Tag: Culdees

Druim na Cille, Comrie, Perthshire

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Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 73838 24299

Getting Here

Cupmarks at Druim na Kill

Along the A85 road between Comrie and St Fillans, just over a mile out of Comrie, on the right-hand side (north) of the road is the small farm-track into the fields where the ruined stone circle of Tullybannocher lives.  Walk up this track (known as Maam Road), past the stones, and keep going uphill for more than a mile (literally 1 mile up, another track turns sheer right, but ignore it) where the track eventually levels-out; keep walking for another 600 yards, slightly downhill, until you reach a distinct fork in the track where you need to veer right, uphill, and keep walking up the track for ⅔-mile (1km) where you’ll eventually see a cottage ahead of you.  150 yards before this, to your left, down the slight slope and just as it begins to slope back up again on the other side, there’s some olde walling with a coupla big stones in it.  It’s there!

Archaeology & History

When James MacIntosh (1888) first visited this carving in the 19th century—which is close to the curious cairn of Druim na Cille just 75 yards to the west—he described there being a group of seven large stones forming, what he thought, might have been a large enclosure.  I think he was right.  Several of these stones can still be seen: each of them along some ancient walling that swerves in an arc to the east. One of these stones has a number of cup-marks on it.

Fred Coles’ 1991 sketch
The carving, from the track

The design isn’t too impressive when compared to others in this neck o’ the woods, but they’re very distinct.  We visited the place on a truly dark grey day: conditions that don’t usually allow for good visibility regarding cup-marks; but thankfully the cups along this stone are quite deep and hard to miss.  Running along one section of the stone are what Gow called, “eleven beautifully formed cups, varying from 2¼ to 4 inches in diameter and from half an inch to an inch in depth.”  When Fred Coles (1911) came here he counted thirteen cup-marks.  There may be fourteen.

The stone does possess some more recent groove marks made by a metal instrument, possibly a tractor or perhaps when local workmen stuck up a microwave tower close by.  Thankfully it hasn’t directly affected the cups on the stone.  Check it out when you visit the nearby ring cairn.

References:

  1. Coles, Fred, “Report on Stone Circles Surveyed in Perthshire, Principally Strathearn,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 45, 1911.
  2. Gow, James M., “Notes near St Fillans: Cup-Marked Stones, Old Burying Ground at Kindrochet and Drumnakill”,  Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, volume 22, 1888.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Druim na Cille, Comrie, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 73759 24293

Also Known as:

  1. Drum-na-Kil
  2. Drumnakill

Getting Here

The Drum na Cille mound

Along the A85 road between Comrie and St Fillans, just over a mile out of Comrie, on the right-hand side (north) of the road is the small farm-track into the fields where the ruined stone circle of Tullybannocher lives.  Walk up this track (known as Maam Road), past the stones, and keep going uphill for more than a mile (literally 1 mile up, another track turns sheer right, but ignore it) where the track eventually levels-out; keep walking for another 600 yards, slightly downhill, until you reach a distinct fork in the track where you need to veer right, uphill, and keep walking up the track for ⅔-mile (1km) where you’ll see a cottage ahead of you.  About 50 yards before the house, down the slope on your left, a large rounded mass covered in bracken is the site you’re after.

Archaeology & History

This is an odd site, in more ways than one.  In the 18th and 19th century, local people told that it was “a very ancient churchyard, so old, indeed, that the grave-stones among the rank grass are scarcely discernible.” (Carment 1882)  This lore was reinforced by the fact that, as James Gow (1888) put it,

“within living memory that a burial took place here, and the tradition is that people came to bury the “wee unchristened bairns” from long distances, such as Loch Tayside, Glendochart,  Balquhidder, and Strathyre.”

