Kildonan / Cill Donnain

Described and illustrated in Macpherson (1876-1878) with reference to an earlier source of ca. 1700 on the finding of a large "sepulchral urn" that had been unearthed at a burial ground located "about thirty yards from the church". The earlier reference described the object as "a big stone hewn to the bottom, about four feet deep, and the diameter of it is about the same breadth"; this basin was "almost full of human bones, but no head among them, and they were fair and dry"; popular interpretation was quick to turn it into St Donan's relics [Donan, founder of a monastery on the island, and fifty-odd of his companions are said to have ben burned alive by raiding Vikings on AD 618]. This early source proved apparently quite inaccurate. What was found, instead, was "a stone basin, rather than urn" the measurements of which were also quite different from those given in the earlier source, at least one foot less in diameter than earlier reported [cf. Measurements area]. Soon after this, a visit of the Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Mr. Anderson, "resolved to examine the stone anew". The object was found again, about sixty yards from the church, buried not very deeply (its cover had been struck recently by a plough), and described thus: "we found a large basin of whitish sanstone roughly chiselled into a circular form, and hollowed out also somewhat roughjly into a circular form[...]. The inside is hollowed out not quite perpendicularly, and the bottom is about an inch and a half deeper in the centre than at the sides, except where it has been perforated by an opening two inches wide at the inside, and three at the outside". They also found some charcoal, soil and "a few fragments of human bones, say ten or a dozen", none of which matched the description of the earlier source of about 170 years since. The artifact was re-buried and the site marked with a "long sea-rolled stone, elliptical in form, about 22 inches in length and 10 in breadth [55 x 25 cm]" a stone that had been also unearthed nearby by a plough and that was know locally as "St Columba's pillow". The conclusion arrived at by the said Mr. Anderson "was that the stone had probably been a font at one time, or possibly a piscina, however it came to have had these bones deposited in it". Walker (1887) writes at length about Macpherson's report, and, as a concluding comment, states that "as the basin is evidently very much larger than the ordinary piscina, there can be little doubt that it was used as a baptismal font. The side drain points to its being of early date." The object may have been a baptismal vessel just as well as a farm cistern or water trough (or both!).