Scotland. Mr Eeles, who is an authority on the subject, tells us that the
passing bell is no longer rung, nor is there any ringing at burials beyond
tolling the bell for a few minutes as the procession approaches the
churchyard. In some parishes even this is said to be fast dying out. In
the Burgh Records of Dundee "it is statute that an ony person cause the
gret bells to be rung for either saul, mass or dirige, he sall pay forty
pence to the Kirk werk."
The ringing of the death-knell was universal after the Reformation, when
it seemed to have acquired a new meaning in the minds of the people,
having become degenerated, so to speak, into a mere notice to the public
that a death had taken place. Shakespeare refers to this ringing of the
death-knell in his seventy-first sonnet:--
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than ye shall hear the surly, sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.
The Reformation and the decline of Gothic architecture both combined to
put their impress upon bells. The Reformation naturally caused a great
change in the inscriptions, and the decline of Gothic led to a poverty of
design and an abandonment of the fine lettering, crosses, and other
ornaments. Figures of angels and saints no longer appeared, and soon the
artistic black letter gave place to the commonplace Roman capitals. With
these drastic changes much of the romance of the bell has been swept
away.
Saints and Holy Wells.
BY THOMAS FROST.
Among the results of the preaching of the Gospel to the ignorant and
superstitious in the early ages of the Church there must, unfortunately,
be included a considerable mixture of pagan beliefs and customs with the
new religion, some of which have survived even to our own time. The sacred
character ascribed to a great number of wells or springs both in England
and Scotland may be traced back, in numerous instances, to pagan rites
observed at them in pre-Christian ages. Some of these, as at Drumlanrig,
in Dumfries county, and at Tully Beltane, in the Highlands of Perthshire,
have near them a circle of stones, resembling those supposed to be
associated with Druidism; and of the latter, Jamieson says in his
"Scottish Dictionary,"--"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," as he calls the circle of upright stones.
In the little island in Loch Maree, in the county of Ross, is a well or
spring traditionally associated with St. Maelrubha, who is said to have
been a monk of the monastery of Bangor, in Ireland, and to have founded a
church at Applecross, in the same county, in 673. Pennant, who visited
Innis Maree in 1772, says:--"In the midst is a circular dike of stones,...
I suspect the dike 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." The
probability of this appears from old Kirk Session records of an annual
custom in Applecross of sacrificing a bull to "Mourie" on the saint's day.
This custom survived until the latter half of the seventeenth century,
when it was denounced as idolatrous.
In the island of Lewis, one of the Hebrides, are the ruins of a chapel
formerly dedicated to St. Mulvay, near which is a spring, the water of
which was supposed to be of singular efficacy in curing diseases of the
brain. The patient was made to walk seven times round the ruins, and was
then sprinkled with water from the spring. In others of the Hebrides, and
along the west coast, there are many wells named after St. Columba. Almost
every well in Scotland is, indeed, named after some mediaeval saint, many
of them of only local fame, and very few having a place in the
ecclesiastical kalendar. St. Ronan's Well, from the association with it of
Scott's novel of that name, is the best known to the general reader. It
has been identified with the mineral well at Innerleithen, in the county
of Peebles, which long enjoyed good repute as a curative agent in diseases
of the eye and the skin, and also in dyspepsia.
The church of St. Fergus, in Buchan, commemorates an Irish missionary of
the eighth century, in whose memory a well in the parish of Kirkmichael,
in Banffshire, is named. Concerning this spring, Dr Gregor, in his "Folk
Lore of the North-east of Scotland," says:--"Easter Sunday and the first
Sunday in May 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."
The best known of several wells named after St. Helena, the mother of
Constantine, is beside the road from Maybole to Ayr, and about two miles
and a half from the former place. It used formerly to be much resorted to
on the 1st of May, for the benefit of sickly children. St. Iten's Well, at
Cambusnethan, in Lanarkshire, at one time was held in good repute as a
cure for asthma and skin diseases. Martin, in a description of the
Hebrides, written about 1695, mentions a well named after the same saint
in the Isle of Eigg, which was regarded by the natives as a panacea for
"all the ills that flesh is heir to." He gives a curious, and in view of
the connection of holy wells with pagan beliefs and customs, an
interesting account of the dedication of this well by a priest called
Father Hugh.
"He obliged all the people to come to this well," he says, "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,--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."
