"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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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