Wilson
himself bears witness. There is something almost pathetic in the
thought that less than forty years after that dedication service in
which the Prebendary of Glendevon took part, these additions were to be
pulled to pieces by the savage mob which wrecked, amongst other
religious houses, the stately monastery on the Links of the Forth; and
it is just possible that the great destroyer--spiritually at least--of
what Canon Wilson helped to build up was in his parish in 1556. At any
rate a spot is still pointed out on the glebe where, according to
tradition, John Knox preached. We know from his own statement[3] that
he spent some time in the early part of the summer of that year at
Castle Campbell--which is only some four or five miles distant--"whare
he taught certane dayis"; so it is at least not utterly improbable that
he may have come through Glenquey past the Maiden's Well, and visited a
possible congregation in Glendovan, exhorting them to "prayaris, to
reading of the Scriptures, and mutuall conference unto such tyme as God
should give unto them grettar libertie."[4]

The second direct mention of Glendevon in public records is of a
somewhat unsavoury order, and affords a rather curious illustration of
the beliefs of the people of Scotland in the seventeenth century. John
Brughe, one of the most notorious necromancers and wizards of his day,
was tried at Edinburgh on November 24th, 1643, for practising sorcery
and other unholy arts, and amongst the charges brought against him was
that he had met Satan thrice "in the kirkyeard of Glendovan at quhilkis
tymes ther was taine up thrie severall dead corps, ane of thame being
of ane servand man named Johne Chrystiesone; the uther corps, tane up
at the Kirk of Mukhart, the flesch of the quhilk corps was put above
the byre and stable-dure headis" of certain individuals in order to
destroy their cattle.[5] John's object in collecting Glendovan "muild"
was, according to this indictment, not a beneficent one; but it is to
be remembered to his credit that he used the powdered bones of the dead
and other materials, notably "ane inchantit stane of the bignes of a
dow egg,"[6] for the healing of man and beast, and we are told that for
curing a number of oxen afflicted with the murrain by administering a
pint of one of his patent medicines, accompanied with the invocation,
"God put thame in their awin place," repeated thrice, he got "ellevin
od schillings, with twa peckis of