Looking W, at the circle
The old mound, looking SE

That’s a lot of effort and a considerable distance for some people to travel!  But the age and nature of this site is curious.  It very name, Drum-na-kill derives from either “ridge of the burial ground” or the “hill of the chapel” (and variants thereof)—yet there are no records of any such early church or religious cell here.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that there never was one.  A wandering Culdee priest may have set up camp here more than a thousand years ago after doing his service with the fading druids of Dull, less than 20 miles to the north.  Such things, never written down, will obviously have happened in these mountains and cannot be discounted merely due to a lack of scripts. But we simply don’t know.  When Mr Gow described the place—as “a raised enclosure 25 to 30 feet in diameter, with, a turf-covered wall or rampart 3 or 4 feet high surrounding it”—he emphasized that “in former times (it) was used as a burying ground for unbaptised infants.” (large numbers of Highlanders weren’t in the slightest bit interested in the ways of the Church)  So how far back in time did this tradition go…?

Well, Gow thought the place to be an early christian site.  But when Fred Coles came here more than thirty years later, during his massive survey of the Perthshire stone circles, he deemed it to be a much earlier construction.  A “cairn circle” no less—which would give it a more Bronze Age footprint.  And this definition has stuck.  Coles (1911) told that,

Coles’ 1911 diagram
Raised ‘walling’ highlighted

“This Cairn-circle is about seventy yards east of the shepherd’s cottage, and it slightly resembles others already noticed in Perthshire.  It measures from crest to crest of its circular ridge 44 feet 3 inches east and west by 37 feet 10 inches north and south.  Several large blocks of stone lie exposed on the crest, and many others can be felt as one walks along it.  The ridge is completely  oval-circular, having no break or passage-way, and encloses a flattish, rather uneven space measuring about 34 feet in diameter.  The height above the outside ground at the best-preserved portions is fully 4 feet.”

More than a century later, its not changed much—although if you were to believe the updated Trove website, “the cairn has been destroyed in the process of land improvement.”  Which is untrue.  As the albeit darkened photos here show (we visited it on a truly dark grey day), the raised cairn, despite being covered in a mass of deep bracken, is clearly in a condition similar to what Coles described.  It looks like a typical example of this type of monument, of considerable size, with reasonably well-defined edges and comprising the usual scattered mass of stones in and around it.  The large boulders that Coles described don’t seem to be in evidence, but these were apparently shifted a few decades back and added to the enclosure walling to the east.  To honest, only the untrained eye would miss the place!  Check it out when you’re looking at the cup-marked stone, less than a hundred yards to the east…

References:

  1. Carment, Samuel, Scenes and Legends of Comrie, James P. Mathew: Dundee 1882.
  2. Coles, Fred, “Report on Stone Circles Surveyed in Perthshire, Principally Strathearn,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 45, 1911.
  3. Gow, James M., “Notes near St Fillans: Cup-Marked Stones, Old Burying Ground at Kindrochet and Drumnakill”,  Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, volume 22, 1888.
  4. MacPherson, John, “At the Head of Strathearn”, in Chronicles of Strathearn (ed. W.B. MacDougal), David Philips: Crieff 1896.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

College Well, Brechin, Angus

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Sacred Well:  OS Grid Reference – NO 5945 6006

Archaeology & History

College Well on 1865 map

Highlighted on the 1865 OS-map, this lost water source was located between the Brechin cathedral/round tower and the curiously-named St. Michael’s Mount, whose history seems to be lost.  It would seem to be the well which Ruth & Frank Morris (1981) name as the ‘Ancient Well’ in their survey.

Folklore

The reason behind this site being classified as a sacred (or holy) well is based on the tradition that the Culdees had a religious convent here in the 12th century and, according to David Black (1839),

“This convent is believed to have stood a little to the west of the present parish church, in the gardens now belonging to the kirk-session, still called “the College Yards.”  A small well of delightfully pure water in these gardens receives the name of the College Well, and is reported, by tradition, to have been the well of the Culdee convent.”

On the issue of St. Michael, students of folklore will know that, in the christian cult, he was an early dragon-slayer.  His annual commemoration day is September 29.  One of his shamanistic functions “relates to the very old tradition of Michael as the receiver of the souls of the dead.” (Attwater 1965)

References:

  1. Black, David D., The History of Brechin, Alexander Black: Brechin 1839.
  2. Gibson, Colin, Folklore of Tayside, Dundee Museum c.1968.
  3. Morris, Ruth & Frank, Scottish Healing Wells, Alethea: Sandy 1982.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the 1st edition OS-map in this site profile, Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

Clach an Eolas, St Kilda, Outer Hebrides

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Legendary Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NF 101 996?

