nable practices". The list of districts covers some fifty miles of the western coast.
In the second extract the "derilans" appear to receive the sacrifices. If this could be proved—the wording of the record is vague at the very point of interest—and if Mr. Dixon's suggested derivation from the Gaelic deireoil, "afflicted",[1] is correct, the lunatics would seem to have served as priests to the grove—a completely primitive conception of the holiness of the possessed man—and to have received the gifts of ordinary sufferers, the "poor ones" of Mourie. More accurate information is greatly to be desired on this curious point.
Twenty years later, in 1678, the mystic healing powers of the island are thus acknowledged: "At Dingwall, 6 August 1678. Inter alia, that Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, minister of Gerloch … summoned by his officer to this prebrie day Hector Mackenzie ... in the parish of Gerloch, as also Johne Murdoch and Duncan Mackenzies, sons to the said Hector, as also Kenneth McKenzie his grandson, for sacrificing a bull in ane heathenish manner in the iland of St. Ruffus, commonly called Elian Moury ... for the recovering of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, spouse to the said Hector Mackenzie, who was formerlie sicke and valetudinaire."[2]
With so little definite knowledge, it is impossible to say whether the saint took over some powerful local cult with its many sanctuaries, or whether all the varying strands and relics of the primitive worship of local powers, approached on mountain-tops, or in sacred groves, or by holy wells, were gradually gathered up into his dominant name; but the power of one personality, the tendency to unify belief, seems strangely hinted at in these records of the tenacious worships of "Mourie".
The beautiful legend of the two graves marked with the
