hurch of Abernethy, an ancient seat of
the Culdees, is granted by King William to his new foundation, Orme of
Abernethy, who is also styled Abbot of Abernethy, grants the half of
the tithes of the property of himself and his heirs, the other half of
which belongs to the Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a
strictly ecclesiastical character are made by the same document. Thus
we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs--a counterpart to
those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which
frequently puzzle the antiquary in his researches through early
Scottish ecclesiastical history.

The Abbot of Aberbrothwick possessed a peculiar privilege, the origin
of which is in some measure associated with the Culdees--the custody
of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba. The lands of
Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to Adomnan the biographer
of Columba, were gifted for the maintenance of the banner. The
privilege was conferred on the Abbey by King William, but as it
inferred the warlike service of following the banner to the King's
host, the actual custody was held by laymen, the Abbey enjoying the
pecuniary advantages attached to the privilege, as religious houses
drew the temporalities of churches served by vicars.

It will readily be believed that this, one of the richest and most
magnificent monastic institutions in Scotland, numbered many eminent
men among its abbots, who from time to time connect it with the early
history of Scotland. It is even associated with a literature that has
survived to the present day, in having been presided over by Gavin
Douglas, the translator of Virgil. The two Beatons, Cardinal David and
Archbishop James, also successively its abbots, give it a more
ambiguous reputation. At the Reformation, the wealth of the Abbey was
converted into a temporal lordship, in favor of Lord Claude Hamilton,
third son of the Duke of Chatelherault, and the greater part of the
temporalities came, in the seventeenth century, into the hands of the
Panmure family.

In a tradition immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said
that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity
preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean,
which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell Rock" from
the peculiar character of the warning machinery of which the abbot
made use:

"The Abbot of Aberbrothwick
Had placed that be