Also Known as:

  1. Stone of Knowledge

Archaeology & History

This stone has very similar qualities to the one found upon Mullach-geal, ⅔ of a mile to the west, as a place where ritual magick was performed.  And, just like the Mullach-geal stone, we only have an approximate position of its whereabouts: “behind the village”, as Mr Sands (1878) said.  The same words were used by other St Kildan writers when it came to describing the whereabouts of Tobar Childe, so we must assume it to be reasonably close to the old well.

Folklore

Mr Sands seems to be the first person to write about it, telling us,

“At the back of the village is a stone, which does not differ in external appearance from the numerous stones scattered around, but which was supposed to possess magical properties.  It is called Clach an Eolas, or Stone of Knowledge.  If any one stood on it on the first day of the quarter, he became endowed with the second sight — could “look into the seeds of Time,” and foretell all that was to happen during the rest of the quarter.  Such an institution must have been of great value in Hirta, where news are so scanty.  To test its powers I stood on it on the first day of Spring (old style) in the present year, but must acknowledge that I saw nothing, except two or three women laden with peats, who were smiling at my credulity.”

Charles MacLean (1977) mentioned the stone a hundred years later, but seems to have just copied this earlier description.  Does anyone up there know its whereabouts?

References:

  1. MacLean, Charles, Island on the Edge of the World, Canongate: Edinburgh 1977.
  2. Sands, J., Out of the World; or Life in St. Kilda, Maclachlan & Stewart: Edinburgh 1878.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Mullach-Geal Stone, St Kilda, Outer Hebrides

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Legendary Rock:  OS Grid Reference – NF 092 996

Archaeology & History

This is a most intriguing site, whose exact location seems to have been forgotten.  It was first mentioned in Macaulay’s History of St Kilda (1764) as being one of four stone altars that the islanders used for worship.  Three of them were related to the early christian figure of St. Brendan, whose well and chapel remains are on the south-side of the island.  However, this fourth stone altar possessed a purely magickal and heathen function.  Macaulay initially gives the location as being “on top of a hill to the southwest” of St. Brendan’s chapel; but subsequently tells us it was upon “Mulach-geall” which is a mile NNW.  It was an important place to the people of Hirta and its exact position needs to be found and, hopefully, the altar still exists.

Folklore

Despite Macaulay’s conflicting directions of how to get here (a common feature of early writers), he wrote:

“I have already made mention of one St. Kilda altar, that in Brendans Chapel.  There are no less than four more in the island, of which three lie at considerable distances from the holy places.  There is one particularly on the top of a hill to the south-weft (sic), dedicated according to tradition to the God who presides over Seasons; The God of thunder, lightning, tempests and fair weather.  To avert the terrible judgments inflicted by this mighty Divinity, the ancient St. Kildians offered propitiatory sacrifices on this altar, sacrifices of different forts, much like the old Pagans, who offered a black sheep to Winter, or the Tempest, and a white one to the Spring…  The place where the people of this island, offered their victims to Taranis, is called Mulach-geall, that is to say, the White eminence or hill…”

More than a hundred years later, Seton (1878) made mention of it, but added no further details.

The invocation to Nature’s elements is something we find echoed at some sites further east, such as the Well of the North Wind on Iona and its compatriot Well of the South Wind.  At both these places, so-called ‘pagan’ rituals were used to both placate and invoke the gods and spirits of the wind.  This one on St Kilda possessed additional magickal prowess.  But where is it?  Have we lost it, or is it sleeping somewhere on the edge of Mullach-Geal…?

References:

  1. Macaulay, Kenneth, The History of St. Kilda; Containing a Description of This Remarkable Island; the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants; the Religious and Pagan Antiquities There Found, T. Becket: London 1764.
  2. Seton, Gordon, St. Kilda – Past and Present, William Blackwood: Edinburgh 1878.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian