Baring-Gould’s sources: Anglican and Scottish Martyrologies. Authorities:—Aberdeen Breviary, Hector Boece, Hist. Scot. lib. ix. Matthew of Westminster under date 941; Turgot of Durham, &c.

S. Balther is supposed to be identical with S. Baldred, commemorated the same day in the Scottish Martyrologies.

S. Baldred is said to have lived a solitary life on the Bass-rock. At the entrance of the Firth of Forth was a dangerous rock just above the level of low tide which proved a cause of continual shipwreck. Baldred, says the lection in the Aberdeen Breviary, compassionating the sailors, went to the rock, and standing on it, it swam away under him "like a boat," and he conducted it to a place where it could do no mischief, and there he rooted it again.

He died at Aldham (Alderstone), and his body was claimed by the neighbouring parishes of Tyningham and Preston. A contest arose between the three parishes, and the story is told, which occurs also in that of S. Tyllo, that in the morning there were three precisely similar bodies, so that each parish was able to possess S. Baldred.

In 951, Anlaf the Dane burnt the church and monastery of Tyningham, and immediately after was struck with sudden sickness, and died. The body of S. Balther was rediscovered by revelation, by a priest, Elfrid, two centuries later, whose mission seems to have been the recovery of lost relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor], for he found also those of SS. Bilfred, Acca, Alkmund the bishop, king Oswin, and the abbesses Ebba and Ethelgitha, being directed to them all by visions. The bones of S. Balther and S. Bilfred were put together with the body of S. Cuthbert [bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 687)] in his shrine at Durham. But they were removed from the shrine again in 1104, the head of S. Oswald being alone left with S. Cuthbert, and were put in the shrine of the Venerable Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)].

S. Bilfred was a goldsmith, who is said to have chased a book of the Gospels with gems in gold, which was long preserved at Durham, and is now in the Cottonian library in the British Museum. On the cover is "✠ Eadfrid, Oetilwald, Billfrith, Aldred hoc Evangelium Deo et Cuthberto uonstruxerunt et ornaverunt;" above this in Saxon characters, and in a Northumbrian dialect, "And Billfrith, the anchorite [a hermit, sometimes walled into a cell beside a church], he fabricated the curious works that are on the outside, and it adorned with gold and with gems, also with silver overgilded, a priceless treasure." Billfrith is supposed to be a local form of Bilfred.