St. Baldred of Bass Rock

The Aberdeen Breviary gives the following information about St. Baldred:- "After the translation of S. Kentigern [Bishop of Glasgow] to the society of the angels, in 530, at the age of one hundred and eighty-three, S. Baldred, who had been his suffragan, became famous in Laudonia. He betook himself to the eremitic life in remote desert places, and islands of the sea, among which is one termed Bass, where he for a long time dwelt upon the memory of his model S. Kentigern, and above all things meditated on the bitter passion of Christ, in fasting, and weeping, and wailing. He also taught the faith in the three parochial churches of Aldhame, Tynynghame, and Prestoune, which had been subjected to him by S. Mungo [Kentigern]. Here he performed some miracles of healing, and a rock, which impeded the navigation, moved beneath him to the shore. It is still called the Tumba or Scapha of S. Baldred. At length, worn out by extreme old age, he died in the house of the parish priest of Aldhame."

It seems that this account confuses two saints of the same name, one of whom was a disciple of the Scottish St. Kentigern and died in about 608 (March 6), and the other an Anglo-Saxon saint of the eighth century who lived at Tyningham and later on Bass Rock., and who removed a dangerous reef between Bass Rock and the mainland to its present site, where it is known as St. Baldred's Rock. The relics of the Anglo-Saxon saint were discovered by Alfred Westow in the 11th century and removed to Durham, where he was commemorated on March 6.

(Sources: Alexander Forbes, Calendars of Scottish Saints, Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1872, pp. 273-274; David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 27).