430 THE QUiGRtCH. 



printed in tlie Society's Transactions, it was accompanied with a note 

 whicli told that " The owner of the relic afterwards emigrated to 

 America, carrying the Quigrich with him." When engaged, some 

 years since, in preparing " The Prehistoric Annals of Scotland" for 

 the press, — little dreaming then of becoming a settler in Canadian 

 clearings, but rather disposed to imagine myself in some special res- 

 pects adscriptus glehcB, — I tried to recover the traces of this ancient 

 Scottish relic, and learned that it still existed in the safe custody of 

 its hereditary keeper, who was settled on a farm in "Western Canada, 

 Since then, unanticipated changes have afforded me opportunities 

 for a careful inspection of this curious Scottish ecclesiastical memo- 

 rial, now transferred to Canadian soil, and such notes, descriptive 

 or historical, as I have been able to glean concerning it, may very 

 appropriately find a place in the Canadian Journal, relative to a; 

 relic, which, though now Canadian, claims an antiquity some cen" 

 turies older than the first discovery of the New "World, with all that 

 pertains to its chronicled history. 



Notwithstanding the long proscription of all ante -reformation and 

 episcopal relics in Scotland, it is surprising how many such have been 

 devoutly preserved, and venerated with superstitious fervour, almost 

 to our own day. In the first Scottish Covenant, the subscription of 

 which was, so early a3 1585, rendered obligatory on every graduate 

 of the Scottish universities, the subscriber is made do declare, after 

 long and due examination of his own conscience, that he " abhors 

 and detests all kinds of papistrie, but, in special, the vsurpit autho- 

 ritie of that E-omane Antechrist, ... his canonizatioun of men, 

 worschipping of imagrie, relicques and crosses ; ... his prophane 

 holie water, baptizing of belles, conjuring of spirits, crossing, sayn- 

 ing, anoynting, conjuring, hallowing of Goddis holie creatouris, with 

 the superstitious opinioun joyned thairwith." Nevertheless, at 

 Trilli n, — according to a former incumbent, cell-linn : the cell of the 

 Saint's pool, — and throughout Grlendoehart and Strathfillan, at the 

 close of the eighteenth, and even in the earlier years of this nine' 

 teenth century, faith in the virtues of the relics of Saint Fillan seems 

 to have been scarcely less strong than, of old, in the sanctity which 

 the Gaels of Strathfillan ascribed to their good Abbot in the seventh 

 century. 



Alexander Dewar, the present custodier of the Quigrich, writes 

 in answer to queries submitted to him : " I do not remember where 



