THE ANCIENT CHURCH AND PARISH

OF ABERNETHY.

INTRODUCTION.

PERHAPS one of the finest features in the thought of the present day is the emphasis it has laid on the principle of development it is now an accepted axiom that as the life of to-morrow will be conditioned by that of to-day, so the life of to-day is conditioned by that of yesterday. The idea of organic development has been applied with a success, which is the promise of still greater success, to all departments of thought; and it surrounds the past with an increasing interest to recall, that it conditions the present, and that the present can be best understood in the light of the past out of which it grows, and by which it has come to be what it is. Civilisation, while largely affected by the forces that are at work in the life of to-day, is to a considerable degree the product of the past-the outcome of what living men, who have come and gone before us, thought, said, and did. The past rules us not the less potently when we are unconscious of its influence, and so a healthy form of thought, while prospective, ought also to be retrospective: while it sees "the distant gates of Eden gleam," ought also to consider the conditions that have helped to make the Eden possible. In the

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words of Principal Caird: "Every step by which the consciousness of mankind has emerged from the life of nature and from the rudest primitive notions of itself and the world up to its present point of advancement, lives in the present consciousness of the race, transmuted but not annihilated."1

The increase of interest, then, in historical subjects that is in many quarters giving evidence of its existence cannot but be regarded as one of the healthy signs of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Historical interest is always fascinating in itself and fraught with practical good; it is not only speculative but essentially beneficial in its influence; it lessens the passions of the hour and clears the eyesight; it enables us to distinguish between what is permanent and what is accidental; it fixes our attention upon the main current of progress, and forbids us attaching undue importance to side-issues and details. In all the branches of man's manifold life, time has been power, and in order to understand the present we must first of all study the past that has helped to make it what it is. It has been well said: "History, while scientific in method, should pursue a practical object. That is, it should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future. ... Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics."

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Again, not only is this historical spirit manifesting itself on the larger plane of the national life, but also on the smaller plane of the ancient village community, tribe, and parish. And well will this be, if in the study of the particular we do not forget to look at it in the light of the general; if in regarding the unit, we do not forget that it is organically related to other units; if in studying the parochial and mastering its details, we do not neglect

1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 308.

2 The Expansion of England, pp. 1 and 174.

to maintain a true historical perspective and a wider outlook. Detachment is hurtful to a true estimate of things when it ends with that which is detached; detachment is helpful when the study of the particular leads to a fuller knowledge of the general, when the parochial attitude is broadened by a wider outlook that realises the larger life organically related to it. There have often been in the parish forces that have visibly affected the life of the nation, and guided the course of its development, and this because they have started there as a centre, but affected a much wider area as their circumference. What goes on in the world of men is well illustrated by the geological forces that work slowly and invisibly in the world of nature, and it has been thus expressed by Sir Archibald Geikie:

The story of the origin of our scenery shows that in the grander revolutions of the world as well as in the humbler routine of daily life, it is the little changes which by their cumulative effects bring about the greatest results; that the lowly offices of wind and rain, springs and frost, snow and ice, trifling as they may appear, have nevertheless been chosen as instruments to mould the giant-framework of the mountains; and that these seemingly feeble agents have yet been able, in the long lapse of still untold ages, to produce the widest diversity of scenery, and to do this, not with the havoc and ruin of earthquake and convulsion, but with a finely-balanced harmony and order, forming out of the very waste of the land a kindly soil, which bears year by year its mantle of green, yielding food to the beast of the field and the fowl of the air, and ministering to the wants and enjoyment of man.1

Geology teaches that the configuration of the land has been caused by the daily working of the ordinary, everyday causes, and there is a parallel to this in the life of man. His constant strivings to satisfy his needs and overcome the resistance of external conditions, both by individual effort and combination, throughout the centuries, have led to the rich complex social life of to-day; and so it will ever be interesting to study his early efforts, for they 1 Scenery and Geology of Scotland, p. 352.

contain the possibilities of later things, and imply the end, of which, humble although they be, they are still the certain promise. This is what may be done by an investigation into the life of the ancient parishes, and they afford limited areas, within which we may more closely, and on that account more exactly, study the influences that have been at work in the formation of the life of the nation, or find reflected in them what moves the life of man everywhere. The parish would be an interesting unit, if we could only know its past, and very many of our parishes have an interest which is by no means local.

Those acquainted with village life in Scotland can hail with pleasure the evidence of a growing interest in antiquities, which forms a distinctively new departure. There is unquestionably a feeling of respect abroad, quite distinct from superstition, for the relics and monuments of former ages, and it is true to say that "within the last fifty years a new interest, almost like another sense, has arisen in our ancient monuments of art."1

There is much connected with this parish that is worthy of being preserved, and it is with this conviction that the present work is undertaken.

1 Early Christian Architecture in Ireland, p. 142 (quoted).

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CHAPTER I.

PREHISTORIC: A SKETCH OF THE EARLY PEOPLE

AND CULTURE.

IN the present chapter an attempt will be made to describe the stages of early culture, as they have been ascertained by specialists in this department of investigation. Archæologists give us certain results from an examination of the articles early man has left behind him on the soil, and a definite conception of the early inhabitants of the country. We give their general conclusions, made interesting to us as interpretations of the prehistoric remains that are preserved in the National Museum, Edinburgh, and were found within the parish boundary from time to time.1

The implements of the "river-drift men" have been found in the gravelly deposits at rivers' banks, and they carry us back to a race of nomadic hunters, dependent entirely upon what they could acquire by their superior cunning over the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air. Their implements are called by scholars palæolithic, and among their contemporaries in Britain were the lion, elk, reindeer, urus, bison, cave-bear, horse, elephant, and mammoth. Remains of the urus were lately discovered in this parish at Mugdrum.2

The second race has been called the "cave-men." They show an

1 The articles referred to are thus marked in the Museum cases at Edinburgh: A. H. 5; A. H. 61; A. H. 90; A. H. 57; A. S. 27; A. S. 74; A. S. 42; B. S. 123; D. A. 37; D. L. 4, &c.

* See Laing's Lindores Abbey and the Burgh of Newburgh, p. 2.