While S. Buidhe was continuing S. Ninian’s work in Angus, the historical S. Servanus or Serf , even better known by the classical shortening of the Latin name as S. Ser, continued it along the left bank of the Forth into Fife. He also taught among the Britons of Strath-Clyde, and put himself into personal touch with the mission conducted by S. Drostan the Briton in what is now Aberdeenshire. S, Servanus died c. A.D. 543 a frail old man, as we learn from the Life of S. Kentigern. His mother was Alma daughter of a prince of the Irish Picts (‘Cruithne’ is the word used) and his father Proc, prince of a British tribe whose name the copyists changed to ‘Canani’ from some such form as Cenomani. This name was too suggestive for the fabulists who formed it into ‘Canaan’ and invented a legend to suit this scriptural name.

S. Servanus lived in the time of Owain ap Urien the prince of the Britons, who was father of S. Kentigern. The saint had a Church at Dunbarton, the capital of the Britons. The well of this Church existed until recent times and was known as S. Ser’s, the form of his name which still continues in Aberdeenshire. The younger brother of Rhydderch, champion of the Christians and sovereign of the Britons, bore the saint’s name. The following names of places where Servanus settled communities or planted Churches show the range of his activities, Dunbarton, Culross, Abercorn on the opposite shore of the Forth, Dysart, Alva (Stirlingshire), Dunning and Monzievaird in Strathearn, Monkege (Keith-hall), and Culsalmond in Aberdeenshire. His presence in Strathearn and the Forth valley shows that he was in touch with the workers left by S. Colm of Inchmaholm when he returned to Ireland c. A.D.514. No foundation by S. Servanus appears now between Perthshire and Aberdeenshire, which is accounted for by what we have seen, namely that Angus and Mearns were occupied by S. Buidhe’s workers. 

The principal muinntir of S. Servanus was at Culross. Here he acted as foster-father and teacher to the boy Kentigern, better known by his pet name ‘Mungo.’ When Kentigern was fifteen yearsof age or thereby he departed from Culross to the casula of S. Fergus at Carnochnear Airth. From the fact that this S. Fergus attracted Kentigern, he was manifestly a more important teacher than Joceline, in his rather restricted reference, indicates. It is certainlynot without interest that when S. Fergus died, Kentigern took much pains to bury him at S. Ninian’s foundation on the Molendinar at Glasgow, where he then proceeded to organize a muinntir of his own. As the ancient authority says — ‘He is the venerable man who possessed Cuilenros.’ Just as the Scotic fabulists misread ‘Ternan’ as ‘Tervan,’ so they misread a contraction of ‘Ochils’ as a contraction for ‘ Orcades. ‘ With these misread names when inventing a Roman origin for the Church of Pictland, they represent their ‘Tervanus’ as ‘Archbishop’ of the Picts and Servanus as ‘Apostle’ of the ‘Orkneys,’

At the time when S. Servanus was still actively engaged in Pictland of Alba, another missionary, who was destined to leave a great name among the Irish Picts, visited various districts in Alba where S. Ninian had organized communities. This was S. Finbar, the Irish Pict who, as noted, became Ab of Maghbile (Moville) in Ulster. The mediaeval Latin writers have reated much confusion about him by attaching fragments of his biography to nearly everyone of the various variants given to his name in the several dialects spoken where he was wont to minister. His composite name was Fin-Bar. With the aid of the suffixes of endearment the Irish varied this to Finnian and Finnioc. The Britons gave the first of these the form of Gwynan, which the present Lowlanders have preserved as Winnan. The Picts of Alba retained the complete form Findbar, shortened in compounds to Find. In later times the descendants of the Vikings in Alba showed preference for the shortened form “nBar” from which some of their Roman Catholic teachers evolved the Latin genitive ‘Barri,’ which happens to be the shortened form of the name of a different and later Irish saint.

Fortunately the early Roman Catholic scholars who preserved the annals of the Church in the dioceses of Moray and Aberdeen kept his correct name in the Latinized form of the local pronunciation ‘Finberrus.’ S. Finbar was born towards the end of the fifth century, and died in extreme old age at Maghbile on the l0th of September A.D. 578 according to the old Irish annals. As already noted, he was sent in ‘the ships’ of Candida Casa from the muinntir at Aondruim (Nendrum) in Strangford Lough to complete his education at Candida Casa. He remained attached to Candida Casa for ‘twenty years,’ and was successively pupil, master, and missionary there. After his return to Ireland, and after he had founded Maghbile in A.D.540, he led a highly equipped mission which sailed in his own ships to what is now Ayrshire. He strengthened the Church among the Britons there, founded certain new Churches, among them being Kilwinning (‘Kil-Gwynan,’also ‘Kil-Fhinian’).

