Fillan

The name Fillan probably means "little wolf" in Irish / Gaeilge, being formed on a diminutive of faol, an old word for the animal.

St. Fillan of Munster, the son of Feriach, grandson of Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster, received the monastic habit at the Abbey of Fintán of Taghmon in Wexford and came to Scotland from Ireland in 717 as a hermit along with his Irish princess-mother St. Kentigerna, and his Irish prince-uncle St.

[3] The story may be considered more of a parable than historical truth, but the connection with the origins of Fillan's name remains obvious.

St. Fillan was credited with powers such as the healing of the sick and also possessed a luminous glow from his left arm which he used to study and copy Sacred Scripture in the dark.

The saint's original chapel was up river, slightly northwest of the abbey and adjacent to a deep body of water which became known as St. Fillan's Pool.

The success of the Scots at Bannockburn was attributed to the presence of the arm of Saint Fillan, which was borne by its custodian, the Abbot of Inchaffray, on the field of battle.

[2] It was long in the possession of a family of the name of Jore and/or Dewar (from the Gaelic deoir), who were its hereditary guardians in the Middle Ages.

One day a visitor who was unused to seeing bells flying through the air was startled and shot it with an arrow, causing a crack.

The bell was recovered by Bishop Forbes of the Episcopalian Diocese of Brechin 70 years later, in 1869, who had it placed in the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh for safe keeping.

St. Fillan of Munster is commemorated in the Roman Catholic Church on 3 February,[2] and was specially venerated at Cluain Mavscua, County Westmeath, Ireland, and at the villages of Houston and Kilellan, Renfrewshire, Scotland[7] and so early as the 8th or 9th century at Strathfillan, Perthshire, Scotland, where there was an ancient monastery dedicated to him, which, like most of the religious houses of early times, was afterwards secularized.

St Fillans, Perthshire is a village at the eastern end of Loch Earn near the remains of the 7th century Pictish fort of Dundurn.