Saint Fillan, Filan, Phillan, Fáelán (Old Irish) or Faolán (modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic) is the name of an eighth century monk from Munster, who having studied at Taghmon Abbey, traveled to Scotland and settled at Strath Fillan.
Name
The name Fillan probably means "little wolf" in Irish, being formed on a diminutive of faol, an old word for the animal. In Irish the name Faolán is pronounced 'Fway-lawn'.
Life
St. Fillan of Munster, the son of Feriach, grandson of Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster, received the monastic habit at the Abbey of Fintán of Taghmon in Wexford and came to Scotland from Ireland in 717 as a hermit along with his Irish princess-mother St. Kentigerna, and his Irish prince-uncle St. Comgan. They settled at Loch Duich.
After spending some time with his uncle Saint Comgan at Lochalsh, where Killilan (Kilfillan) bears his name, the saint devoted himself to the evangelization of the district of Perthshire round Strath Fillan, which is called after him, and where he was greatly venerated. The story may be considered more of a parable than historical truth, but the connection with the origins of Fillan's name remains obvious.
St. Fillan was credited with powers such as the healing of the sick and also possessed a luminous glow from his left arm which he used to study and copy Sacred Scripture in the dark. The new foundation received a grant from King Robert, in gratitude for the aid which he was supposed to have obtained from a relic of the saint (an arm-bone) on the eve of the great victory over King Edward II's army at the Battle of Bannockburn. The saint's original chapel was up river, slightly northwest of the abbey and adjacent to a deep body of water which became known as St. Fillan's Pool.
Relics
The Mayne was an arm bone, now lost, enclosed in a silver reliquary or casket. The success of the Scots at Bannockburn was attributed to the presence of the arm of Saint Fillan, which was borne by its custodian, the Abbot of Inchaffray, on the field of battle. Still kept at the woollen mill in Killin are a set of river stones which were believed to have been given healing powers by St. Fillan. A particular sequence of movements of an appropriate stone around the afflicted area was believed to result in a cure. and was specially venerated at Cluain Mavscua, County Westmeath, Ireland, and at the villages of Houston and Kilellan, Renfrewshire, Scotland and so early as the 8th or 9th century at Strathfillan, Perthshire, Scotland, where there was an ancient monastery dedicated to him, which, like most of the religious houses of early times, was afterwards secularized.
Patronage
Fillan is the patron saint of the mentally ill. In Strathfillan are the ruins of Saint Fillan's chapel, and hard by is the Holy Pool, in which the insane were, as late as the 19th century, bathed to obtain a cure by the saint's intercession. Scott refers to it in Marmion (Cant. I. xxix).
St Fillan's parish church in Aberdour, Fife was first recorded as being associated with St Fillan in 1390; parts of the church date to at least 1123, possibly even predating nearby Aberdour castle with which its history is so closely intertwined.
There was a monastery dedicated to St. Fillan as early as the 8th or 9th century at Strath Fillan in Perthshire. The chapel at Doune Castle was dedicated to Saint Fillan.
St Fillans, Perthshire is a village at the eastern end of Loch Earn near the remains of the 7th century Pictish fort of Dundurn. St Fillans is a locality near the township of Mudgee in New South Wales, Australia.
The Scottish surname MacLellan (MacGille Fhaolain in Scottish Gaeilic) means son of the servant of Saint Fillan.
St. Fillan's spring is referenced in Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake, as the resting place of the "Harp of the North" invoked at the beginning of the poem.
References
nl:Fillan