cured of their diseases. So great were its virtues, that he was told that if he had been a day or two later he would have seen hundreds of both sexes bathing in its waters. As it was he met five or six returning, and amongst them an unfortunate girl out of her mind, who had been brought from thirty miles distance for several moons, but had not derived the smallest advantage. A rocky point projects into the pool, on the one side of which the men bathed and on the other

the women. Each person gathered up nine stones from the pool, and after bathing walked to a hill near the water where there are three cairns, round each of which he performed three turns, at each turn depositing a stone. "If it be,” he says, "for any bodily pain or sore that they are bathing, they throw upon one of these cairns that part of their clothing that covered the part affected; and if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they bring some of the meal that it feeds upon and make it into paste with the water of the pool, and afterwards give it to the beast to eat, which is an infallible cure, but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which the beast is led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, nightcaps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters, and smocks." When mad people are bathed they throw them in with a rope tied about the middle, after which they are taken to St. Fillan's church, where there is a large stone with a niche in it just large enough to receive them. In this stone trough, which lies in the open churchyard, they are fastened down to a wooden framework, and there left for a whole night with a covering of hay over them, and St. Fillan's bell is put upon their heads. If in the morning the unhappy patient is found loose, the saint is supposed to be propitious;

1 The stone trough still exists. It is apparently a stone coffin, probably of the twelfth or thirteenth century, with a round niche for the head-at least so it has been described to me.

if on the contrary he continues in bonds, the case is supposed doubtful. "I was told," he adds, "that wherever this bell was removed, it always returned to a particular spot in the churchyard next morning. In order to ascertain the truth or falsehood of this ridiculous story I carried it off with me, and mean to convey it to England." And he did convey it to England, and but for the happy accident of the Bishop of Brechin meeting and entering into conversation with one who had seen the bell there, it might have remained unrecognised, and been ultimately lost.

In this strange narrative there are several points worthy of our consideration. The practices here disclosed are doubtless direct survivals from the early cultus of St. Fillan, celebrated most probably on the very site of his original foundation, of which the three cairns may possibly mark the remains. Such a survival of the early belief in the healing virtues of waters, that have been hallowed by the use, or by the special blessing of one or other of the first founders of the faith, is not confined to any one district of Scotland. There are few parishes that had not one or more of these holy pools or wells, which were more or less commonly resorted to for their healing virtues down to quite recent times.1 So difficult was it to

1 A few of these "holy wells" may be specified :-St. Adamnan's wells at Dull and Forglen; St. Aidan's wells at Menmuir, famed for the cure of cutaneous diseases, and St. Aidan's well at Fearn; St. Baldred's well and pool at Prestonkirk; St. Bride's wells at Dunsyre and at Beith; St. Comb's well at Menmuir; St. Colman's well at Kiltearn; St. Caran's well at Drumlithie; St. Columba's wells in Eilan na Naoimh and in Eigg; St. Fechin's or St. Vigean's well at Grange of Conon in Forfarshire; St. Devenick's well at Methlick; St. Donnan's well in Eigg; St. Ethan's well at Burghead; St. Fergus's well at Glammis; St. Fillan's wells at Struan, St. Fillans, Largs, etc.; St. Mair's well at Beith; St. Irnie's well at Kilrenny; St. Mungo's (Kentigern's) wells at Penicuick and Peebles; St. Maelrubha's well on Innis Maree, famed for the cure of insanity; St. Marnock's well at Aberchirder; St. Mirrin's well at Kilsyth; St. Medan's well at Airlie; St. Modan's well at Ardchattan; St. Moluag's well at Mortlach; St. Muriel's well at Rathmuriell in the Garioch; St. Nathalan's well at Old Meldrum; St. Ninian's wells at