One authority indicates that during his stay at Candida Casa he visited various parts of the east coast of Pictland; but it was on the east of the three northern counties, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, that his most enduring work was done. He concentrated his attention on the district between S. Ninian’s Edderton, the original Celtic Abbey of Fearn, and S. Ninian’s foundation at Wick. He established a muinntir at Dornoch where, in course of time, the Roman Church placed the seat of the bishops of Caithness, after failure at Halkirk. He planted a Church at Geanies in Easter Ross, known as S. Finbar’s Chapel, and among other Church-sites that bore his name, one was at Berriedale (‘Barudal’), about eight miles beyond S. Ninian’s at Navidale, Helmsdale. In the Roman Catholic period an attempt was made to supersede S. Finbar’s foundation at Dornoch by a dedication to SS. Mary and Gilbert; but the parishioners refused to follow the clergy.

The people of the diocese of Caithness persisted in their veneration for the saint of the older Church, and until recent times S. Finbar was as much honoured in Caithness as in Ulster. S. Finbar became the neighbour and intimate friend of his distinguished fellow-Pict S. Comgall the Great of Bangor; and it was undoubtedly through S. Finbar’s practical acquaintance with Pictland of Alba, and by his inspiration, that S. Comgall was moved to use the inexhaustible resources of his community at Bangor to feed the needs of the growing Church of the Picts, at that time becoming isolated more or less from Candida Casa by the incursions of the pagan Angles into south western Alba.

Contemporary with S. Finbar in the beginning of the sixth century was S. Drust, Trust, or Drostan, of Deer, in Aberdeenshire. He is referred to by Angus the Culdee as ‘ Trustus cona thriur,’ that is ‘Drostan with his three’ disciples, who were SS.Colm or Colman, Medan, and Fergus.  S. Drostan’s exact dates have not been preserved, but his period is clearly established by certain definite particulars about him. He was a Briton. His father was prince of Demetia (the Demetae), now part of South Wales (Dyfed). In Monmouthshire there was a Llan-Trostroc, now ‘Trosdre.’ The saint was an elder brother of the mother of Aedhan ‘the false.’ When Aedhan had proved himself a military leader of ability, S. Columba of lona ordained him king of the Dalriad Scots or Gaidheals, against the wishes of many of the people, in spite of the rights of Duncan (Donnchadh), son of the previous king, and in defiance of Scotic law. Aedhan behaved treacherously to the Britons, hence the epithet by which he is known, and he became the steady foe of the Picts of Alba. The Buchan authorities give S. Drostan’s date as c. A.D. 500, and the date of his fellow-worker S. Fergus is given in the View of the Diocese of Aberdeen as ‘the beginning of the sixth age,’ c. A.D.520.

So far it has not been discovered at what British or Pictish school S. Drostan was trained. All that is authentic is that he came off the sea with his disciples, landed at Aberdour in Aberdeenshire, and after a time went inland and settled with his muinntir at Deer under the sanction of Bede. who was then Pictish mormaor of Buchan. Bede had at first been hostile to the saint’s settlement. Centuries after S. Drostan’s time, during the Gaidhealic ascendencyinPictland,the names of SS. Drostan, Colm, and Fergus were removed from their proper historical setting, and woven into legends intended to create a belief in the priority of the Roman mission in Pictland, and to support the romanized Gaidheals in the usurpation of the property of the old Pictish Church. In the famous legend, entered in the Book of Deer by an eleventh-century Gaidhealic hand, S.Colm is boldly transformed into S. Columba (Columcille) the Gaidheal; and S. Drostan the Briton, and head of a mission in Pictland, is subordinated to him. The reckless fabulist was probably unaware that S. Drostan laboured in Buchan before S. Columba began his work even in Ireland, that in S. Columba’s time the Gaidheals regarded the Picts as implacable foes, and were meditating to get back the parts of Dalriada out of which they had been hunted by the Pictish sovereign, and that, to this end, S. Columba had ordained to the Gaidhealic or Scotic throne of Dalriada, Aedhan, the arch-enemy of the Picts, and the man who betrayed the very Britons who had helped him to repair his broken fortunes when he was a wanderer from his own people.