"The places of Druidical worship, which Maelrubha found on his arrival in Applecross, in all probability became afterwards places of Christian worship; and such of them as were believed to possess special virtues continued to enjoy their special reputation, with this difference, however, that what the god, or demon, or _genius loci_ did before, the saint took upon himself, tolerating as much of the old ceremony as the elastic conscience of the age permitted. 'Une religion chargée de beaucoup de pratiques,' says Montesquieu, 'attache plus à elle qu'une autre, qui l'est moins;' and this principle was freely acted on,--the more freely, perhaps, that the early Christian teachers came among a people peculiarly given to ceremony, if we may trust the remark of Pliny, 'The Britons are so stupendly superstitious in their ceremonies, that they go even beyond the Persians.' I am inclined to think, with Pennant and the writer in the old Statistical Account, that Inch Maree was such a locality. The sacrifice of the bull, and the speaking of the saint as 'the god,' made this probable, while the belief expressed by some old writers that such was the fact, and existing oral traditions, render it still more so. "I have no earlier allusion to the well on this island than 1656. It was then the resort of the lunatic, and, as I have said, it may possibly have been so from the date of Mourie's arrival, or even before that time. One shrine in Belgium is known to have had a special reputation of this kind for more than twelve hundred years. I refer to that of St Dympna in Gheel. Our own St Fillan's, too, has been resorted to for the 'blessed purpose of conferring health on the distressed' since the year 700. Further back still, Orpheus, who is said to have written the hymn to Mercury, speaks of Mercury's grot, where remedy was to be had for lunatics and lepers. "The most interesting feature of these [presbytery] extracts, however, is the finding so complete and formal a sacrificial ceremony commonly practised in our country at so late a period as within two hundred years of our own day. The people point to Inverasdale as the last place where the sacrifice was offered. For the cure of the murrain in cattle, one of the herd is still sacrificed for the good of the whole. This is done by burying it alive. I am assured that within the last ten years such a barbarism occurred in the county of Moray. It is, however, happily, and beyond all doubt, very rare. The sacrifice of a cock, however, in the same fashion, for the cure of epilepsy, is still not unfrequently practised; but in neither of these cases is the sacrifice offered on the shrine of a saint, or to a named god, though, of course, in both there is the silent acknowledgment of some power thus to be propitiated.