Folklore

St Serf’s Water
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Rhiannon
Rhiannon Apr 30, 2010
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Somewhere in the vicinity of St Serf’s Water, a barrow was opened prior to 1800, and two urns containing bluish 4” polished axes were found. St Serf’s Well was here too, but ‘Canmore’ says that it’s been lost since the Water level rose.

Nigh to this place is St Serf’s Well, and the moor whereon St Serf’s market is held. He was the tutelary saint of the parish of Monivaird. This well is a plentiful spring of water. About sixty years ago, our people were wont, on Lammas day, to go and drink it, leaving white stones, spoons, or rags, which they brought with them; but nothing except the white stones now appear, this superstitious practice being quite in oblivion. It has been useful in a strangury, as any other very cold water would be; for a patient, taking a tub full of it immediately from the well, plunging his arms into it, which were bare to the elbows, was cured. St Serf’s fair is still kept on the 11th of July, where HIghland horses, linen cloth, &c. both from the south and north, are sold.

‘Extracts from a History of the Parishes of Monivaird and Strowan’, by Mr Porteous, in vol.2 (1822) of Archaeologia Scotica.

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