The Bass Rock : its civil and ecclesiastic history / by the Rev. Thomas M'Crie, D. D. Geology, by Hugh Miller. Martyrology, by the Rev. James Anderson. Zoology and botany by Professor Fleming and Professor Balfour.

  • Thomas M'Crie
Date:
1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Bass Rock : its civil and ecclesiastic history / by the Rev. Thomas M'Crie, D. D. Geology, by Hugh Miller. Martyrology, by the Rev. James Anderson. Zoology and botany by Professor Fleming and Professor Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [3] of the passage, often causing shipwrecks. The blessed Baldred, moved by piety, ordered himself to be placed on this rock , Avhich being done, at his nod the rock was immediately lifted up, and like a ship driven by the wind, proceeded to the nearest shore, and thenceforth remained in the same place as a memorial of this mi- racle, and is to this day called St Baldred’s Coble or Cock-boat/’* And, indeed, we are informed by a mo- dern writer who has made St Baldred the hero of a poem,t that a small rock at the mouth of Aldhame Bay still bears the name of Baudrons Boat. We have also St Baldred’s Cradle, another rock, “ which tradition says elegantly is rocked by the winds and the waves,” —Baldred’s Well, and Baudron’s (the Scotch name for Baldred’s) Statue, which was demolished by “ an irre- verent mason.” All this certainly proves the existence of such a personage, and the high repute in which he was held in that neighbourhood. But, at the risk of incurring the epithet bestowed on the iconoclastic ma- son, we must say, with all respect for St Baldred’s nod, that the agency of a good sea-storm or flood-tide ap- pears to us a more probable explanation of the cock- boat story. St Baldred, it would seem, died on the Bass,J on the 6th of March in the year 606. Even at that early age, Christians had begun to pay a superstitious veneration to the relics of distinguished saints; and the honour of having the dead body of the revered anchorite depo- sited among them might naturally become an object of competition among his rude and half-civilized disciples. * Jamieson’s Hist. Culdees, p. 190. | St Baldred of the Bass, and other Poems; by James Miller. Edin. 1824. + This at least is stated by Boece, though other accounts mention Ald- hame as the place of his death.