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The Bass is only accessible at one flat shelvy point to the south-east,—the sole landing-places, and these but a few feet wide, being the south and north sides of this point. To command these there is a small fortalice, now unroofed, and in ruins. To the west the cell in which Blackadder was imprisoned and died is still pointed out, with its three small ironbarred windows; and half-way up the acclivity, a little beyond the ancient garden, where now not even a “flower grows wild,” are the remains of a Roman Catholic chapel, which, when the island was made the bastille of Scotland, state necessity converted into an ammunition magazine.

The Bass is about a mile and a half from the shore, and nearly the same in circumference. Around it the sea has been fathomed to the depth of 180 feet; and as the rock rises above it to the height of 420, the total elevation from the base is about 600 feet. Its most precipitous aspect is towards the north, where the descent to the ocean is almost a sheer perpendicular; and below there is a remarkable caverned passage leading completely through the rock to the southward, which is navigable in calm weather even at full tide.

Tradition asserts that the Bass was the residence of Baldred, the disciple of Kentigern, in the sixth century; and he is regarded by Major, and by Spotswood, (vide Church History,) as the apostle of East Lothian, having fixed his cell at Tyningham, and preached through the neighbouring country. This account is countenanced by Smith's Bede, (p. 231-254,) where it is said that a Saxon monastery, dedicated to him, existed there. The diocese of the saint is described by Simeon as “tota terra quæ pertinet ad monasterium Sancti Balthere quod vocatur Tyningham a Lambermore usque ad Escemuthe (Inveresk.”) Consequently it comprehended the whole superficies of East Lothian.

In 1406 the unfortunate King Robert the Third placed his son, afterwards James the First, of poetic memory, in this fortalice on the Bass, as being the stronghold of greatest security against the machinations of his uncle, the cruel and perfidious Duke of Albany. It was for many generations the property of the ancient family of Lauder, who styled themselves of the Bass, and who are now, I believe, represented by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder of Fountainhall and Grange, the accomplished author of the Account of the Morayshire Floods, A Coasting Voyage round Scotland, The Wolf of Badenoch, and other well-known works. It is supposed, however, that their mansion was not on the island, but on the shore near North Berwick; and a flat stone in the cemetery of the Auld Kirk is said to mark out their resting-place.

The island was afterwards converted into a state-prison, alike for civil and ecclesiastical delinquents; and during the reigns when Presbytery was proscribed and persecuted, many of its adherents, as testified by the pages of Wodrow, were confined here. The most distinguished of these was Blackadder, whose memoirs have been ably and interestingly written by Dr Crichton.

Opposite to the Bass, and on three sides surrounded by the sea, rise the majestic ruins of Tantallon Castle, the great strong-hold of the ancient Douglases, from which they defied alike the threats of the foe and the commands of the sovereign. It could only be approached from the west, and by a drawbridge defended by a massive tower and a double ditch. The walls, which form an irregular hexagon, are of enormous strength and thickness. Over the entrance the memorable emblem of the “bloody heart” may still be traced. The stronghold arose with the settlement of the Douglases in East Lothian under Robert the Second; and such was its power of security and resistance, that popular conviction, as evinced by the saying,

regarded its destruction as among impossibilities.

Quantum mutatum ab illo!—The very mention of Tantallon carries back the mind to the days of chivalry and romance, and to Archibald Bell-the-Cat, as depicted in the glorious pages of Marmion.

In early times such was the reputation of the fishery in the neighbourhood of the Isle of May, at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, that it was resorted to even by the fishermen of other countries. A curious authentication of this fact exists in a MS. life of St Kentigern, (Bibl. Cotton. tit. A. xix.,) written about the end of the reign of David the First:—

See as quoted in M`Pherson's Notes on Winton, vol. ii. p. 479.

The same site remains to this day the most favourite fishing-station on the Forth — turbot and other fine fish being thence supplied to the London and Edinburgh markets.

It is curious to remark that the existing varieties of sea-fowl frequenting the Bass are almost exactly the same as those described and enumerated by the naturalist John Ray, in his curious visit to the island in 1661, (Itineraries, p. 191-194.) The most celebrated of these then and now is the gannet or solan-goose—an immense bird, measuring six feet from tip to tip of the wings, and which is almost peculiar to this rock and Ailsa Craig, on the Ayrshire coast. Of these birds there are many thousands, which may be seen, in the months of June and July, hatching their young on the bare shelves of the rock. Hence, in Drummond of Hawthornden's famous Macaronic poem, the Polemo-middinia, the island is characterised as the Solangoosifera Bassa.