Bit of a link here for folklore addicts (just me then): The Reverend Robert Kirk, he of ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, was a minister here in Balquhidder for 19 years, before he transferred to Aberfoyle. And eventually disappeared into the Other world.
You can read ‘The Secret Commonwealth’ at the Sacred Texts Archive, here:
sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sce/index.htm
Saint Angus really liked it here.
[He] is said to have come to the glen from the eastward, and to have been so much struck with its marvellous beauty that he blessed it. The remains of the stone on which he sat to rest are still visible in the gable of one of the farm buildings at Easter Auchleskine, and the turn of the road is yet called “Beannachadh Aonghais” (Angus’s Blessing).
From p83 of JM Gow’s (1887)
‘Notes in Balquhidder: Saint Angus, curing wells, cup-marked stones, etc’,
Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 21, 1886-7 – link below.
If the building’s still there, the stone probably will be too – the OS saw it at NN 5499 2071 when they checked in 1979. “This much weathered stone, locally associated with St Angus, is built into the top of the E gable end of a farm building.” (RCAHMS record).
There are lots of other stones with cupmarks or stories in the vicinity (including a rumoured stone circle and a ‘stone setting’, but the RCAHMS don’t seem to think these have much antiquity, when they can be tracked down).
James Mackintosh Gow’s article on ‘Notes in Balquhidder: Saint Angus, curing wells, cup-marked stones, etc’, in the Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 21, 1886-7.
