"This spring, tradition reports, reared its head on the top of Dun
Fholain (Fillan's Hill) for a long time, doing much good, but in
disgust (probably at the Reformation) it removed suddenly to the foot
of a rock, a quarter of a mile to the southward, where it still
remains, humbled, but not forsaken. It is still visited by
valetudinary people, especially on the 1st of May and the 1st of
August. No fewer than seventy persons visited it in May and August,
1791. The invalids, whether men, women, or children, walk or are
carried round the well three times in a direction Deishal--that is from
east to west, according to the course of the sun. They also drink of
the water and bathe in it. These operations are accounted a certain
remedy for various diseases. They are particularly efficacious for
curing barrenness, on which account it is frequently visited by those
who are very desirous of offspring. All the invalids throw a white
stone on the Saint's cairn, and leave behind them as tokens of their
gratitude and confidence some rags of linen or woollen cloth. The rock
on the summit of the hill formed of itself a chair for the Saint, which
still remains. Those who complain of rheumatism in the back must
ascend the hill, sit in this chair, then lie down on their back, and be
pulled down by the legs to the bottom of the hill. This operation is
still performed, and reckoned very efficacious. At the foot of the
hill there is a basin made by the Saint on the top of a large stone,
which seldom wants water even in the greatest drought, and all who are
distressed with sore eyes must wash them three times with this water."
Of such holy wells, it may be interesting to learn that there were,
previous to the Reformation, a great number throughout Scotland.[1]
They were usually called after saints, because of the cells of saints
being fixed near a spring. Hence these wells are usually in the
vicinity of old ecclesiastical sites, and in many cases where the wells
alone remain, they mark the place of those sites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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