Saint Medan

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Saint Medan was a saint, apparently of the early British or Irish period, whose existence and name are inferred from the name Kirkmaiden in Wigtownshire, but who is also associated with Angus and Aberdeenshire.

1 The occurrence and legend of Medan
2 Who was Medan?
3 Other information
4 References

[edit] The occurrence and legend of Medan

There is a Kirkmaiden both in the Rinns of Galloway and also on the other side of Luce Bay in the parish of Glasserton near Monreith in the Machars – both in Wigtownshire in Scotland. A legend relates how the saint with her nuns is said to have travelled from the one location to the other across Luce Bay, using a rock as a boat.

[edit] Who was Medan?

Some points about the name suggest problems in transmission. First, the name "Medan" sounds similar to the English word "maiden": this may mean that an originally masculine name was interpreted later by ill-informed or unsophisticated Anglophones as a woman's. Second, the name may well begin with the Gaelic element "mo" meaning "my" – an honorific or a diminutive.

The name has been related to several women saints recorded elsewhere. The element "edan" is similar to "Etáin", a name occurring once in the 15th century in Scotland, and argued as the virgin saint of Tumna near Boyle in Co. Roscommon in the diocese of Elphin – though another authority derives Cill Medoin in the diocese of Tuam not from an apocryphal saint Etáin but prosaically from the Irish for "middle church". Again, the name may be a version of St Modwena, Moninne or Darerca, who was abbess of Cill Sléibe Cuilinn in Killevy near Slieve Gullion and died on 5 July 517 or 519; it is said that she founded a number of churches in Scotland. There is a 1901 dedication to a female St Medan in Troon in Ayrshire^[1].

There are other perhaps stronger arguments for the name being that of a man. The name is similar to a man's name, Muadán, which occurs in commemorations on both sides of the Irish Sea, including Glendaruel in Argyll, and has been glossed as a version of "my Aedan": 16 saints bore the name Aedan, including the well-known Aedan of Lindisfarne. Again, a male saint named Medan was buried at Bodmin and perhaps commemorated at Tregavethan, both in Cornwall. A male Modan is the saint of Rosneath, Falkirk, Kirkton of Airlie in Forfar, Fraserburgh and Fintray in Aberdeenshire, and Freswick in Caithness^[2]. The church at Kingoldrum in Angus, which was given to Arbroath Abbey in 1211–4 by William the Lion, was dedicated to St Medan; not far from it is a St Medan's Well, and it is thought that originally it was a Celtic establishment^[3]. St Medan is also said to have been one of the three companions of St Drostan, the evangeliser of Aberdeenshire and founder of Deer Abbey^[4].