. She bathed her limbs in the spring, and returned home on foot.

Hugh Miller, in his “Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,” recounts a tradition concerning a certain spring near the town of Cromarty known as Fiddler’s Well, from the name of the young man who discovered its virtues. The water gushes out from the side of a bank covered with moss and daisies. The tradition, considerably abbreviated, is as follows:—William Fiddler and a companion were seized with consumption at the same time. The latter died not long afterwards, and Fiddler, though wasted to a shadow, was able to follow his friend’s body to the grave. That night, in a dream, he heard the voice of his dead companion, who told him to meet him at a certain spot in the neighbourhood of the town. Thither he went, still in his dream, and seated himself on a bank to await his coming. Then, remembering that his friend was dead, he burst into tears. “At this moment a large field-bee came humming from the west and began to fly round his head …. It hummed ceaselessly round and round him, until at length its murmurings seemed to be fashioned into words, articulated in the voice of his deceased companion—‘Dig, Willie, and drink!’ it said, ‘Dig, Willie, and drink!’ He accordingly set himself to dig, and no sooner had he torn a sod out of the bank than a spring of clear water gushed from the hollow.” Next day he took the bee’s advice. He found a spring, drank the water, and regained his health. Hugh Miller adds, “its virtues are still celebrated, for though the water be only simple water it must be drunk in the morning, and as it gushes from the bank; and, with pure air, exercise, and early rising for its auxiliaries, it continues to work cures.”

We need not multiply examples of non-mineral healing wells. Whatever benefit may be derived from them cannot be ascribed to any specially medicinal quality in their waters. The secret of their popularity is to be sought for in the annals of medical folklore, and not in those of scientific medicine.

Certain springs got the credit of warding off disease. On the island of Gigha, near the west coast of Kintyre, is a farm called Ardachad or High Field. Tradition says that a plague once visited the island, but that the people, belonging to the farm, escaped its ravages. This immunity was ascribed to the good offices of a well, in an adjoining field. The high situation of the farm and the presence of good water would tend to prolong health, without the intervention of magic. The Rev. Dr. Gregor, in his “Folklore of the North-East of Scotland,” alludes to St. Olaus’ Well in Cruden parish, Aberdeenshire. Its virtues are recorded in the couplet—

“St. Olav’s Well, low by the sea

Where peat nor plague shall never be.”

On the top of the Touch Hills, in Stirlingshire, rises St. Corbet’s Spring. The belief formerly prevailed that whoever drank its water before sunrise on the first Sunday of May would have life prolonged for another year. As a consequence, crowds flocked to the spot early on the day in question. In 1840 some old people were still living who, in their younger days, had taken part in these annual pilgrimages. In mediæval times, the belief prevailed that no one baptised with the water of Trinity Gask Well, Perthshire, would be attacked by the plague. When water for baptism was drawn from some holy well in the neighbourhood, its use, in most instances, was doubtless due to a belief in its prophylactic power. As already mentioned, baptisms in St. Machar’s Cathedral, Old Aberdeen, were at one time administered in water taken from the saint’s spring. Before the Reformation the water used at the chapel of Airth, in Stirlingshire, is believed to have been procured from a well, dedicated to the Virgin, near Abbeyton Bridge. We do not know of any spring in Scotland with a reputation for the prevention of hydrophobia. St. Maelrubha’s Well, on Innis Maree, is said to have lost its efficacy for a time through contact with a mad dog. What happened, when a mad bull was plunged into the Holy Pool at Strathfillan, will be alluded to later. In the village of Les Saintes Maries, in the south of France, is an interesting twelfth-century church with a well in the crypt. The water, when drunk, is said to prevent any evil consequences from the bite of a mad dog. Mr. E. H. Barker gives an account of this well in his “Wayfaring in France.” He says, “The curé told me that about thirty people, who had been bitten by dogs said to be rabid, came annually to drink the water; and, he added, ‘not one of them has ever gone mad.’ M. Pasteur had become a formidable rival of the well.”

CHAPTER VII.

Water-Cures.

