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(Figs. 66 and 67), and on the shrine of the bell of St. Patrick's Will (Fig. 72), to be subsequently noticed. It does not appear on the iron bell-handles, because the material was too intractable to be dealt with in this way. But it was such a favourite device with the artificers of the period that wherever they had an ending to finish they gave it the semblance of an

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Fig. 65.-The Bell of St. Ruadhan of Lorrha. animal's head.

Even the handles of the chalices simulated lacertine creatures grasping the lip of the sacred vessel between their jaws. The same feeling pervades the whole of the ornamental work of the time. We see it in the manu

1 A different, and, as I conceive, an altogether untenable explanation of this ornamental ending of the handle of St. Fillan's bell has been given by the late Bishop of Brechin, attributing to it a connection with a form of pagan worship of the existence of which among the Celtic tribes in Britain there is no evidence.

scripts, the brooches, the book-covers, the shrines, the bellcases, the chalices, the crosiers, the processional crosses, and even in the high crosses of stone and sculptured stone monuments. There is nothing exceptional, nothing essentially

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pagan in this zoomorphic style of ornamentation. So far as we know it in this country, it belongs only to the Christian time, and no argument for the pagan or semi-pagan character of any object on which it occurs can stand for a moment

against the fact of its general prevalence as a strongly-marked characteristic of the Christian art of the Celtic people.

The earlier history of St. Fillan's Bell is lost, but its later history is a very remarkable one. Of the early Celtic monas

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tery in Glendochart, to which it belonged, there remains no vestige. Founded by St. Fillan, son of Kentigerna,1 daughter

1 St. Kentigerna is commemorated in the dedication of the church of Inch Cailleach in Loch Lomond. Her brother St. Comgan is said in the Breviary of Aberdeen to have been associated with St. Fillan in Strathfillan and in

of Cellach Cualan, King of Leinster, in the early part of the eighth century, it shared in the failing fortunes of the early Celtic establishments. As the great abbeys grew and multiplied, and the Anglo-Norman lords gave liberally to them of the lands that fell to their share in the feudal partition of the country, so the original foundations established by the first planters of Christianity declined, their revenues were alienated or absorbed, their constitution changed, and if their buildings were re-edified, their historical associations were severed from them by re-dedication to one or other of the new order of saints who had no personal connection with the people or the country. It was the peculiarity of the Celtic system, that the saints whose memory was held in veneration were in every instance the planters of the churches in which they were commemorated, or the founders of the monasteries from which the planters of these churches proceeded.1 Hence these early dedications are altogether different in their character from the later ones that superseded them. They have a historical as well as a religious significance, and on this

Lochalsh, where there are two churches, Kilchoan and Kilellan, dedicated to him and St. Fillan. In Ireland St. Fillan is commemorated as St. Faolan of Cluain Mosena in Fartullagh, county of Westmeath, on the same day (January 9) as in the Scottish Calendar. He is also commemorated on August 26th in the Martyrology of Donegal. The other St. Fillan of Dundurn at the east end of Loch Earn is called an lobar or the leper. He is described in the same Martyrology as "of Rath Erann in Albain and of Cill Fhaelain in Laoghis in Leinster, of the race of Aengus, King of Munster." His day is June 22d, and his date nearly two centuries earlier than St. Fillan of Strathfillan.

1 It is a remarkable fact that the saints of the early Celtic Church were not reverenced because they were martyrs, but simply because they were founders of churches and teachers of Christianity. With the exception of St. Donnan, who is said to have suffered martyrdom in the island of Eigg, no instance of "red martyrdom" occurs until the arrival of the Vikings, who slew priests and people indiscriminately when out on their plundering expeditions. But the paganism of Ireland and Scotland had fallen peacefully before the power of the new faith almost three centuries before this.

account they fall within the province of the archæologist and the historian, and rank among the most valuable materials that have survived the lapse of ages. In the case of St. Fillan's there has been fortunately no re-dedication, but in the time of King Robert the Bruce the establishment had sunk to such a condition, that he gave to the monastery of Inchaffray the patronage of the church of Killin on condition that a canon should be provided for the performance of divine service in the church of Strathfillan,1 and subsequently the priory of Strathfillan was erected as a dependency of Inchaffray. The ruins of this priory still remain. The bell which has survived the decay, both of the ecclesiastical system to which it originally belonged and of that which succeeded it, had lain for generations in the open air, usually upon a tombstone in the churchyard. But in the end of the last century it disappeared, and all traces of it were lost for seventy years. In the autumn of 1869 the late Alexander P. Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, being at Dunecht on a visit to Lord Crawford, the conversation turned upon the peculiar usages of the early Scottish Church, and on the mention of this peculiar type of bell, an English gentleman who was present remarked that there was a bell of this description in the house of a relative of his in Hertfordshire. The result was that the bell was identified and sent back to Scotland, to be placed in safety in the National Museum. Fortunately for the establishment of its authenticity as the Bell of St. Fillan, the gentleman who carried it off had made an entry in his diary which still exists. It states that, On the 9th of August 1798 he rode from Tyndrum to the holy pool of Strathfillan, which, towards the end of the first quarter of the moon, was resorted to by crowds of the neighbouring peasantry, who expect to be

1 Dr. Stuart has printed the confirmation of this grant in his "Historical Notices of St. Fillan's Crosier," in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. xii.

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