Bladud

Did You Know?

• Eighteenth-century Bath architect John Wood suggested identifying Bladud with Abaris the Hyperborean, a healer from Classical Greek sources.
• A Bleydiud son of Caratauc appears in the Welsh Harley MS 3859 genealogies, suggesting Geoffrey of Monmouth may have misinterpreted a scrap of Welsh genealogy.
• The Welsh form of the name is given as Blaiddyd in manuscripts of the Brut Tysilio.

Legend

According to the final form of the legend, as recorded in John Hardyng's Chronicles of 1457, Bladud was sent by his father to be educated in the liberal arts in Athens. After his father's death, he returned with four philosophers and founded a university at Stamford, Lincolnshire, which flourished until Saint Augustine of Canterbury suppressed it due to heresies taught there. He supposedly ruled for twenty years, during which he built Kaerbadum or Caervaddon (Bath), creating the hot springs through magic. He dedicated the city to the goddess Athena and lit undying fires in her honor; as the flames grew low they turned into balls of stone, with new ones springing up in their place—an embellishment of an account from the third-century writer Solinus regarding the use of local coal on the altars of her temple. The story also relates that while in Athens, Bladud contracted leprosy. Upon returning home he was imprisoned but escaped and went into hiding, finding work as a swineherd at Swainswick, about two miles from the later site of Bath. He noticed that his pigs would go into an alder-moor in cold weather and return covered in black mud, which was warm, and that the pigs that wallowed in it did not suffer from skin diseases. After trying the mud-bath himself, he was cured of his leprosy, restored as heir-apparent, and founded Bath so that others might benefit. The story of his cure was later exploited when Bath became a fashionable spa resort. A statue of King Bladud overlooking the King's Bath at Bath carries the date 1699 but is much older, assembled from parts of two statues (depicting Edward III and Bladud himself) previously mounted on the city's north and south gates; its pitted appearance from weathering enhanced the association with disease. In the eighteenth century, architect John Wood incorporated many references to Bladud in his buildings.

In fiction

Bladud has appeared in several works of fiction. Vera Chapman wrote a fantasy novel titled Blaedud the Birdman. Moyra Caldecott's novel The Winged Man also tells his story. In the game Fire Emblem: Three Houses, he is a legendary hero called Blaiddyd. Stephen Lawhead's novel The Silver Hand features a bard recounting the myth of Bladudd the Blemished, a teaching story about sovereignty and purity. Charles Dickens included a short, artistically interpreted version of the legend in The Pickwick Papers, during a visit to Bath.