Trying different Springs—Curing all Diseases—Fivepennies Well—Water and Dulse—Special Diseases—Toothache—Sore Eyes—Blindness—Headaches and Nervous Disorders—Deafness—Whooping-cough—Gout—Sores—Ague—Sterility—Epilepsy—Sacrifice of a Cock—St. Tegla’s Well—Insanity—Severe Treatment—Innis-Maree—Struthill—Teampull-Mòr—Hol y Pool—Fillan’s History and Relics—Persistence of Superstition.

Some people apply to different doctors in succession, in the hope that new professional advice may bring the coveted boon of health. For the same reason visits were paid to different consecrated wells. On the principle that “far fowls have fair feathers,” a more or less remote spring was resorted to, in the hope that distance might lend special enchantment to its water. Certain springs had the reputation of healing every ailment. A spring of this kind is what Martin calls “a catholicon for all diseases.” He so styles various springs in the Western Isles, and one in the Larger Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde. Fivepennies Well, in Eigg, had some curious properties. “The natives told me,” he says, “that it never fails to cure any person of their first disease, only by drinking a quantity of it for the space of two or three days; and that if a stranger lie at this well in the night-time, it will procure a deformity in some part of his body, but has no such effect on a native; and this, they say, hath been frequently experimented.” A noted fountain in the Orkney group was the well of Kildinguie in the Island of Stronsay. It is situated not far from the beach. To reach it one has to walk over a long stretch of sand. Its fame at one time spread over the Scandinavian world, and even Denmark sent candidates for its help. Besides drinking the water, health-seekers frequently ate some of the dulse to be found on the shore. A local saying thus testified to the advantages of the combined treatment: “The well of Kildinguie and the dulse of Guiyidn can cure all maladies except black death.” In the Island of Skye is a spring called Tobar Tellibreck. The natives, at one time, held that its water, along with a diet of dulse, would serve for a considerable time instead of ordinary food.

Other springs were resorted to for particular complaints. Toothache is distressingly common, and commonly distressing; but, strange to say, very few wells are specially identified with the ailment. Indeed, we know of only three toothache wells in Scotland. One is in Strathspey, and is known as Fuaran Fiountag, signifying the cool refreshing spring. The second is in the parish of Kenmore, at the foot of Loch Tay. The third is in Glentruim, in Inverness-shire. Another well at Kenmore was resorted to for the cure of sore eyes. In the parish of Glass, close to the river Deveron, is an ancient church dedicated to St. Wallach. Some thirty yards below its burying-ground is a well, now dry, except in very rainy weather. Its water had the power of healing sore eyes. The water of St. John’s Well, at Balmanno, in the parish of Marykirk, Kincardineshire, was a sovereign remedy for the same complaint. Beside the road close to the farmhouse of Wester Auchleskine, at Balquhidder, in Perthshire, once stood a large boulder containing a natural cavity. The water in this hollow was also noted for the cure of sore eyes—the boulder being called in consequence Clach-nan-Sul, i.e., the stone of the eyes. In 1878, by order of the road trustees, the boulder was blasted, on the ground that it was a source of danger to vehicles in the dark, and its fragments were used as road metal. The Dow Well, at Innerleithen, was formerly much visited for the restoration of weak sight. A well in Cornwall, dedicated to St. Ludvan, miraculously quickened the sense of sight. In Ireland, a spring at Gougou Barra, between Glengariff and Cork, is believed by the peasantry to cure blindness. In 1849, Miss Bessie Gilbert, a daughter of the late Bishop Gilbert of Chichester, who had lost her sight when a child, visited the spring along with some of her relatives. Curiosity, however, was her only motive. Her biographer relates that “the guide besought Bessie in the most earnest and pathetic manner to try the water, saying that he was sure it would restore her sight, and entreating her brothers and sisters to urge her to make use of it.”

