Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/351

Rh the two branches forming the river Tay, have their source. The one rises in the mountains facing the inn, the other in those to the north, at the back of the inn, and rolls round two sides of it, almost close to the door, and is called the Fillan water; over which is a pretty simple bridge leading to the west and north roads. Within sight of the house, in the side of a very lofty mountain, is a very fine lead mine, and the ore extremely pure. The mountains in which the Fillan rises must have a great quantity of sulphur in them, as that water turns the stones over which it falls, of a green colour. There is little to be seen or to admire at Tyndrum: the landlord, however, wished me to see a holy well near Strath Fillan kirk, whose water, he told me, cured every disease but that of the purse. My head was more full of the virtues of the well, than the wit of the inn-keeper; and concluding, as he pronounced the words, that the disease of the purse was a Galic name for some malady, I simply asked what it meant in English? "Money, madam; it will not cure the want of that." The water of Fillan holy well must needs be a radical cure for madness, in the way it is there administered for that disease. The poor creature thus