The Church of Monzievaird was in all probability founded, by Saint Serf, and he was certainly its patron saint. If we are not compelled to postulate two saints of this name from the number of years covered by traditions which cannot all relate to the same person, we would incline to quit hold of the earlier and less definite tradition, and to consider Saint Serf as contemporary with Adamnan, the celebrated Abbot of Iona, and distinguished biographer of Saint Columba. St. Serf founded many churches, and his reputation in the Middle Ages for the neat and appropriate miracles attributed to him may be reckoned the measure of his eminence among Scotland's early evangelists. Wyntoun gives a quaint dialogue between St. Serf and the enemy of mankind, in which the Devil, plying the Saint with many knotty theological questions, wholly fails to overcome him, and suddenly departs. Another of these monkish miracles makes St. Serf discover the theft of a sheep by ordering it to bleat forth the story of its wrongs from the guilty stomach of the thief, and to redden his face with shame for having denied his crime! St. Serf's memory survives here in the well called after him, with its plentiful supply of water. As lately as 1760 the parishioners were wont to be drawn by a lurking superstition to drink of it on Lammas Day, leaving in it white stones, spoons, or rags, which they brought as remembrancers, just as devout Mohammedans still leave their prayer rags attached to the grating of the Mosque El-Aksa, at Jerusalem, or the lower branches of the giant oak that marks the site of the grove at Dan. St. Serf's festival and fair day long continued, and was kept on the 1st of July while the market lasted. The church itself was impropriated to the Abbey of Inchaffray, founded by the Earl of Strathearn about the beginning of the twelfth century, and was served by a vicar, to whom that monastery delegated the clerical duty, doubtless on the usual pittance of stipend. The Tosachs, from the Gaelic word meaning "first" or "chief," were the old proprietors of Monzievaird. Their first residence was not at the old castle at Greenend, but at Balmuick, on the estate of Lawers, then called Fordie, and the foundation of the house was traceable at the close of last century. The chief of Monzievaird was accustomed to execute a man on the first day of every month, and this celebration of the almanac at Tom-an-Tosach was apparently designed to prevent the feudal rights of pit and gallows from falling into desuetude. The story runs that the last chief held nightly interviews with a fairy, a proceeding which aroused his wife's jealousy. She tracked him by a ball of worsted attached to his button, and, discovering him in conclave with the fairy, demanded her immediate destruction. Thereupon the fairy fled, and the power of the Tosach departed also. The inhabitants rose against him, and he had to seek refuge abroad.