Headaches and nervous disorders were cured by water from Tobar-nim-buadh or the Well of Virtues in St. Kilda. Deafness was also cured by it. At the entrance to Munlochy Bay, in the Black Isle of Cromarty, is a cave known in the neighbourhood as Craig-a-Chow, i.e., the Rock of Echo. Tradition says that in this cave a giant once lived. If not the retreat of a giant, it was, at any rate, of smugglers. What specially concerns us is that it contains a dripping well, formerly much in request. Its water is particularly cold. Like the St. Kilda spring, it was believed to remove deafness. Of Whooping-cough Wells, a noted one was at Straid, in Muthill parish, Perthshire. Invalids came to it from considerable distances. Early in the present century a family travelled from Edinburgh to seek its aid. The water was drunk immediately after sunset or before sunrise, and a horn from a live ox had to convey it to the patient’s lips. This was not an uncommon practice. Perhaps it may have been due to some vague notion, that life from the animal, whence the horn came, would be handed on, via the spoon and the water, to the invalid. The Straid horn was kept by a woman in the immediate neighbourhood, who acted as a sort of priestess of the well. A well at the Burn of Oxhill, in the parish of Rathven, Banffshire, had a local celebrity for the cure of the same complaint. Sufferers from gout tried the efficacy of a spring in Eckford parish, Roxburghshire, styled Holy Well or Priest’s Well. A spring in the churchyard of Logiepert parish, Forfarshire, removed sores, and another in Martin’s Den, in the same parish, was reckoned anti-scorbutic. Another noted Forfarshire spring was in Kirkden parish, with the reputation of curing swellings of the feet and legs. Lochinbreck Loch, in Balmaghie parish, Kirkcudbrightshire, was visited from time immemorial for the cure of ague. Indeed, there was hardly a bodily ailment that could not be relieved by the water of some consecrated spring.

Springs were sometimes believed to cure female barrenness. Wives, anxious to become mothers, formerly visited such wells as those of St. Fillan at Comrie, and of St. Mary at Whitekirk, and in the Isle of May. In this connection, Mr. J. R. Walker, in his article in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” volume v. (new series), observes, “Many of the wells dedicated to ‘Our Lady,’ i.e., St. Mary (Virgin Mary) and to St. Brigid, the Mary of Ireland, were famous for the cure of female sterility, which, in the days when a man’s power and influence in the land depended on the number of his clan or tribe, was looked upon as a token of the divine displeasure, and was viewed by the unfortunate spouses with anxious apprehension, dread, doubt, jealousy, and pain. Prayer and supplication were obviously the methods pursued by the devout for obtaining the coveted gift of fertility, looked upon, by females especially, as the most valuable of heavenly dispensations; and making pilgrimages to wells under the patronage of the Mother of our Lord would naturally be one of the most common expedients.”

Epilepsy, with its convulsions and cries, seldom fails to arrest attention and call forth sympathy. In times less enlightened than our own, the disease was regarded with awe as of supernatural origin; and remedies, always curious and sometimes revolting, were tried in order to bring relief. We may assume that the water of consecrated springs was used for this purpose; but, as far as we know, no Scottish fountain was systematically visited by epileptic patients. After enumerating a variety of folk-cures for the disease in question, Sir Arthur Mitchell, in an article on Highland Superstitions bearing on Lunacy in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” volume iv., remarks, “For the cure of the same disease, there is still practised in the North of Scotland a formal sacrifice—not an oblique but a literal and downright sacrifice—to a nameless but secretly acknowledged power, whose propitiation is desired. On the spot where the epileptic first falls a black cock is buried alive, along with a lock of the patient’s hair and some parings of his nails. I have seen at least three epileptic idiots for whom this is said to have been done.” The same writer adds, “Dr. G——, of N——, informs me that some time ago he was called on to visit a poor man belonging to the fishing population who had suddenly died, and who had been subject to epileptic seizures. His friends told the doctor that at least they had the comfort of knowing that everything had been done for him which could have been done. On asking what remedies they had tried, he was told that, among other things, a cock had been buried alive below his bed, and the spot was pointed out.” This sacrifice of a cock in Scotland is of special significance, for it formed a distinctive feature of the ritual once in vogue in Wales at the village of Llandegla, Denbighshire. St. Tegla’s Well there, was believed to possess peculiar virtue in curing epilepsy. Pennant gives a minute account of the ceremony as practised in his days. The following is a summary:—“About two hundred yards from the church rises a small spring. The patient washes his limbs in the well, makes an offering into it of fourpence, walks round it three times, and thrice repeats the ‘Lord’s Prayer.’ These ceremonies are never begun till after sunset. If the afflicted be of the male sex, he makes an offering of a cock; if of the fair sex, a hen. The fowl is carried in a basket, first round the well, after that into the churchyard, when the same orisons and the same circumambulations are performed round the church. The votary then enters the church, gets under the communion table, lies down with the Bible under his or her head, is covered with the carpet or cloth, and rests there till break of day, departing after offering sixpence, and leaving the fowl in the church. If the bird dies, the cure is supposed to have been effected, and the disease transferred to the devoted victim.” As regards the cock or hen, the ceremony in this case was quite as much a sacrifice as in the Scottish example. St. Tegla merely took the place of the pagan divinity who had been first in the field, and to whom offerings had been made. In former times, sacrificing a living animal was also resorted to occasionally to cure disease in cattle. An ox was buried alive in a pit, and the pit having been filled with earth, the other members of the herd were made to walk over the spot. In 1629, Isabel Young, spouse to George Smith, portioner of East Barnes, Haddingtonshire, was tried for witchcraft. From her indictment we learn that she was accused, inter alia, of having buried a “quick ox, with a cat and a quantity of salt,” in a pit as a sacrifice to the devil, the truth being that a live ox had been so treated by her husband as a charm to cure his cattle, which were diseased. A remarkable circumstance bearing on this point is alluded to by Mr. A. W. Moore in his “Surnames and Place-names of the Isle of Man,” under the heading of Cabbal-yn-Oural-Losht, i.e., Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice. “This name,” he tells us, “records a circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which, it is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man. A farmer, who had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burnt a calf as a propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel was afterwards built. Such facts point to the same notion as that already indicated in connection with St. Tegla’s Well, viz., that disease is due to some malignant being, whose favour is to be sought by the offering up of a living creature.