St. Fillan's Well, at the foot of a green hill in the parish of Comrie,
was formerly much frequented on the 1st of May and the 1st of August by
persons in quest of health, who walked or were carried three times round
it, from east to west, following the course of the sun. This done, they
drank of the water of the spring, deposited a white stone on the saint's
cairn, and departed, leaving some rag of linen or woollen as an offering.
Half-way between the bays of Portankill and East Tarbet, on the coast of
Wigtonshire, are the ruins of St. Medan's chapel, within which are three
natural cavities in the rock, which at high water are filled by the tide.
Sickly children used to be brought to the larger hole to be bathed, and
this is still done occasionally, though faith in such matters, as in so
many others, seems to be lessening. Dr Trotter, who visited the place in
1870, had the ceremony described to him by an eye-witness as
follows:--"The child was stripped naked, taken by one of the legs, and
plunged head-foremost into the big well until 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."
There is nothing certain known about this St. Medan, though there are
wonderful legends concerning her in the Aberdeen Breviary and elsewhere.
Concerning the chapel in Wigtonshire, Dr Trotter thinks that "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 Well, at Liberton, near Edinburgh, has been regarded for
centuries as a remedy for diseases of the skin, and is still frequented by
persons suffering from them. It derives its name from a tradition,
preserved by Boece, in his chronicle of Scotland, that the spring rose
miraculously from a drop of oil brought from the tomb of St. Catherine of
Alexandria on Mount Sinai, and this story was considered to be
countenanced by the fact that drops of oil are often observable on the
surface, a phenomenon now regarded as due to the decomposition of coal, or
bituminous shale, in seams below. Boece says that Queen Margaret, the wife
of Malcolm III., built a chapel near the spring, and dedicated it to St.
Catherine; but this chapel, some remains of which were still standing at
the close of the last century, was dedicated to St. Catherine of Sienna,
not to her sister saint of Alexandria. Before the Reformation, the nuns
made an annual visit to the well, three miles from their convent, in
solemn procession, a ceremony due perhaps to the coincidence of name.
James IV. made an offering in this chapel in 1504, and when James VI.
returned to Scotland in 1617, he visited the well, and, as Sir Daniel
Wilson relates in his "Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time," he
"commanded it to be enclosed with an ornamental building, with a flight of
steps to afford easy 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."
St. Bernard's Well, a sulphurous spring in the valley below Dean Bridge,
Edinburgh, is traditionally associated with the sainted Abbot of
Clairvaux. Its medicinal virtues appear to have escaped notice, however,
until 1789, when the property on which it is situated came into the
possession of Lord Gardenstone, who erected a handsome Grecian edifice
over the spring, set up within it a statue of Hygeia, and appointed an
attendant to dispense the water at a very trifling charge. The place then
became a popular resort for the purpose of drinking the water, and in 1889
the statue of the Roman goddess, having become decayed, was replaced by
one in marble, by the generosity of the late William Nelson, who also
restored the temple and made the surroundings more attractive.
On Soutra Hill, the westernmost point of the Lammermoor range, there once
stood a hospital founded by Malcolm IV., for the reception of poor
travellers, and dedicated to the Trinity. Only a small portion of the
building now remains, but near it is a spring known as Trinity Well, which
in former times was much frequented on account of the healing virtues
attributed to it. A similar reputation was enjoyed for a long time by St.
Mungo's Well, on the west side of the hill named after that famous
Scottish saint, in the parish of Huntley, Aberdeenshire.
There were springs also which were reputed to preserve from disease those
who partook of their water. The virtues of St. Olav's Well, in the parish
of Cruden, in Aberdeenshire, are recorded in the couplet--
St. Olav's Well, low by the sea,
Where pest nor plague shall never be.
Of St. Corbet's Well, on the top of the Touch Hills, in Stirlingshire, it
was formerly believed that whoever drank its water before sunrise on the
first Sunday in May was sure of another year of life, and crowds of
persons resorted to the spot at that time, in the hope of thereby
prolonging their lives. Water for the font was often taken from holy
wells, and it was believed in the middle ages that persons baptised with
water from Trinity Well, at Gask, in Perthshire, would never be attacked
by the plague. Baptisms in St. Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen, were at one
time performed with water taken from the saint's spring; and, before the
Reformation, the font at Airth, in Stirlingshire, is said to have been
supplied from a well dedicated to the mother of Christ, near Abbeyton
bridge.
Passing over a number of springs with reputed medicinal properties, but
not associated with any hagiological tradition, we find it stated by Mr J.
R. Walker, in a communication to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, that
"many of the wells dedicated to 'Our Lady' 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."
