1233-1258) may as well have applied to _Keledei_ declining there, and
does not imply that they never were there, but existed only at Muthill
(13 miles to the north), and that the Culdees of Muthill, being in the
diocese of Dunblane, were called Culdees of Dunblane. "We find," says
Skene,[4] "the _Keledei_ with their prior at Muthill from 1178 to
1214,[5] when they disappear from the records, and Muthill becomes the
seat of the dean of Dunblane, who had already taken precedence of the
prior of the _Keledei_. It is probable that, under the growing
importance of Dunblane as a cathedral establishment, the possessions of
the _Keledei_ had fallen into secular hands." This would be the more
easy, as the monastery of the Culdees was a distinct institution about
a mile south of the church and village of Muthill.

The foundation of the present cathedral is attributed to Bishop
Clement, originally a monk, who received the tonsure from St. Dominic
himself. The cathedral which he has left has since his day been
extended both to east and westward; and what he built he joined on to
the more ancient square and perpendicular tower. The cathedral
consists of an aisled, eight-bayed nave (130 by 58 feet, and 50 feet
high), an aisleless choir (80 by 30 feet), with a chapter-house,
sacristy, or lady chapel, to the north. The nave is almost entirely
pure first-pointed. In the clerestory the windows are of two lights,
with a foiled circle set over them, plainly treated outside, but
elaborated by a range of shafted arches running continuously in front
of the windows within, so much apart from them as to leave a narrow
passage round the building in the thickness of the wall. The east
window is a peculiar triplicate, with the centre light much taller and
wider than the others. The west front has over the doorway and its
blind arch on either side three very long and narrow two-light windows
of equal height, with a cinquefoil in the head of the central window
and a quatrefoil in the head of the side windows; whilst above is a
vesica, set within a bevelled fringe of bay-leaves, arranged
zigzag-wise, with their points in contact--the last the subject of a
well-known rhapsody by Ruskin. The root of the cathedral history in
this case lies in the tower. It stands awkwardly a little out of line
in the south aisle of the nave, an evident remnant of an older church,
exactly like the similar tower in Muthill, of the eleventh century,
retained in