St Fergus and his Companions
Jane Coll celebrates St Fergus on his feast Day.
At the age of 12, I moved up to High School. This involved a change from a six pupil, one teacher primary school in a remote crofting community on the West coast to a 1,000 pupil comprehensive in the central belt. I was different in many ways, an obvious one being my accent. As there is a similarity between my native accent and that of Southern Ireland, I was often mistaken for an Irish incomer. This irritated me, never having left my native soil, especially as the question was usually phrased ‘What part of Ireland do you come from?’ rather than the more acceptable ‘Are you Irish?’. There is an assumption throughout Scotland that any Roman Catholic Scot must be of Irish descent within a few generations. While this is true for many, it ignores those pockets of Scotland bypassed by the Reformation whose faith can be traced back to 1st century missionaries from Ireland rather than the effects of famine and the industrial revolution.
I now live in Caithness, where the Reformation wiped out all traces of Catholicism – or so people assume. An official Catholic presence only returned with the herring fishing of the 19th century. Yet there are some lingering memories and traditions from the earliest days of Christianity in the North. One well-known story involves the patron saint of the county town of Wick, St Fergus (6th or 7th century). Fergus is a Pictish name, although he seems to have spent some time in Ireland. He is associated with Strathearn, then Caithness, then Buchan. His name was honoured through the centuries and a statue of him survived into post-Reformation times. When a zealous minister destroyed the statue in 1613, the citizens of Wick were so incensed that they threw him into the river and left him to drown. A replacement effigy was placed in what was the Sinclair aisle of the old church of St Fergus. After many years in the local museum, it now has pride of place in the current St Fergus Church, Wick. The Church of Scotland in Halkirk was also named after him.
A companion of Fergus was Modan, who is associated with an ancient chapel site, now covered by a mausoleum, at Freswick on the coast north of Wick. This site was greatly venerated and the local custom of praying at the ruins while going round it on their knees took several generations of disapproval from the local ministers before it died out. St John’s Loch at Dunnet, 20 miles to the east of Wick, also had an early chapel site and a tradition of people going round it praying for cures – this time on Midsummer morning.
Another companion of Fergus, Drostan, has several sites dedicated to him in the county. Canisbay church is still active and the current building, parts of which date back to the 15th century, is near the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to Drostan. On the other side of the county is a graveyard that was still in use within living memory, also dedicated to Drostan. The walls of the graveyard contain the original baptismal font.
The third companion, Colm, is less well known. There is a site on Dunnet Links, now covered by sand dunes, associated with him. Another graveyard, nearer the centre of the county at Dirlot, is usually attributed to Columba but I suspect that the original dedication was to Colm and modern recorders, not familiar with the Celtic saints, assumed that this was a corruption of the much better-known name of Columba. This graveyard was also in use until comparatively recently.
It seems that chapel sites and graveyards retain their sense of being sacred places regardless of whichever denomination is in charge at any one time.
Jane Coll | Caithness