By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
On the other side of the estuary from Edinburgh in Fife there is the beautiful village of Culross. These days it tends to be a pilgrimage site for Outlander fans who have sat glued to the screen watching the adventures of Jamie and Claire set in the 18th century. But long before this popular series made Culross a tourist spot, it was once the destination of another pilgrimage – the cave and site of a saint known as Serf, or Servanus.
Unfortunately, very few real facts are known about him. Our earliest source is from about 1185 in The Life of S. Kentigern by Jocelinus, a monk of Furness. He claims that when he made his research about Kentigern the earliest written evidence he found was ‘written in the Scotic dialect… in a barbarous way’ which he sought to ‘season… with Roman salt’. Despite his embellishment, a handful of facts remain about Serf from his work. We find that he was at Culross where he ‘taught sacred literature to many boys, who were to be trained to the Divine service.’ According to Jocelinus, King Loth of the Gododdin cast away his daughter Thaneu for the crime of becoming pregnant illegitimately, and the people put her in a coracle in the estuary. She ended up at Culross where she gave birth to a son who was named Kentigern and Mungo by Serf. This boy was trained up for the ministry at Serf’s school, later becoming the famous Bishop of Strathclyde.
The Breviary of Aberdeen was put together by Bishop Elphinstone. In 1510 it was the first book in Scotland to come off the printing press from Edinburgh. This book contained legends of the saints of this nation; among them was The Life of S. Servanus [Serf]. So much of this account is pure fantasy, but it is clear that he was based at Culross, from where he issued forth to preach and see miracles in the Kingdom of Fife and elsewhere. His prayer cave at Dysart became a place of pilgrimage for centuries afterwards, until the Reformation put a stop to it.