SUPERSTITIONS OF ISLE MAREE--(_continued_).
The principal source of the knowledge we possess of the superstitious
sacrifices of bulls and attempted cures of insanity at Isle Maree, are
the minutes extracted from the records of the Presbytery of Dingwall,
which will be found in Appendix F.
Dr Mitchell has the following instructive remarks on these subjects in
his paper written in 1860:--
"Fuller wittily observes that, as careful mothers and nurses on
condition they can get their children to part with knives are contented
to let them play with rattles, so the early Christian teachers permitted
ignorant people to retain some of their former foolish customs, that
they might remove from them the most dangerous. Fuller is here writing
of protesting times; but if we go back to the first introduction of
Christianity into our country, we shall find that many pagan ceremonies
were connived at and engrafted on the new religion, which we now-a-days
should feel inclined rather to class with edged tools than rattles.
Instead of breaking the monuments of idolatry, our early teachers gave
them a Christian baptism, by cutting on them the symbols of their own
religion; and with the rites and ceremonies of paganism they dealt in
like manner.
"The places of Druidical worship, which Maelrubha found on his arrival
in Applecross, in all probability became afterwards places of Christian
worship; and such of them as were believed to possess special virtues
continued to enjoy their special reputation, with this difference,
however, that what the god, or demon, or _genius loci_ did before, the
saint took upon himself, tolerating as much of the old ceremony as the
elastic conscience of the age permitted. 'Une religion chargée de
beaucoup de pratiques,' says Montesquieu, 'attache plus à elle qu'une
autre, qui l'est moins;' and this principle was freely acted on,--the
more freely, perhaps, that the early Christian teachers came among a
people peculiarly given to ceremony, if we may trust the remark of
Pliny, 'The Britons are so stupendly superstitious in their ceremonies,
that they go even beyond the Persians.' I am inclined to think, with
Pennant and the writer in the old Statistical Account, that Inch Maree
was such a locality. The sacrifice of the bull, and the speaking of the
saint as 'the god,' made this probable, while the belief expressed by
some old writers that such was the fact, and existing oral traditions,
render it still more so.
"I have no earlier allusion to the well on this island than 1656. It was
then the resort of the lunatic, and, as I have said, it may possibly
have been so from the date of Mourie's arrival, or even before that
time. One shrine in Belgium is known to have had a special reputation of
this kind for more than twelve hundred years. I refer to that of St
Dympna in Gheel. Our own St Fillan's, too, has been resorted to for the
'blessed purpose of conferring health on the distressed' since the year
700. Further back still, Orpheus, who is said to have written the hymn
to Mercury, speaks of Mercury's grot, where remedy was to be had for
lunatics and lepers.
"The most interesting feature of these [presbytery] extracts, however,
is the finding so complete and formal a sacrificial ceremony commonly
practised in our country at so late a period as within two hundred years
of our own day. The people point to Inverasdale as the last place where
the sacrifice was offered. For the cure of the murrain in cattle, one of
the herd is still sacrificed for the good of the whole. This is done by
burying it alive. I am assured that within the last ten years such a
barbarism occurred in the county of Moray. It is, however, happily, and
beyond all doubt, very rare. The sacrifice of a cock, however, in the
same fashion, for the cure of epilepsy, is still not unfrequently
practised; but in neither of these cases is the sacrifice offered on the
shrine of a saint, or to a named god, though, of course, in both there
is the silent acknowledgment of some power thus to be propitiated.
"I only know one other recorded instance of the formal sacrifice of a
bull in Scotland, to a saint on his feast-day. A writer of the twelfth
century, Reginald of Durham, sometimes also called Reginald of
Coldingham, takes occasion, in his lively 'Book of the Miracles of St
Cuthbert,' to relate certain incidents which befell the famous St Aelred
of Rievaux in the year 1164, during a journey into Pictland,--that is
Galloway it would seem, or perhaps, more generally, the provinces of
Scotland lying to the south of the Forth and Clyde. The saintly abbot
happened to be at 'Cuthbrichtis Kirche,' or Kirkcudbright, as it is now
called, on the feast-day of its great patron. A bull, the marvel of the
parish for its strength and ferocity, was dragged to the church, bound
with cords, to be offered as an alms and oblation to St Cuthbert.