In no department of medical science have methods of treatment changed more within recent years than in that of insanity. Enlightened views on the subject now prevail among the educated classes of society; and the old notion that a maniac can be restored to mental health by treating him like a criminal, or by administering a few shocks to his already excited nerves, is fortunately a thing of the past. At least it no longer holds sway in our lunatic asylums. In the minds of the ignorant and credulous, however, the old leaven still works. Lady Wilde, in her “Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland,” alludes to a method of treatment in fashion till lately among the peasantry there. When anyone showed signs of insanity ‘a witch-doctor’ was called in. This potent individual sprinkled holy water about the room and over the patient; and after uttering certain incantations—understood by the by-standers to be ‘Latin prayers’—proceeded to beat him with a stout cudgel. In the end the ravings of the lunatic ceased, or as it was put, “the devil was driven out of him.” In Cornwall, at St. Nun’s Well, the expulsive power of a new terror used to be tried. According to Carew, the modus operandi was as follows:—“The water running from St. Nun’s Well fell into a square and enclosed walled plat, which might be filled at what depth they listed. Upon this wall was the frantic person put to stand, his back towards the pool, and from thence, with a sudden blow in the breast, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellow, provided for the nonce, took him and tossed him up and down, alongst and athwart the water, till the patient, by foregoing his strength, had somewhat forgot his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church, and certain masses said over him, upon which handling, if his right wits returned, St. Nun had the thanks; but if there appeared small amendment, he was bowsened again and again, while there remained in him any hope of life or recovery.” North of the Tweed the treatment was hardly less soothing. When a lunatic was being rowed over to Innis Maree to drink the water of St. Maelrubha’s Well there, he was jerked out of the boat by the friends who accompanied him. A rope had previously been tied round his waist, and by this he was pulled back into the boat; but before he could gather together his all-too-scattered wits, he was in the water again. As a rule this was done, not once or twice, but repeatedly, and in the case of both sexes. Such was the method up to a comparatively recent date. Pennant thus describes what was done in 1772:—“The patient is brought into the sacred island; is made to kneel before the altar, viz., the stump of a tree—where his attendants leave an offering in money; he is then brought to the well and sips some of the holy water; a second offering is made; that done, he is thrice dipped in the lake; and the same operation is repeated every day for some weeks.” This towing after a boat to cure insanity was not an isolated instance. Early in the present century, the wife of a man living at Stromness in Orkney, went mad through the incantations of another female believed to be a witch. The man bethought him of the cure in question, and, out of love for his afflicted wife, dragged her several times up and down the harbour behind his boat. Mr. R. M. Fergusson, who mentions this case in his “Rambles in the Far North,” says that the woman “bobbed about behind the boat like a cork, and remained as mad as ever.”

