that when the king, being sorely troubled in mind on the evening before the battle, had retired into his tent, and was engaged in prayer to God and St Fillan, suddenly the silver case which contained the arm-bone of the saint opened of itself, and shewed him the relic, and then 'clakkit to again.' The priest who had charge of it immediately proclaimed a miracle, declaring that he had brought into the field only the 'tume cais' (empty case), being fearful lest the precious relic should fall into the hands of the English.

If we accept Boece's statement to the extent of believing on the strength of it that any of the relics of St Fillan were brought to the field, we may believe that they were all there, and that they were carried round the army on the morning of the fight, when the abbot of Inchaffray walked barefooted in front of the ranks bearing aloft 'the croce in quhilk the crucifix wes hingin.' That such practices were not uncommon is gleaned from other instances, such as that of the crosier of St Columba—the Cath Bhuaidh or 'Battle-Victory'—so named because it used to give the victory to the men of Alba when carried to their battles. If then the crosier of St Fillan was present at the battle of Bannockburn, and the victory was ascribed to the saint's intervention, this may have been the occasion of its being glorified with such a magnificent silver shrine.

But if it had no public history and no picturesque associations, the story of its transmission from age to age, linked as it was with the chequered fortunes of the religious foundation to which it was attached, and of the strange and varied circumstances in which it has been preserved by a succession of hereditary keepers, through failing fortunes and changes of faith, in poverty and exile, is sufficient to invest it with surpassing interest.

Since its arrival at Edinburgh the singular discovery has been made that the gilt silver casing of the crosier had been constructed for the purpose of inclosing an older staff-head of cast bronze. This has been taken out of its concealment, and is now exhibited alongside the silver one. The surface of this older crosier is divided into panels by raised ridges ornamented with niello. These panels correspond in number, shape, and size to the silver plaques now on the external casing, and they are pierced with rivet-holes which also correspond with the position of the pins by which the plaques are fastened. It is thus clear that when the old crosier was incased, it was first stripped of its ornamental plaques of filigree-work, which were again used in making up the external covering so far as they were available. Such of them as had been either entirely absent, or so much worn as to require redecoration, were renewed in a style so different from the original workmanship, as to demonstrate that it is a mere imitation of an art with which the workman was unfamiliar. This establishes two distinct phases in the history of the crosier, and suggests that at some particular period, a special occasion had arisen for thus glorifying the old relic with a costly enshrinement. What that occasion was may be inferred from some considerations connected with its public history.

We know nothing of the history of St Fillan's foundation during the first five centuries, in which the founder's staff passed through the hands of his various successors as the symbol of office of the abbot of Glendochart. But in the time of King William the Lion, we find that the office had become secularised, and the abbot appears as a great lay lord, ranking after the Earl of Athole, and appointed alternatively with him as the holder of the assize, in all cases of stolen cattle in that district of Scotland. Whether he held the crosier in virtue of his office we cannot tell; but the likelihood is that it was when the office was first usurped by a layman, that the crosier was placed by the last of the true successors of St Fillan in the custody of a 'dewar' or hereditary keeper, with the dues and privileges which we afterwards find attached to this office. Such an arrangement was not uncommon in connection with similar relics of the ancient Celtic church. We thus find the dewar of the Cogerach of St Fillan in possession of the lands of Eyich in Glendochart in 1336. In process of time the official title of dewar became the family surname of Dewar; and we have a curious instance of the Celtic form of the patronymic in a charter granted in 1575 by Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy to Donald Mac in Deora vic Cogerach.

The inquiry is naturally suggested why a relic with such associations, intrinsically so valuable, and always so highly venerated, should have been allowed to remain in the possession of laymen, and to be kept in their private dwellings, often no better than turf cottages in the glen. The crosier was splendid enough to have graced the processional ceremonials of the highest dignitary of the Church, and thus to have been a coveted acquisition to the richest monastery in the land. That it was so coveted may be fairly inferred from the fact that on the 22d April 1428, John de Spens of Perth, Bailie of Glendochart, summoned an inquest of the men of Glendochart to hold inquisition regarding the authority and privileges of 'a certain relick of St Felane called the Coygerach.' Of the fifteen summoned, three were Macnabs, deriving their origin from the son of a former abbot; three were of the clan Gregor; and one was named Felan, after the saint. Their verdict sets forth that the Coygerach was in the rightful possession of the deoire, because the office of bearing it had been given hereditarily by the successor of St Fillan to a certain progenitor of Finlay, the deoire at the time of the inquest; that the privileges pertaining to the office had been enjoyed and in use since the days of King Robert Bruce; and that when cattle or goods were stolen or taken by force from any inhabitant of the glen, and they were unable to follow them from fear or feud, the dewar was bound to follow the cattle or goods wherever they might be found throughout the kingdom.

We hear no more of the rights of the Cogerach till 1487, when the dewar sought the sanction of the royal prerogative to aid him in holding his charge with all its ancient rights. In that year, King James III. issued letters of confirmation under the Privy Seal, in favour of Malice Doire, who, as the document sets forth, 'has had a relic of St Felan called the Quigrich in keeping of us and our progenitors since the time of King Robert Bruce, and of before, and has made no obedience or answer to any person spiritual or temporal in any thing concerning it, in any other way than is contained in the auld infeftment granted by our progenitors.' The object was to establish the rights of the Crown in the relic, as distinguished from the rights of the Church; and we may presume that the royal infeftment to which it refers may have been granted by Bruce on the occasion when the old crosier was glorified by incasement in a silver shrine, in token of the king's humble gratitude to God and St Fillan for the victory of Bannockburn.

We find traces of the dewars and their lands in charters down to the time of Queen Mary. The Reformation deprived them of their living, and converted the relic, of which they were the keepers, into a 'monument of idolatry,' fit only to be consigned to the crucible. Still they were faithful to their trust, although instead of emolument it could only bring them trouble. In the succeeding centuries their fortunes fell to a low ebb indeed. In 1782 a passing tourist saw the Quigrich in the house of Malice Doire, a day-labourer in Killin. His son, a youth of nineteen, lay in an outer apartment at the last gasp of consumption; and the traveller was so moved by concern for the probable fate of the Quigrich, in the prospect of the speedy death of the heir to this inestimable possession, that he wrote an account of the circumstances, and transmitted it, with a drawing of the crosier, to the Society of Antiquaries of