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Killin means White Church, or it could mean a burial ground because, in the river just down from the glorious Falls of Dochart, lies an island named Inch Buie, the Yellow Island so-called from the golden moss which still covers it. This is the ancient burial ground of the Clan MacNab. They were once a powerful clan in the area with lands stretching west down Strathfillan. This named after the missionary St Fillan who brought Christianity here. His silver crozier, known as the Quigrich, has survived for more than a millennium and is now held by the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The MacNabs, like other ancient clans in this part of Perthshire, lost their lands to the incoming Campbells who ruthlessly schemed their way to wealth and power. They became the Earls of Breadalbane and controlled a stretch of the country from Kenmore, west to the Atlantic Ocean. Loch Tay was their private lake. They put together a chain of castles to lock their territory. – Taymouth at the east end of the loch. Ardtalnaig, half way down, covered the pass south to Glen Almond. Finlarig was by Killin, Loch Dochart Castle in Strathfillan.
The village, whose Killin News monthly press is long established, marks the eastern-most entry point to the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park. It boasts a Youth Hostel for walkers and climbers and a good little museum that displays the healing stones used by St Fillan for his cures – particularly madness. Unfortunately they are not used today. Just west of Killin is Lix Toll; ‘Lix’ derives from the Gaelic for a tomb, not, as used to be thought, named from a milestone in Roman numerals announcing ‘LXI (ie 51) miles to Glasgow.’
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