The well at Struthill, in Muthill parish, Perthshire, once had a considerable reputation for the cure of insanity. It was customary to tie patients at night to a stone near the spring, and recovery would follow if they were found loose in the morning. An adjoining chapel was ordered to be demolished in 1650 by the Presbytery of Auchterarder, on the ground of its being the scene of certain superstitious rites, but the spring continued to be visited till a much later date. At Teampull-mòr in Lewis, in addition to walking round the ruins, and being sprinkled with water from St. Ronan’s Well, the insane person was bound and left all night in the chapel on the site of the altar. If he slept, he would recover; but if he remained awake, there was no hope of a cure. In the Struthill and Teampull-mòr instances, as well as that of Strathfillan mentioned below, the binding of the patient was an essential part of the treatment; and in two at least of the cases the loosening of the bonds was reckoned an omen of good. The mysterious loosening of bonds used to be an article of common belief. Dalyell, in his “Darker Superstitions of Scotland,” remarks, “Animals were sometimes liberated supernaturally. In the Isle of Enhallow, a horse tied up at sunset would wander about through the night; and while the kirk session took cognisance of a suspected witch who had exercised her faculties on a cow, the animal, though firmly secured, was found to be free, and in their vicinity when the investigation closed.”

The Holy Pool of St. Fillan was famous for the cure of various diseases, but specially of insanity. It is referred to in “Marmion” as

“St. Fillan’s blessed well

Whose springs can frenzied dreams dispel

And the craz’d brain restore.”

It is not, however, a well, but a pool, in the river Fillan, about two miles lower down than Tyndrum. To correctly estimate the reverence paid to this sacred pool, we must glance at the influence, exerted by Fillan on the district during his life-time, and afterwards by means of his relics. The saint flourished in the early eighth century. He was born in Ireland. His father was Ferodach, and his mother was Kentigerna, daughter of a prince of Leinster. She afterwards came to Scotland and led the life of a recluse, on Inch Cailleach, an island in Loch Lomond. According to the Aberdeen Breviary, Fillan was born with a stone in his mouth, and was at once thrown into a lake where he was ministered to by angels for a year. He was then taken out and baptised by Bishop Ybarus, and at a later date received the monastic habit from Muna, otherwise called Mundus. Devoting himself to solitary meditation he built a cell close to Muna’s monastery. On one occasion, a servant went to call him to supper, and looking through a chink in the wall, saw the saint busy writing, his uplifted left hand throwing light over the book in lieu of a candle. Whatever may be thought of the incident, few will deny its picturesqueness. In competent hands it might be made the subject of a striking picture. Fillan afterwards went to Lochalsh, where he dedicated a church to his uncle Congan, the founder of the monastery of Turriff, in Aberdeenshire. We next find Fillan in the principal scene of his missionary work, viz., in Glendochart, in that portion of the glen anciently called Siracht, and now Strathfillan. This area formed a separate parish till 1617, but was then united to the parish of Killin. Fillan arrived with seven serving clerics, and tradition says that he built his church at a spot miraculously pointed out to him. The neighbourhood was, and is full of interest. “Glendochart,” writes Mr. Charles Stewart in “An Gaidheal,” “is not celebrated for terrific mountain scenery like Glencoe or the Coolins, but has a grandeur of a different character. Lofty mountains, clothed, here in heather, there in green; cloudy shadows frequently flitting across their sides, and serried ridges of multiplied lines and forms of varied beauty, and along their sides strangely shaped stones and boulders of rocks deposited by the ancient glaciers. Along the strath there are stretches of water, its course broken occasionally by lochs; sometimes wending its way slowly and solemnly through green meadows, and anon rushing along as at the celebrated bridge of Dochart, at Killin, with fire and fury.”

