Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 24 on 05/01/2006.

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The most famous Fillan

There have been 16 Saint Fillans. James Irvine Robertson recalls the eighth century one

According to Saints of Scotland, a list of those important to the spiritual life of Scotland, there are 16 saints named Fillan.

They were all priests of the Celtic Church which operated in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland centuries before St Augustine came from Rome to convert the English. Unlike the Catholic Church which required many hurdles to be negotiated and many centuries and miracles before someone became worthy of sainthood, a saint in the Celtic Church seems to have been awarded this honour by popular repute and tradition.

The St Fillan, in the case that concerns us here, the bringer of Christianity to Glen Dochart and Strathfillan in the eighth century. He died in 777 AD.

Before that, he had set himself up in a little cell alongside the modern West Highland Way, between Crianlarich and Tyndrum, where he did his duty and died.

But unlike the other 15 Fillans, he was not to be forgotten.

He used a pool on the river Dochart to heal by immersion, and the spot was still being used for curing madness more than 1,000 years later.

His eight healing stones – each used to cure some specific complaint or injury to a particular part of the body – are preserved at Killin. Originally there were five relics of the saint, the Mesr, the Mayne, the Fergy, the Bernane and the Quigrich.

No one knows what the Mesr was. The Mayne and the Fergy were likely to have been his bones.

In 1306, more than five centuries after Fillan’s death, the newly-crowned Robert Bruce.....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish History

Page number : 20