ST. FELAN, OR FOELAN, ABBOT

HIS name is famous in the ancient Scottish and Irish Calendars. The example and instructions of his pious parents, Feriach and St. Kentigerna, inspired him from the cradle with the most ardent love of virtue. In his youth, despising the flattering worldly advantages to which high birth and a great fortune entitled him, he received the monastic habit from a holy abbot named Mundus, and passed many years in a cell at some distance from the monastery, not far from St. Andrew’s. He was by compulsion drawn from this close solitude, being chosen abbot. His sanctity in this public station shone forth with a bright light. After some years he resigned this charge, and retired to his uncle Congan, brother to his mother, in a place called Siracht, a mountainous part of Glendarchy, now in Fifeshire, where, with the assistance of seven others, he built a church, near which he served for several years. God glorified him by a wonderful gift of miracles, and called him to the reward of his labors on the 9th of January, in the seventh century. He was buried in Straphilline, and his relics were long preserved there with honor. This account is given us of him in the lessons of the Aberdeen Breviary.1 The Scottish historians2 attribute to the intercession of St. Felan a memorable victory obtained by king Robert Bruce, in 1314, over a numerous army of English, at Bannocburn, not far from Sterling, in the reign of Edward II. of England, who narrowly escaped, being obliged to pass the Tweed in a boat, with only one companion. See Lesley,1. 17; Boetius,1. 14. Chatelain certainly mistakes in confounding this saint with St. Finan, bishop of Lindisfarne.*