The same writer mentions that three spots, where Fillan was wont to teach the natives of the Strath, are still pointed out, viz., at the upper end of Glendochart, where the priory was afterwards built, halfway down the glen at Dun-ribin, and at the lower end at Cnoc-a-bheannachd, i.e., Hill of the Blessing, near Killin. Fillan instructed the people in agriculture, and built mills for grinding corn. Out of compliment to him, the mill at Killin was idle on his festival, (Jan. 9th), as late as the middle of the present century. Indeed there was a superstition in the district that it would not be lucky to have it working on that day. Fillan also instituted fairs for the sale and barter of local produce. His fair is still held at Killin in January. The miraculous element in his history did not end with his life. He seems to have died somewhere about Lochearn, and his body was brought back to Glendochart, by way of Glen Ogle. When the bearers reached the point where Glendochart opens upwards and downwards, a dispute arose as to the destination of their burden. Some wished the saint’s body to be buried at Killin and others at Strathfillan. Behold a marvel! When they could not agree, they found that instead of one coffin there were two, and so each party was satisfied.

Robert Bruce’s fight with the followers of Macdougall of Lorne took place near St. Fillan’s Church, at a spot, afterwards named Dalrigh or the King’s Field. On that occasion, an earnest prayer was addressed to the saint of the district, and through his intercession victory came to Bruce. So at least runs the legend. After his success at Bannockburn, the King in gratitude founded St. Fillan’s Priory, in Strathfillan, and endowed it with the neighbouring lands of Auchtertyre, and with the sheep-grazing of Bein-mhannach or the Monk’s Mountain, in Glenlyon. Indeed, if tradition speaks truth, Bruce had a double reason to be grateful to Fillan, for the victory at Bannockburn, was attributed to the presence in the Scottish camp, of a relic of the saint, said to be an arm-bone set in silver. The relic, however, as Dr. John Stuart shows, in the twelfth volume of the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” was probably his Coig-gerach or pastoral staff, popularly, but erroneously called his Quigrich. It is said to have been kept at Auchlyne, in a chapel called Caipal-na-Faraichd, and when the chapel was burnt to have been rescued by a person, either then, or afterwards, called Doire or Dewar, whose descendants became its custodiers. The subsequent history of the relic is curious. In 1782 it was at Killin in the keeping of Malice Doire. In 1818 it was taken to Canada, where it remained for some sixty years. Through the patriotic zeal of Sir Daniel Wilson it was then sent back to Scotland, and now forms one of the treasures in the National Museum of Antiquities, at Edinburgh.

The sanctity of Fillan thus distilled like a fertilising dew over the district of Glendochart. We need not, therefore, be surprised that, in days darker than our own, a thriving crop of superstitions was the result. It is certainly a striking testimony to the enduring influence of the saint, that the pool, believed to have been blessed by him, retained its fame till within the memory of persons still living. Possibly the pool was reverenced even before his time. Towards the end of last century, as many as two hundred persons were brought annually to the spot. The time selected was usually the first day of the quarter, (O.S.), and the immersion took place after sunset. The patients, with a rope tied round their waist, were thrown from the bank into the river. This was usually done thrice. According to previous instructions, they picked up nine stones from the bottom of the stream. After their dip they walked three times round three cairns in the immediate neighbourhood, and at each turn added a stone to the cairn. An English antiquary, who visited the spot in 1798, writes, “If it is for any bodily pain, fractured limb or sore, that they are bathing, they throw upon one of these cairns that part of their clothing which covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds upon and make it into paste with these waters, and afterwards give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, nightcaps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters, and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their halfpence.”

