S. Erchard or M’erchard a Pict, also a native of ‘Mearns’ Alba, was one of S. Ternan’s converts and became his disciple. Erchard’s birthplace was near Kincardine O’Neil, Aberdeenshire. In course of time S. Ternan ordained him a presbyter.’and Erchard resolved to devote himself to continuing S. Ninian’s mission-work among the Picts of Alba. It is interesting to note that he settled near a Church which S. Ninian had founded during his northern mission at Temple on Loch Ness. His headquarters were in Glenmoriston.ofifthe Great Glen of Alba, now the line of the Caledonian Canal. In silent testimony to S. Erchard’s establishment, there are still in Glenmoriston the Suidhe M’erchaird, S.Erchard’s seat, his well called Fuaran M’erchaird, the ancient Churchyard known as Cladh M’erchaird, and S. Erchard’s Church-site. S. Erchard, like his master, left a famous bell. Dr. Mackay’s translation of S. Erchard’s warning is — ‘l am Merchard from across the land, keep ye my sufferings deep in your remembrance; see that ye do not for a test place this bell in the pool to swim. ‘  

S.’Paldy,’ so well known through his connection with Mearns, falls to be noticed with this group of missionary workers. His name will appear again, at a period when he was blind through great age, in connection with the boyhood of S. Dewi (David) of Wales. In Perthshire his name appears with the uncorrupted diminutive in the form ‘Paldoc‘ Among the Britons he came to be known as Pawl Hén, and Peulan Hin, that is, S. Paul the Aged. The early Irish Picts, judging from the Martyrology of Tallagh, knew him as ‘ Polan,’ that is ‘ Paul ‘ with the diminutive an. He was the founder, among other centres, of Candida Casa on Tav among the south Britons. He was also associated with S. Ninian’s foundation at Dunottar in the Mearns; and in the Martyrology of Tallagh he and Nennio the fourth Ab of Candida Casa (Whithorn) are commemorated together at the 21st day of May. In parts of South Wales he is commemorated on the 22nd day of November.

In the early Roman Catholic period the Aberdeen group of historical writers confused this S.
‘Paldy’ or ‘PMdoc’ with Palladius who was sent on a mission to the Irish a.d. 430 by Pope Celestine. Murchu’s Life of Patrick and the annotations to Tirechan. See also Skene and his authorities, Celtic Scotland, book ii. chap. i. p. 27. The A confusion of S. ‘Paldy’ with Palladius threatened to become continuous after David de Bemham in 1244 dedicated a new Church to ‘Paldy’ at Fordun but gave him the name ‘ Palladius‘. Palladius, we are told, was rejected by the ‘rude and savage’ Irish. As he did not wish to spend time in a land not his own, but desired to return ‘to him who sent him,’ that is to Celestine; he crossed to the territory of the Britons, which lay opposite to Ireland, where he was seized with illness and died. In passing, it may be well to recollect that some authorities consider that the historical Palladius is one and the same with the historical Patrick; and that the name ‘Palladius’ is nothing more than an exact Latin translation of S. Patrick’s original native name, Sucat.

Whether or not, it is clear about the historical Palladius that he was unsuccessful in his mission to the Irish; that, having retired, he died on the way back ‘to him who sent him,’ somewhere amongthe Britons to the south-west of Pictland ; that, therefore, he could not have conducted a mission in Pictland of Alba subsequent to the Irish one, or have taken any part in continuing S. Ninian’s work there. When, therefore, a choliaston the Hymn of Fiac of Sletty declares that Palladius ‘reached the extreme part of the Monaid * towards the south, where he founded the Church of Fordun and ” Pledi” is his name there’; it is evident that he is confusing two different men, and is transferring a fragment of biography to Palladius which belongs to S. ‘Paldy’ of Fordun (Paul Hén) ; because Auchinblae and Fordun, where, among other places, S. ‘Pildy’ laboured, lie slightly to the south of the extreme end of the Monad’ (the correct name of the eastern end of the ‘Grampians’); and within sight of the Cairn o’ Mont which preserves the original name.  By the error of a scribe “Modhaid” is a reading.

 
Moreover, we can trust certain definite scraps of history preserved, by one of the hands, in the Breviary of Aberdeen and by Fordun himself, which tell how S. Ternan was a native of the Mearns and that his baptizer was the native saint whom they confused with Palladius. Consequently this’Pawl,’ or ‘Pildoc,’ or ‘Paldy’ who baptized the man who became third Ab of S. Ninian’s Candida Casa was not the ecclesiastical foreigner Palladius who never came to Mearns or to anywhere else in Pictland of Alba; but a native minister, a member of one of the earlier missionary groups which S. Ninian had arranged alongthe east coast of Pictland. One of those groups was, at the time, in this very locality. S. Ninian on his northern mission had organized a missionary community and founded a Church at the fortress of Dunottar on the sea, about ten miles from Auchinblae and Fordun, where S. ‘Paldy’s’ name survives in connection with a Church-site and a fair.

