Unleash your spirituality
You step into the mystic world of Celtic spirituality at the rocky outcrop where eighth century holy man St Fillan reputedly preached and performed healing miracles.
The crusted crag is fronted by an ornamental lake and mantled with rhododendrons and shrubbery.
Otherwise, the sacred site has changed little since St Fillan introduced the Christian gospel to men and women of the Renfrewshire countryside following his arrival from Bangor monastery in Northern Ireland.
He was the son of Feradach, a noble Irish prince, and Kentigerna, who was the daughter of a Leinster king.
The rugged rock protrudes from a grassy knoll in Houston’s Barfillan area. In the old language, the name means ‘stony hill of Fillan.’
The energetic evangelist chose the neighbourhood for his soul-saving mission field because, previously, it was a citadel of pre-Christian religious rituals of the Iron Age Celts.
He vowed to save souls in the heartland of heathenism.
Barfillan’s pinnacled peak of pantheistic paganism may have been the scene of night-time fire festivals, where white-robed Druid priests of the Old Religion chanted paeans of praise to ancient nature deities.
Down below, tribesmen and women with flaming torches marched solemnly round the boulder.
These processions were superseded by Christian worship, prayers, devotions, incantations, exorcisms and healing miracles evocative of poet Sir Walter Scott’s haunting vision of ‘St Fillan’s Well, whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel and the crazed brain restore.’
Following his death around 749AD, a small stone church was erected near the scene of St Fillan’s labours and where he may be buried.
The sanctuary was known as Kilallan Church. During medieval times, it became a dependency of Paisley Abbey, whose abbots, priors and monks frequently visited.
The ruins are visible today in a hallowed hollow near Barfillan Hill, which I visited recently with the landowner’s permission.
It was a surreal sensation, listening to carolling woodland birds and inhaling the soporific scent of Springtime wildflowers. I felt part of the eternal Communion of Saints.
This is the sacred union between the Church Militant here on earth and the Church Triumphant in heaven, which transcends time and the tomb.
Some 1,300 years later, the spirit of St Fillan still soothes the soul at that earthly paradise graced by his footsteps and healing hands.
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