"It is curious to find, in the inaccessible districts both of the north
and south of Scotland, traces of a similar Christianised paganism.
Whether these ceremonies are remains of the vague Druidical, or of the
Helioarkite, or of the Mithraic worship, I am not able to say. As
regards the last, which was set up in opposition to Christianity, and
which used many of its ceremonies, it is known that the sacrifice of a
bull was one of its rites. The study of this form of worship has not yet
received from Scottish antiquaries the attention which it probably
deserves.
"It would seem that to some saints the sacrifice of a bull was not
confined to the day of honour, but was a thing of frequent occurrence.
This appears from a letter on the superstitions of Caernarvonshire of
the sixteenth century, in which the writer tells us that he visited the
locality where bullocks were said to be offered to St Beyno, and that he
witnessed such an offering in 1589. This Beyno is described as 'the
saint of the parish of Clynnog, and the chiefest of all saints;' but we
are told that the people did not dare to cut down the trees that grew in
the saint's ground, 'lest Beyno should kill them, or do them some one
harm or another.' Though so saintly, therefore, as to be deemed the
chiefest of all saints, he was evidently not worshipped solely as a
beneficent being, and sacrifices were offered to avert his anger as well
as to secure his favour; thus bringing out his successorship as saint of
the place to the _demon loci_ of pure paganism. 'They called Barnabas,
Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius,' and _vice versâ_.
"In our own day, belief in the healing virtues of the well on Inch Maree
is general over all Ross-shire, but more especially over the western
district. The lunatic is taken there without consideration of consent.
As he nears the island, he is suddenly jerked out of the boat into the
loch; a rope having been made fast to him, by this he is drawn into the
boat again, to be a second, third, or fourth time unexpectedly thrown
overboard during the boat's course round the island. He is then landed,
made to drink of the waters, and an offering is attached to the tree.
Sometimes a second and third circumnavigation of the island is thought
necessary, with a repetition of the immersions, and of the visit to the
well.
"The writer of the 'New Statistical Account,' in 1836, says that the
poor victim of this superstitious cruelty was towed round the island
after the boat by his tender-hearted friends. Macculloch, writing in
1824, says: 'Here also there was a sacred well, in which, as in St
Fillan's, lunatics were dipped, with the usual offerings of money; but
the well remains, and the practice has passed away.' He makes two
mistakes here. Lunatics are not, and cannot be, dipped into the well,
which is not larger than a bucket, and both practice and well still
exist. Pennant describes the ceremony in 1772, as having a greater show
of religion in the rites, and less barbarity in the form of immersion.
According to him, the patient was taken to the 'Sacred Island, made to
kneel before the altar, where his attendants left an offering in money;
he was then brought to the well, sipped some of the holy water, and a
second offering was made; that done, he was thrice dipped in the lake,
and the same operation was repeated every day for some weeks.'
"I could not learn that any form of words is at present in use, nor do
any of the writers referred to make mention of such a thing; nor does it
appear that the feast-day of the saint (25th August) is now regarded as
more favourable than any other.
"There is an unwillingness to tell a stranger of the particular cases in
which this superstitious practice had been tried, but several came to my
knowledge. About seven years ago a furious madman was brought to the
island from a neighbouring parish. A rope was passed round his waist,
and, with a couple of men at one end in advance and a couple at the
other behind, like a furious bull to the slaughter-house he was marched
to the loch side, and placed in a boat, which was pulled once round the
island, the patient being jerked into the water at intervals. He was
then landed, drank of the water, attached his offering to the tree, and,
as I was told, in a state of happy tranquillity went home. 'In matters
of superstition among the ignorant, one shadow of success prevails
against a hundred manifest contradictions.'
"The last case of which I heard came from a parish in the east of Ross,
and was less happy in its issue. It was that of a young woman, who is
now in one of our asylums. This happened about three years ago.
"Another case was reported in the _Inverness Courier_ of 4th November
1852, and is quoted at length by Dr Reeves, in his paper on Saint
Maelrubha, already referred to (see Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. iii., p.
288).
"'Every superstition,' says Archbishop Whately, 'in order to be rightly
understood, should be read backward.' In this manner I have endeavoured
to treat that which is attached to the little-known Inch Maree. We have
seen it as it exists to-day, with its ceremonies of cruelty, barbarism,
and ignorance; we have seen it, differing little from its present form,
a century ago; we have seen it in 1656 and 1678, associated with an
abominable and heathenish sacrifice; we have connected it with the
saintly founder of the monastery of Applecross; and we have adduced some
reasons for believing that its real paternity goes back to strictly
pagan times."
