THIS SUBJECT allows me to evoke one of my clearest memories of Frank Barlow lecturing to me when I was an undergraduate. The topic was the liaisons of King Edgar – a gift to Frank's sardonic humour – and I particularly remember a vivid portrayal of Wilton as a sort of finishing school with young bloods calling and asking if they could take young Edith out for the afternoon. This warning to be open-minded in one's expectations of the true nature of the lives of distant saints was reinforced when I read (also as an undergraduate) Frank's study of Edward the Confessor which draws a vivid contrast between Edward's life as it was likely to have been in reality and the way it was subsequently realigned to suit later hagiographical needs. These influences from an impressionable age have stayed with me and, after a sufficient period of ruminatio, I would like to explore whether such approaches are also applicable to the lives of Anglo-Saxon female saints. Is it possible, for instance, for Edward's great-aunt St Edith of Wilton also to be detached from her hagiographical cocoon to be given some kind of biographical reality?

Before proceeding any further it must be admitted that there are many female saints whose cults originated in Anglo-Saxon England for whom it is not possible to provide any reliable biographical data. A number of communities in England after the Norman Conquest found themselves in possession of a wellestablished cult of an Anglo-Saxon female saint about whom little or nothing appeared to be known.