Bath under ]Vest Saxon Dominion. 37 



sion, and fed his mind upon heavenly studies. Many good 

 men were attracted by him to that sacred spot." 



^, , ^ AVe must not forget the story of Bladud, which 



Bladud. a J 7 



first appeared about the close of the Saxon 

 period. It purports to be a British tradition of the dis- 

 covery of the virtue of the hot springs. Bladud was the 

 son of a king, who had to leave his home because he was 

 leprous. He became a swineherd, and as he lay with the 

 swine, they caught the disease. One day, as he was pasturing 

 them in the forest, they were taken with a sudden fit of 

 running, and he had great ado to follow them ; they scam- 

 pered down the hill into a morass. When at length he over- 

 took them, they were wallowing in the mire, in which they 

 seemed to take unusual delight, and to which they returned 

 day after day. At length he observed that the swine were, 

 cured; he tried the same remedy with the same happy 

 effect. 



The eleventh century was a time of intellectual vigour, and 

 one of its manifestations was in the way of historical curiosity, 

 which appeared in two forms, the form of sober annals, and 

 also the form of historical romance. The latter school 

 was much fed by Welsh tradition, real or fictitious; and 

 hence some celebrities of the borderland between history and 

 fable, such as Arthur, and Lear, and Bladud. The Latin 

 book of Geoffrey of Monmouth, is at the head of this litera- 

 ture ; then it passed into French and English, becoming 

 popular and prolific. 



The eminence of the minster-city was ere long to be sig- 

 nalized by a perilous distinction ; — it was to become for a 

 time the bishop-stool of Somerset. The transient honour of 

 episcopacy left not behind it any memories worthy to com- 

 pensate for. the perpetual loss of the Abbacy. 