In several notes to his paper Dr Mitchell, besides stating his
authorities, points out that St Ruffus and St Maelrubha appear to have
been regarded as identical, and that Inch Maree itself was in 1678
spoken of as the "Island of St Ruffus." Also, that an old man in the
district told him that the name of the island was originally
Eilean-Mo-Righ (the island of my king), or Eilean-a-Mhor-Righ (the
island of the great king), and that this king was long ago worshipped as
a god in the district. Dr Mitchell also mentions that, some fifteen or
twenty years before, a farmer from Letterewe is said to have brought a
mad dog to the well on the island. It drank of the waters, and was
cured; but the desecrating act is said to have driven virtue for a time
from the well. I have a detailed account of this last incident from
James Mackenzie of Kirkton, which differs from Dr Mitchell's
information. James Mackenzie says he well remembers that it was about
1830 that John Macmillan, who was the first shepherd the late Mr Bankes
had at Letterewe, and who was the son of Donald Macmillan who had been
shepherd at Letterewe when Macintyre was manager there, had a sheep-dog
that went mad. John took the dog to Isle Maree, and put him headlong in
the well; the dog died next day, and John Macmillan died a week after
that!
Dr Mitchell, in a foot-note referring to the account of the sacrifice of
a bull in 1164 witnessed by St Aelred of Rievaux at Cuthbrichtis Kirche,
remarks that, "it is interesting to find that the clerks of the church,
the Scolofthes, who must have been the best informed and most learned,
opposed the ceremony, and attempted to throw it into ridicule by
proposing to bait the bull, probably an indication that opinion was then
beginning to change."
Dr Mitchell also remarks, in another foot-note, that "it would appear
probable, that as Romish paganism after a time began to acknowledge and
worship covertly and openly the divinities of the Druids, so
Christianity did not escape a similar pollution, but, after a time,
tolerated and even adopted not a few of the ceremonies and sacrifices of
that modified Druidism with which it had to deal. And since Druidism
existed in force to a later period in the north of Scotland than
elsewhere, it may be reasonably expected that we shall there find the
strongest and most enduring evidence of the infusion of paganism into
Christianity."
In connection with this interesting point, the following note respecting
the Kirkcudbright bull, which occurs at page 9 to the preface to vol.
ii. of "The Sculptured Stones of Scotland," published by the Spalding
Club, is instructive:--
"The memorable advice given by Pope Gregory to the Abbot Melitus
prescribes a course of action which we cannot doubt was adopted by the
early missionaries in dealing with the superstitions of the
heathens:--'Et quia boves solent in sacrificio dæmonum multos accidere,
debet eis etiam hac de re aliqua sollemnitas immutari; ut die
dedicationis vel natalitii sanctorum martyrum quorum illic reliquiæ
ponuntur, tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias quæ ex fanis commutatæ
sunt de ramis arborum faciant, et religiosis conviviis sollemnitatem
celebrent; nec diabolo jam animalia immolent, sed ad laudem Dei in esu
suo animalia occidant, et donatori omnium de satietate sua gratias
referant; ut dum eis aliqua exterius gaudia reservantur, ad interiora
gaudia consentire facilius valeant. Nam duris mentibus simul omnia
abscidere impossibile esse non dubium est; quia et is qui summum locum
ascendere nititur, gradibus vel passibus non autem saltibus elevatur'
(Bede Hist. Ecc., 1, 30).
"It is probable that the permission to adopt for a time a heathen rite,
with the view of giving it a new character, was taken advantage of, by
acting on it after the cause of the concession was gone.
"Reginald, the monk of Durham, has preserved a notice of the offering of
a bull to St Cuthbert, at his church on the Solway, on the festival kept
on the day of the dedication of the church in the year 1164 (Libellus de
Admir B. Cuthbert virtut, page 185, Surtees Soc.)."
[Illustration: ANTIQUITY NO. 13.
CAST-IRON APPLIANCE, PROBABLY PART OF MACHINERY FROM THE FASAGH
IRONWORKS.
SCALE--ONE INCH TO A FOOT.]