Some saints' wells were believed to have the power of foretelling whether
the patients on whose behalf they were invoked would recover,--a
superstition which may be traced to Greek paganism of a time thousands of
years before the Christian era. St. Andrew's Well, at Shadar, in the
island of Lewis, was reputed to possess this power. A vessel filled with
water from the spring was taken to the patient's abode, and a small wooden
dish placed on the surface. If this turned towards the east, it was held
to denote that the patient would recover; but if in the opposite direction
that he would die. "I am inclined," says Mr Gomme, "to connect this with
the vessel or cauldron so frequently occurring in Celtic tradition, and
which Mr Nutt has marked as 'a part of the gear of the oldest Celtic
divinities,' perhaps of divinities older than the Celts." The Virgin's
Well, near the ancient church of Kilmorie, in Wigtonshire, was also
reputed to possess this power. If the patient on behalf of whom the
prophetic power of the well was sought would recover, the water flowed
freely; but in the contrary case it failed to well up.
Votive offerings have been mentioned as made to the saints to whom wells
were dedicated, and thus became holy. At Montblairie, in Banffshire,
shreds of linen and woollen were hung on the bushes beside a consecrated
well, and farthings and halfpence were thrown into the water. Miller, in
his "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland," notices a similar
custom as practised in the vicinity of Cromarty, his native town. He says,
"It is not yet twenty years since a thorn, which formed a little canopy
over the spring of St. Bennet, used to be covered anew every season with
little pieces of rag, left on it as offerings to the saint by sick people
who came to drink of the water."
St. Wallach's Bath, in Strathdeveron, is a cavity in the rock, about three
feet in depth, into which water flows from a spring several yards higher
up, the overflow trickling over the edge into the stream, about four feet
below. Down to the beginning of the present century, large numbers of
weakly children used to be brought to this bath to be strengthened by
immersion in it, and some small article of the child's clothing was hung
on a neighbouring tree. The spring was resorted to for the cure of sore
eyes, and pins were offered to the Saint, being left in a hollow of a
stone beside the well. At the end of May, which was the season for the
visit, the hollow was often full of pins. Sir Arthur Mitchell, describing
the holy well on Innis Maree in a communication to the Scottish Society of
Antiquaries, says, "Near it stands an oak tree, which is studded with
nails. To each of these was originally attached a piece of the clothing of
some patient who had visited the spot. There are hundreds of nails, and
one has still fastened to it a faded ribbon. Two bone buttons and two
buckles we also found nailed to the tree. Countless pennies and
halfpennies are driven edgeways into the wood." A more recent visitor,
surprised at finding what appeared to be a silver coin fixed in the tree,
took the trouble to examine it, and found it spurious.
Coins were more usually, however, thrown into the well, and Mr Patrick
Dudgeon, who in 1870 had the well of St. Querdon, in Troqueer parish,
Kirkcudbrightshire, cleaned out, observes in an article contributed to the
transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History Society, that
several hundreds of coins were found at the bottom--nearly all being the
smallest copper coins, dating from the reign of Elizabeth to that of
George III., but chiefly Scottish issues of James VI., Charles I., and
Charles II. He mentions also having been told by old residents that they
remembered seeing rags and ribbons hung on the bushes around the well.
Dr Macgeorge, describing St. Thenew's Well, in his "Old Glasgow," states,
"It was shaded by an old tree, which drooped over the well, and which
remained until the end of the last century. On this tree the devotees who
frequented the well were accustomed to nail, as thank-offerings, small
bits of tin-iron--probably manufactured for that purpose by a craftsman in
the neighbourhood--representing the parts of the body supposed to have
been cured by the virtues of the sacred spring, such as eyes, hands, feet,
ears, and others."
Pilgrimages to saints' wells were a well-observed custom until they were,
after the Reformation, prohibited both by the Church and Parliament. In an
Act of 1581, allusion is made to the perverse inclination to superstition,
"through which the dregs of idolatry yet remain in divers parts of the
realm by using of pilgrimage to some chapels, wells, crosses, and such
other monuments of idolatry, as also by observing of the festal days of
the Saints sometime named their patrons in setting forth of bon-fires,
singing of carols within and about kirks at certain seasons of the year."
In accordance with this enactment, the Kirk Session of Falkirk, in 1628,
ordered several persons who had made a pilgrimage to a holy well to appear
in church on three appointed Sundays, clad in the garb of penitents. A
warning was also issued that persons doing the like in future would be
fined in addition to the penance, and in default, would be put in ward and
fed on bread and water only for eight days.
