Ossian Collection > Peat-fire flame

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
now lies buried in the clods. An Inverness correspondent
writes me that, somewhere about the year, 1869, a house
was erected on the site of this Chapel for her father, who
at the time was medical practitioner for the district. The
bell of the chapel, it is said, used to hang on a large tree
still standing on a slight eminence close to the entrance gate ;
and this tree is known traditionally as the Bell Tree. My
informant tells me, further, that round this tree she and
her companions, when children, habitually played tig,
despite the continued efforts of the servants to scare them
away from it on the pretext that it was ghost-haunted.
Merchard's Bells.
And now we come to Merchard's bells, which are
associated with the Great Glen of Scotland. Merchard,
or Ychard, as he sometimes is referred to, appears in the
Scottish Kalendars; and, according to traditions still
current in Glen Moriston, he was a southern Pict — a native
of Kincardine O'Neill. He was the patron saint of Glen
Moriston.
The story is recited in Strathglas of how the attention of
Merchard and two of his companions was attracted to a
white cow which, day after day, stood gazing at a certain
tree, without ever eating, and yet went home to the byre
each evening with her udder as well filled with milk as were
the udders of the rest of the herd.
Moved eventually by curiosity he no longer could control,
Merchard began to excavate at the base of the tree in
cjuestion. There he found three bells, as bright and fresh
as on the day they left the founder's hands. To each of
his companions Merchard gave a bell : the third bell he
retained for himself. And it was agreed there and then
that, on the spot where any of the three bells rang a third
time of its own accord, a place of worship must be erected.
In this wise it came about that one of Merchard's
companions founded a church at Glen Convinth, in the Aird
district of Inverness-shire. Church, bell, and burying-place
were consecrated duly.
With this particular bell are associated many legends,
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