OLD BATH.

HE origin of cities and towns which lay claim to remote antiquity is always obscure, and generally fabulous. The early history of Bath partakes of both these characters. No decisive proof is to be obtained whether it was indebted to the Britons or the Romans for a "local habitation and a name; " and Romance, in the absence of authentic records, has supplied their place with some of her own interesting but incredible inventions.

Warner, in the excellent little book we are partially appropriating, as well as in his large History, quotes the Bladud legend much as it has been quoted by older and numerous writers during the eighteenth century, and assigns the story to the same authorities, namely :--Dr. Jones, the author of a book, in 1572, called "The Bathes of Bathes' Ayde," and Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century. In the version given by Warner, he introduces the pigs. Now, it is necessary, whilst giving the whole legend, to say that neither Jones, nor Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes any mention of the pigs, nor can we trace it in any authority whatever earlier than Dr. Peirce, who published his Memoirs in 1697. Wood, the great local architect, not only gives a very circumstantial account of the pigs, but he evidently believed it, as he did every other amusing legend which he relates; and the only authority he quotes is very indefinite, so that we

are led to think that he is one of the first writers after Peirce, who has embodied with the legend of Bladud the story of the pigs, which he has amplified to a preposterous

extent.

Many centuries before the Christian era, Lud Hudibras swayed the sceptre of Britain. Bladud, a prince of the highest expectations, was the heir-apparent of this monarch, the darling of his parents, and the delight of a splendid court. By some fatal accident this great prince became a leper; and, as the disease under which he laboured was contagious and incurable, the courtiers prevailed upon his reluctant father to banish him from the palace, lest he should contaminate their immaculate circle with this horrible malady. Lud Hudibras, therefore, dismissed the prince with tears and blessings, to which the queen, his mother, added a brilliant ring, both as a testimony of her affection and a mark of recognition when he should be fortunate enough to get rid of the disease. Shut out from society by the leprosy, Bladud could only aspire to the meanest employments; and having travelled as far as Canesham (Keynsham),2 a village six miles from Bath, he offered himself to a man of that village, who dealt largely

1 Wood says, Vol. I., p. 71, "The story has been handed down to the Elders of the present Age," i.e., when he wrote, in 1749, but by whom the story was handed down, and who the Elders were, we are left to find out. Dr. Peirce, in his "Bath Memoirs," 1697, gives no definite authority as to the early tradition of the pigs.

2 Wood goes so far as to contend that Swinford derives its name from its contiguity to the ford in which the pigs plunged. Other writers since have contended, in much earnest too, that Swainswick was the place in which the prince took refuge, and that like the swine of the Scripture narrative, the herd ran down that steep place into the waters below; only that, instead of being choked, they were cured of their foul disease, and hence the village really should be called Swineswick, a method of determining village nomenclature more ingenious than accurate or scientific.

in pigs, to take charge of a party of these respectable animals. Being accepted by the swineherd, Bladud soon discovered that he had communicated his disorder to the herd; and dreading the displeasure of his patron in case of a discovery, he requested that he might drive his charge to the opposite side of the river, under the pretext that the acorns were finer and more plentiful than in the spot where the animals then grazed. This was acceded to, and Bladud passed the river at a shallow, conducting his pigs to the hills which hung over the northern side of Bath, The health-dispensing springs of this place stole at that time unperceived through the valley, obscured by wild aquatic plants, which spread themselves in matted entanglements over their surface.

The swine, however, led by instinct, soon discovered this treasure, quitted their keeper, rushed violently down the hill, and plunged into the muddy morass below. If this piggish instinct proved nothing else, it would prove the superior intelligence of Bladud's herd over all pigs and piggish creatures which have flourished in earlier and later times.

The Royal swineherd, astonished at the circumstance (as well he might be), endeavoured in vain, for a considerable time, to entice his troop from the spot; but acorns succeeding where eloquence failed, he led them back to their former pens, and on washing them from the mud and filth, he perceived, to his immense gratification, that many of the animals had entirely shed the scabby marks of their disorder, and the others were evidently improved in their appearance.

Bladud, who had studied philosophy at Athens, and possessed a tolerable share of natural sagacity, wisely concluded that there could be no effect without an adequate cause; and after revolving in his mind from whence this sudden favourable change in the pigs could proceed, it struck him, that the virtues of the morass into which they had plunged must have produced it.

It required no great powers of reasoning to establish this

conclusion in his mind, that, if the waters cured the hogs of the leprosy, there was a probability they would be equally beneficial to a man in a similar situation; resolving, therefore, to try their effects, he immediately proceeded to bathe himself in them, and after continuing their use for a few days, had the inexpressible happiness to find himself cleansed from his disease.

The remainder of the story may be readily anticipated. Bladud marched back the pigs to his patron; returned to court, shewed his ring; was known and acknowledged with rapture ; proceeded to the place where he had found his cure; cleansed the springs; erected baths; and built a splendid. city on the spot. Here he lived and reigned for many years with great honour; but getting foolish as he became old, he applied himself at length to the study of magic, and scorning any longer to tread the earth like a common mortal, he determined to take a trip through the air, with no other aid than a pair of necromantic wings, which he had constructed, for unfortunately balloons were then unknown. The consequence was as might be expected on a certain day he sprang from the pinnacle of a temple which he had founded to Minerva, in Bath, tumbled instantly to the ground, and at once put an end to his life and to his fame as a conjuror.

1

Deficient as the above account is, in anything that could stamp it with probability, the inhabitants of Bath both gave credit to it, and valued themselves upon the British origin of the city, till within these hundred years; and, notwithstanding the serious preaching of the Puritans during the usurpation and the wicked wit of Rochester, in the time of Charles the II., who ridiculed the credulity of the Bathonians in a variety of

I The monkish writers have given the following names to the supposed British city: Caer Palladur, Caer Badon, Caer Badin, Caer Gran, Caer yn ennaint twymyn. For a detailed definition of these terms, see "Guidott's Collection of Treatises on the Bath Waters," edition 1725, pages 66 and 67.