In the following year, the Privy Council made an order "that commissioners
cause diligent search at all such parts and places where this idolatrous
superstition is used, and to take and apprehend all such persons of
whatsomever rank and quality whom they shall deprehend going in pilgrimage
to chapels and wells, or whom they shall know themselves to be guilty of
that crime, and to commit them to ward, until measures be adopted for
their trial and punishment." But though pilgrimages in bodies were
checked, individual visits to holy wells continued. In 1630, the Kirk
Session of Aberdeen fined a woman for sending her child to be washed in
St. Fittack's Well, in the parish of Nigg, on the opposite side of the
Dee, and she and her nurse were ordered to acknowledge the offence before
the session.
In course of time, such "offences" came to be regarded more leniently.
Fines gradually ceased to be inflicted, and penance to be enjoined. In
three cases entered in the Kirk Session records of Airth, in
Stirlingshire, in 1757, the persons cited were merely admonished. But old
customs have wonderful vitality, and holy wells are still frequented. Sir
Arthur Mitchell remarks, in "The Past in the Present," that he has seen at
least a dozen wells "which have not ceased to be worshipped," though he
adds that the visitors are now comparatively few. Mr Campbell of Islay
says, in his "Tales of the West Highlands," "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."
Some of the wells once resorted to by great numbers of persons have
disappeared in consequence of changes of the surface. The growth of towns,
railways, agricultural improvements, have each had their part in the
obliteration of spots formerly deemed sacred. The Pilgrims' Well, at
Aberdour, in Fifeshire, which for centuries attracted crowds, is now
filled up. The like end has come to the Abbot's Well at Urquhart, in
Elginshire. St. Mary's Well at Whitekirk, in Haddingtonshire, has also
ceased to exist, the water having been drained off. Near Drumakill, in the
parish of Drymen, Dumbartonshire, there was once a famous spring dedicated
to St. Vildrin, and near it was a cross, with a figure of the Saint upon
it in relief. Between thirty and forty years ago the cross was broken up,
and the fragments used in the construction of a farm-house; and shortly
afterwards the spring was drained into a stream.
There was formerly a holy well beside the lonely cross-road from Abbeyhill
to Restalrig, near Edinburgh, and in the middle ages it attracted a great
number of pilgrims. It appears to have been originally dedicated to the
Holy Rood, but it afterwards became known as St. Margaret's Well, and Mr
Walker thinks that the dedication may have been changed in connection with
the translation of Queen Margaret's remains in 1251, on the occasion of
her canonisation. There was a small Gothic building over the spring until
the North British Railway Company acquired possession of the site and
built a station upon it. The covering was then taken down, stone by stone,
and rebuilt above St. David's spring, on the northern slope of Salisbury
Crags. The water of St. Margaret's Well found another channel, and thus
one more of Scotland's holy wells ceased to exist.
Life in the Pre-Reformation Cathedrals.
BY A. H. MILLAR, F.S.A.SCOT.
The history of every Scottish city or burgh of importance is intimately
connected with one of two possible originals. Each burgh has taken its
origin either from a feudal castle or from a cathedral or abbey. This
statement may seem very sweeping in its character, but a close examination
will prove that it is founded on fact. Edinburgh, for instance, grew up
around the ancient Castle--Eadwin's burh--while the Cathedral of St. Giles
and all the subordinate churches were adjuncts of the secular centre. The
true ecclesiastical point of origin in Edinburgh was St. Margaret's
Chapel, and it still stands within the Castle walls. Glasgow, on the other
hand, took its origin from the Cathedral. That building formed the nucleus
of the original city, and the first houses in Glasgow were the Bishop's
Castle beside the Cathedral, and the dwellings and manses of the
ecclesiastics in its immediate vicinity. It was as a "Bishop's burgh," or
community under ecclesiastical control, that Glasgow first had a corporate
existence. The Bishop or Archbishop nominated the civic rulers, and though
an attempt was made shortly after the Reformation to abrogate priestly
control, and to transfer the power of the election of the Provost to the
Guildry, the Protestant Archbishops strove to retain this right up till
the early years of the seventeenth century. In 1639 the Town Council for
the first time elected the Provost and Bailies, but even then the consent
of the Duke of Lennox--who had received the secularised property of the
Archbishopric--had to be obtained; and it was not until 1690 that the
citizens of Glasgow obtained the right to choose municipal governors.