1

eradicate this popular belief, that the records of almost every kirk-session detail their dealings with persistent offenders. I know no more striking instance of superstition, that is, of the standing over of an ancient belief through all the changes in the form of religion and all the phases of advancing intelligence. If we trace it up to its source we find that it goes back to the dawn of Christianity in Scotland, and even beyond it. Adamnan tells that when St. Columba was staying in the province of the Picts, he heard that there was a fountain famous among the heathen people, which the foolish men worshipped as God. The acts of worship which he specifies are, that they drank of it, and purposely washed their hands and feet in it. It is true that he represents the effect of this washing as injurious instead of beneficial to the votaries, but it was natural that he should take this view, because he immediately goes on to say that after Columba had blessed it and washed his hands and feet in it, he and his companions drank of it, and from that day many diseases amongst the people were cured by the fountain which he had thus blessed. The extraordinary virtues attributed to the waters of St. Fillan's pool could only have been attributed to it in consequence of a similar traditional belief that he had blessed it and used it, and that the effects of this blessing and use were permanent. The peculiar virtues believed to reside in the bell owed their attribution to similar feelings and belief. I shall have more to say of St. Fillan's relics in connection with the crosier, now also in the Museum, which has a history quite as remarkable as the bell, but in the meantime I proceed to notice the other bronze bells still remaining in Scotland. They are but two in number.

Lamington, Arbroath, Stirling, etc.; St. Patrick's well at Muthil; St. Ronan's well at the Butt of Lewis, famed for the cure of insanity; St. Serf's well at Monzievaird, frequented for the cure of various diseases; St. Wallach's well in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire, till lately resorted to as a place of pilgrimage. The list might be easily extended.

Reeves's Adamnan (Scottish Historians), p. 45.

I am indebted to Captain Thomas for my knowledge of the existence of the bronze bell at the church of Insh (Fig. 68), which stands on a small eminence at the north end of Loch Insh on the Spey a few miles below Kingussie. He saw it lying in a window of the church, and took measurements of it some years ago.1 It is of cast bronze,

Fig. 68.-Bronze Bell preserved in the church of Insh.

in shape not unlike the bell of St. Fillan, being 10 inches in height, and 9 inches by 73 across the mouth. It has an oval-looped handle, and, like St. Fillan's bell, it has a moulding round the mouth. The sill of the window on which it lay was a slab of granite having a basin-shaped depression in its upper surface 17 inches wide and 4 inches deep (Fig. 69). Such basin-shaped hollows in large slabs or natural boulders are frequently found in connection with early Christian sites, and often have survivals of superstitious practices connected

1 I am indebted to Mr. Galloway Mackintosh, Elgin for the drawings of the bell and the window-sill on which it lies.

with them, indicating that in earlier times they had sacred uses or associations. On communicating with Rev. Mr. Munro, the minister of Insh, I learned that the bell is still carefully

Fig. 69.-Basin in slab forming window-sill in church of Insh.

preserved, and that there is a tradition told of it in the locality to the effect that it was once removed, but would never be silent crying "Tom Eunan, Tom Eunan," till it made its way back to the hill of that name on which the church of Insh stands. The dedication of the church is not now known, but I venture to say that this legend reveals it, and supplies the long lost name of the saint to whom the bell was originally attributed. That this is no other than Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, and ninth Abbot of Hy,' will be evident from a consideration of the following circumstances: 1st, the legend of the bell which names the hill on

1 Adamnan succeeded to the Abbacy of Iona in 679 at the age of fifty-five. He died on 23d September 704. His chief churches in Scotland were Forvie, Forglen, and Aboyne, in Aberdeen and Banff, Tannadice in Forfarshire, Sanda and Killennan in the parish of Kilkerran in Kintyre, Dalmeny in Linlithgowshire, Campsie and Dull in Perthshire. Few names in passing from their real to their phonetic forms have undergone such transformations as that of Adamnan. It is originally a diminutive of Adam, but under the effect of aspiration Adhamh loses the force of its consonants, and assumes the various sounds of Au, Eu, 0, and Ou, and hence, when the diminutive termination is added it becomes phonetically Aunan, Eunan, Onan, or Ounan. In Banff and Aberdeenshire a further corruption changes it to Teunan, Theunan, and Skeulan. At Dull it is Eonan, and at Forvie Fidamnan. The Breviary of Aberdeen has S. Adampnanus at Sept. 23; Adam King at the same date has St. Thewnan, and Keith St. Thennan; while Thomas Innes speaks of him as called by the vulgar St. Deunan,