"Whether the saint, on his arrival in Scotland, found a pagan temple on this little island, or whether he himself first consecrated the spot, is a question of interest. Pennant says, 'I suspect the dike to have been originally Druidical, and that the ancient superstition of paganism was taken up by the saint as the readiest method of making a conquest over the minds of the inhabitants.' This opinion I am inclined to adopt. The people of the place speak often of the god Mourie, instead of St Mourie, which may have resulted from his having supplanted the old god. Tradition also points to it as a place of worship before the Christian epoch; and the curious record I have obtained of the sacrifice of bulls there, strongly confirms this belief, and furnishes fresh proof of the liberal engrafting upon Christianity of all forms of paganism in the early history of the Church." Chapter XII. 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.