After the ceremony at the cairns the patient was led to the ruins of St. Fillan’s Chapel, about half a mile away, and there tied to a stone with a hollow in it, large enough to receive the body, the unfortunate person being fastened down to a wooden framework. The patient was then covered with hay, and left in this condition all night. As at Struthill, if the bonds were found loose in the morning, he or she would recover; but if not, the case was counted hopeless, or at least doubtful. As the writer of the article on the parish, in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland,” shrewdly observes, “The prospect of the ceremony, especially in a cold winter evening, might be a good test for persons pretending insanity.” At the time when he wrote, viz., in 1843, the natives of the parish had ceased to believe in the efficacy of the holy pool, but it was still visited by invalids from a distance. It was usual, after the fastening process already described, to place St. Fillan’s bell on the head of the patient by way of helping on the cure. This bell is quadrangular in shape. Its size and appearance are thus described by Dr. Joseph Anderson in his “Scotland in Early Christian Times”: “It is an elegant casting of bronze, stands twelve inches high and measures nine by six inches wide at the mouth. The ends are flat, the sides bulging, the top rounded. In the middle of the top is the loop-like handle, terminating where it joins the bell in two dragonesque heads with open mouths.” The bell weighs eight pounds fourteen ounces. In the fifteenth century the relic seems to have been held in special honour, for it graced the coronation of James IV. in 1488. After the Reformation, it was locked up for some time, to prevent its use for the superstitious purpose alluded to above. But, as a rule, it lay on a tombstone in the Priory graveyard, protected only by the reverence paid to it in the district. There was a belief that, if carried off, it would return of its own accord, ringing all the way. In 1798 this belief was put to a severe test, for in that year the English antiquary, already quoted, removed the relic. “In order,” he says, “to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the ridiculous story of St. Fillan’s bell, I carried it off with me, and mean to convey it, if possible, to England. An old woman, who observed what I was about, asked me what I wanted with the bell, and I told her that I had an unfortunate relation at home out of his mind, and that I wanted to have him cured. ‘Oh, but,’ says she, ‘you must bring him here to be cured, or it will be of no use.’ Upon which I told her he was too ill to be moved, and off I galloped with the bell back to Tyndrum Inn.” The bell was taken to England. About seventy years later, its whereabouts was discovered, and it was sent back to Scotland. Like the crozier of the same saint, it is now in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh.

If we may believe a local tradition, the Holy Pool lost its miraculous virtue in the following manner, though, after what the English antiquary mentioned about its water being mixed with meal, and given to diseased cattle, we see no reason why it should have been so particular. A farmer who had a mad bull thought that, if the sacred water could heal human ills, it would be efficacious also in the case of the lower animals. So he plunged his infuriated beast into the stream. What was the effect on the bull we do not know: but since then the virtue has departed from the water. Except for a pleasure dip on a hot summer’s day, no one need now apply at the Holy Pool.

The unbroken reputation of such health resorts, for centuries, is certainly remarkable. Strathfillan kept up its fame for over a thousand years. At Gheel, in Belgium, for fully twelve hundred years, successive generations of lunatics sought relief at St. Dympna’s Well. We must not be too hard on the ages before our own; for, though in some respects dark, in other respects they had a good deal of light. Nevertheless, severe things might be said about them. From a present-day point of view, it might be argued that those, who took their insane friends to get cured in the manner described, required, like the patients themselves, a little rearrangement of their wits.

CHAPTER VIII.

Some Wonderful Wells.

Wells Wonderful as to Origin—Tre Fontane—Springs where Saints were Beheaded—St. Alban’s Spring—Covenanter’s Spring—St. Vynning’s Spring—Scottish and English Hagiology—Springs from Graves—Cuthbert—Milburga—Mysterious Lakes—Hell-Hole at Tunstall—King Henry’s Well— Bringing Sea to Morpeth—Plymouth Water-supply—Fitz’s Well—Good Appetite—Dogs’ Well—Singular Springs in Lewis and Barray—Well in the Wall—Toubir-ni-Lechkin—Power of Wells over Lower Animals—Black Mere—Well at Gillsland—Intermittent Springs—Powbate Well—St. Ludvan’s Well—St. Keyne’s Well.

The epithet wonderful may fitly be applied to whatever springs are endowed by popular credulity with mysterious properties. Those already considered have been mainly associated with the removal or prevention of disease. It is now proposed to glance at certain other characteristics.