The names of S. ‘ Paldy’and Fordun recall the daring series of Romano-Gaidhealic fables which long passed for history in Scotland. These fables are generally connected with the Aberdeen group of historical writers, and frequently with John of Fordun alone, one of the group. It is fair to remember that John of Fordun simply took a hand in a scheme which began before he was born and which did not end when he died. Historical criticism, even when it has been unrelenting, has been directed more at the system, into which he had to fit himself and his writings, than at the man. John of Fordun, priest of the Roman Catholic Church, who wrote before A.D. 1385, garbled history, in the interests of the Romano-Gaidhealic Church and the Scots, who had won ecclesiastical and political ascendency in Pictland, with the object of obliterating the history of the ancient Celtic Church of the Picts and the history of the ancient and independent Kingdom of Pictland, by what the late Dr. Skene called his ‘fictitious and artificial scheme.’  Chron. bk. iii. cc. 8, 9. The Cronica Gentis Scotorum and the Gesta Annalia were Fordun’s contributions.

The fictions of Fordun and the Aberdeen group of historians make the historical mind reel. They alleged that the Scots or Gaidheals had colonized Alba, that is Pictland as well as Dalriada, several centuries before the beginning of the Christian era; that the Scots had been converted to Christianity c A.D. 203 by Pope Victor I.; that, nevertheless, in A.D. 430, Pope Celestine sent S. Palladius to these Gaidheals or Scots to be their ‘first’ bishop; that S. Palladius arrived in ‘ Scotia ‘ (which at that time was not Alba but Ireland) with a great company in the eleventh year of King ‘ Eugenius ‘ (whom Fordun invents) who gave him a place of abode where he desired it. Mearns is indicated, because Fordun adds that the ‘holy bishop’ Ternan became the disciple of Palladius, or ‘ Pildy.’ Incidentally he states, too, that Servanus was a fellow-worker and bishop with Palladius.  It is due to Fordun’s memory to state that Bower, his continuator, not only mishandled the Gesta Annalia, but garbled the main text of the Cronica.It is thus manifest that John of Fordun hesitated at nothing in his effort to create a belief in the antiquity of the Gaidheals or Scots, and in the antiquity of the Roman Catholic Church in Alba or Pictland; but even in his falseness he has bornewitnessto the ancient activities of the earliest Pictish missionaries.

By using the name of Palladius, the unsuccessful Roman missionary to Ireland (Scotia), to eclipse the work of S. Ninian and his disciples who truly initiated the Christianization of Pictland, and who founded the Celtic Church of the Picts; by confusing Paul Hén, locally S. ‘Paldy’ of Fordun, with this same Palladius; and by representing that S. Ternan and the historical S. Servanus continued the work of Palladius, instead of stating that they were associated with Paul Hén, or S. ‘ Paldy,’ in continuing the work of S. Ninian; John of Fordun has unwittingly confirmed that these disciples of S. Ninian were as old, or about as old, as the time of Palladius, namely a.d. 430. Apart from local traditions, John knew that others besides himself had access to ungarbled historical documents, and
that he would defeat his purpose unless he kept historical ministers of the early Church in their correct historical periods. He was astute enough to realize that he could not remove them from history; although he might belittle them and confuse them with the Roman missionaries to whom he wished to give pre-eminence. John’s inventions were long accepted as genuine history.

 
Many followed him in ante-dating the Christianization of Pictland by about two hundred years, in ante-dating the first attempt to romanize the Celtic Church of Pictland by over four hundred years, in ante-dating the Gaidhealic or Scotic ascendency throughout Pictland by over four hundred years, and in placing the Gaidheals or Scots in Pictland several hundreds of years before a single Gaidheal or Scot had settled in Dalriada, to which they first came from Ireland (Scotia). John of Fordun’s fables were not isolated efforts. They make one series among many which issued at different periods from the Scotic ecclesiastical centres. S. Servanus was lifted away from his true historical period in the Pictish Church, and represented as a subordinate and contemporary of the romanized Gaidheal, Adamnan; S. Columba (Columcille) was substituted for S.Colm of Deer and exalted over S. Drostan, the Briton, who lived and laboured at Deer before Columcille’s day; S. Riaghuil (Rule) of St. Andrews was represented as a Roman delegate, and his name used to obscure the name and work of S. Cainnech, a Pict; and the Roman monks of Fearn transformed S. Bar of Cork into another Roman delegate, and used his name to obscure the name and work of S. Finbar of Dornoch and Maghbile.  The Breviary of Aberdeen entered him correctly as ‘ Fynberr epi,’ Finbar the bishop, to distinguish him from S. Barfhionn, the hermit of Cork. The Mariyrology of Aberdeen also makes the confusion of the two men impossibleAs we have seen, the earliest continuators of S. Ninian’s work in Alba were Britons like S. Caranoc, or native Picts like Ternan and Erchard.