32 -REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1901 



rather than in its more usual derivative meaning. The periods 

 of their confinement varied from two or three months to, in 

 one instance — that of the Reverend Alexander Forrester, of 

 St. Mungo — as much as ten long years. 



"The fortress of the Bass, the prison of the martyrs, is now 

 roofless, ruinous. But we have been informed that in their 

 perfect state the windows of its cells were contrived, with 

 refinement of cruelty, so as to allow of no out-look abroad. 

 A chapel, likewise dilapidated, serves by association of ideas 

 to carry our thoughts back to St. Baldred, the patron of the 

 island, who is believed to have died in 606. Whoever may 

 have been responsible for the legends of Baldred's miracles 

 was animated surely by a spirit of mischief, or of drollery, 

 rather than of piety. Of these legends there is one that tells 

 how a certain neighbouring rock proved a source of disaster 

 to shipping in the fair-way. But when the saint took his 

 stand upon its summit, straightway the rock itself became 

 endowed with the properties of a ship, being borne by wind 

 and tide to a more convenient station, where it is now shown 

 as * St. Baldred's Cock-boat.' The incident presents itself to 

 the mental eye as a fit subject for the pencil of some fantastic 

 artist of the school of the late Richard Doyle. More monstrous 

 even than this, however, is the posthumous miracle by which, 

 when three parishes had quarrelled among themselves for 

 possession of the saint's remains, the saint contrived so to 

 multiply his body that each parish scoured a perfect specimen, 

 and so became content. Such fables as these have their 

 place rather in the Monkish Gesta Romanorum than in the 

 Lives of the saints. Certainly they have nothing of that 

 tender poetry which still casts a lingering radiance over 

 miracles ascribed to St. Cuthbert somewhat later in the 

 century." 



Some members of the Club made their way over steep 

 grass slopes to the summit of the Bass, to gain a wide view 

 over the Firth of Forth, with its coasts and islands, and the 

 ruins of Tantallon Castle on the near shore ; this view, though 

 less clear than it might have been in finer weather, was 

 gloomily impressive. To the geological mind there came the 



