The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

BELL LORE
left arm, and his bell. Some fifty years or so ago. the
crozier was found in Canada, in the possession of a Dewar.
To-day this crozier. which was known in olden times as the
cogerach, is to be seen in the National Museum of
Antiquities, at Edinburs^h. When a Dewar set out to
recover stolen livestock, he bore the cogerach in his hand;
and there is a tradition that never in all his quests
throughout Scotland did the bearer of the cogerach have
occasion to resort to force—so disarming was the influence
of this relic upon those who had driven ofif their countrymen's
cattle.
Now, about the time of the Union of the Parliaments.
St. Fillan's Bell was stolen from the kirkyard of Strathfillan
by a young Englishman wandering among the historical
haunts of Scotland. Later, however, the descendants of
this young man restored it, with the result that it, also, is
now on view in the same museum as that containing St.
Fillan's crozier. St. Eillan's Bell shared with so many
other bells the power of finding its way back to its rightful
place, when removed either purposely or inadvertently.
" That which belongs not to you, belong not to it ! " the bell
is believed to have uttered in angry tones, when flying back
through the air to its home in the kirkyard of Strathfillan.
But, somehow or other, it failed to return to Strathfillan of
its own accord when the young Englishman carried it off to
the south of England, where it was discovered quite by
accident several years later.
On the morning of the Battle of Bannockburn, the Abbot
of Inchaffray carried the silver reliquary containing the
bones of St. Fillan's left arm along the ranks of the kneeling
Scottish army. At the time of the Reformation this relic
was either lost or destroyed.
It is said that St. Fillan died at or near the village of
St. Fillan's, at the east end of Loch Earn. The coffin
containing his corpse was borne thence by the men of
Breadalbain for interment in their own territory. But,
when the bearers reached the spot where the tracks to
Strathfillan and Killin diverge, they began to quarrel for the
possession of the corpse. The Strathfillan men strove to
continue the journey in the one direction, and the Killin
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