It is not, however, a well, but a pool, in the river Fillan, about two miles lower down than Tyndrum. To correctly estimate the reverence paid to this sacred pool, we must glance at the influence, exerted by Fillan on the district during his life-time, and afterwards by means of his relics. The saint flourished in the early eighth century. He was born in Ireland. His father was Ferodach, and his mother was Kentigerna, daughter of a prince of Leinster. She afterwards came to Scotland and led the life of a recluse, on Inch Cailleach, an island in Loch Lomond. According to the Aberdeen Breviary, Fillan was born with a stone in his mouth, and was at once thrown into a lake where he was ministered to by angels for a year. He was then taken out and baptised by Bishop Ybarus, and at a later date received the monastic habit from Muna, otherwise called Mundus. Devoting himself to solitary meditation he built a cell close to Muna's monastery. On one occasion, a servant went to call him to supper, and looking through a chink in the wall, saw the saint busy writing, his uplifted left hand throwing light over the book in lieu of a candle. Whatever may be thought of the incident, few will deny its picturesqueness. In competent hands it might be made the subject of a striking picture. Fillan afterwards went to Lochalsh, where he dedicated a church to his uncle Congan, the founder of the monastery of Turriff, in Aberdeenshire. We next find Fillan in the principal scene of his missionary work, viz., in Glendochart, in that portion of the glen anciently called Siracht, and now Strathfillan. This area formed a separate parish till 1617, but was then united to the parish of Killin. Fillan arrived with seven serving clerics, and tradition says that he built his church at a spot miraculously pointed out to him. The neighbourhood was, and is full of interest. "Glendochart," writes Mr. Charles Stewart in "An Gaidheal," "is not celebrated for terrific mountain scenery like Glencoe or the Coolins, but has a grandeur of a different character. Lofty mountains, clothed, here in heather, there in green; cloudy shadows frequently flitting across their sides, and serried ridges of multiplied lines and forms of varied beauty, and along their sides strangely shaped stones and boulders of rocks deposited by the ancient glaciers. Along the strath there are stretches of water, its course broken occasionally by lochs; sometimes wending its way slowly and solemnly through green meadows, and anon rushing along as at the celebrated bridge of Dochart, at Killin, with fire and fury."