Some springs are wonderful as to their origin. Who does not know the legend connected with Tre Fontane, in the vicinity of Rome, where water bubbled up at the three places touched by St. Paul’s severed head? We do not recollect any Scottish instance of a well coming into being in this way; but in England we have St. Osyth’s Well in Essex, where that saint was beheaded by the Danes, and in Wales, St. Winifred’s Well in Flintshire. Concerning the latter, Chambers, in his “Book of Days,” thus writes:—“Winifred was a noble British maiden of the seventh century; a certain Prince Cradocus fell in love with her, and, finding his rough advances repulsed, cut off the lady’s head. Immediately after doing this, the prince was struck dead, and the earth, opening, swallowed up his body. Meanwhile, Winifred’s head rolled down the hill; where it stopped, a spring gushed forth—the blood from the head colouring the pebbles over which it flowed, and rendering fragrant the moss growing around.” Sweden has its St. Eric’s Spring at Upsala, marking the place where Eric, the king, was beheaded about the middle of the twelfth century. St. Oswald’s Well at Winwick, in Lancashire, is said to indicate the spot where that famous Northumbrian king received his death-wound when fighting against Penda, the pagan ruler of Mercia. On a hill in Hertfordshire, a fountain arose to quench the thirst of Alban, England’s proto-martyr, who suffered there about 300 A.D. According to a Kincardineshire tradition, a spring in Dunnottar Castle miraculously appeared for behoof of the Covenanters, who were confined there in 1685. In Holywood parish, Dumfriesshire, (so called from its oak forest, sacred even in pre-Christian times), a fountain sprang up at the intercession of Vynning, the patron of a well at Kilwinning, in Ayrshire. In Scottish hagiology, fountains usually gush forth to supply water for baptism. In English legends they spring up as a tribute to spots where the corpses of saintly persons have rested. Thus, water issued from the graves of Ethelbert at Marden, in Herefordshire, and of Withburga at East Dereham, in Norfolk, and also from that of Frideswide at Oxford. St. Frideswide’s Fair at the last-mentioned place was a noted holiday in the middle ages. It lasted a week, and, during its continuance, the keys of the city were in the keeping of the prior, having been handed over by the mayor, who ceased for the time to be responsible for the peace of the burgh. At Trondhjem, in Norway, a spring arose to mark the spot where King Olaf was buried, about the middle of the eleventh century.

Cuthbert was greatly honoured by the gushing forth of springs, both during his lifetime and after his death. While at Lindisfarne, he was seized with a desire for still greater retirement, and accordingly withdrew to Farne Island, one of the Fern group, two miles distant from Bamborough, and six from Lindisfarne. This island was then haunted by evil spirits; but these he drove away, as Guthlac did from the marshes of Crowland, in Lincolnshire. Cuthbert set about building a cell in Farne Island, and, with the help of angels, the work was satisfactorily completed. Unfortunately, there was no fresh water to be had; but the want was soon supplied. In response to the saint’s prayers, a spring arose in the floor of his cell. Bede says, “This water, by a most remarkable quality, never overflowed its first limits, so as to flood the floor, nor yet ever failed, however much of it might be taken out; so that it never exceeded or fell short of the daily wants of him who used it for his sustenance.” The miracle did not end here. When Eistan of Norway was ravaging the coast of Northumberland in the twelfth century, he landed on Farne Island and destroyed the property of the hermits, whose retreat it then was. The spring, unwilling to give help to the robber bands, dried up. Thirst, accordingly, compelled them to quit the island. No sooner had they left than the spring reappeared and gladdened the spot once more. After Cuthbert’s death, his body was carried from place to place for safety. In his “History of St. Cuthbert,” Archbishop Eyre remarks, “There is a legendary tradition, that when the bearers of St. Cuthbert’s body journeyed northwards from Yorkshire and came to Butterby, near Croxdale, they set down the coffin on the right bank before crossing the river, and immediately a saline spring burst out upon the spot. After fording the river they again rested the coffin, and a spring of chalybeate water rose up where they had laid down the body. A third time the weary travellers, struggling up the rugged pass, were compelled to lay their precious burden on the ground, and a sweet stream of water gushed out of the rock to refresh them.” Prior to this, Cuthbert’s relics had rested a while at Melrose. Tradition says that, on resuming their wanderings, they floated down the Tweed in a stone coffin as far as Tillmouth, on the English Border. The fragments of a sarcophagus, said to be the coffin in question, are still to be seen there beside the ruins of St. Cuthbert’s Chapel. This incident is thus referred to in “Marmion”:—

“Seven years Saint Cuthbert’s corpse they bore.

They rested them in fair Melrose:

But though, alive, he loved it well,

Not there his reliques might repose;

For, wondrous tale to tell!