﻿14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Espinosa. 1 He must be right in the change. Yet Mr. De Roo's 2 very 

 bulky volume takes St. B randan across in a higher latitude; and 

 Mr. Cantwell 3 plants him near Cairo, Illinois, with Ernulphus and 

 Madoc to follow. 



Saint Brandan (or Brenden or Borondon) was summoned, like 

 Bran; but only by an abbot, poor fellow, and for a search in south- 

 western waters after one Mernoc, also very holy and quite vanished. 

 Another object of his quest was the real original garden of Adam and 

 Eve, a rather difficult order. According to some accounts the Breton 

 St. Malo went with him, the lost Mernoc being a Breton too. After- 

 ward St. Malo had a voyage of his own, at least in literature, along 

 similar lines. 



The ship of Brandan, like that of Maelduin, was hide-covered 

 over a wooden framework, the hide being in three layers, one inside, 

 two outside ; and there were other coincidences as to the embarka- 

 tion and the number of sailor-monks. Furthermore, two of the crew 

 were foredoomed in each case. But propriety was now strictly 

 observed. No magic yarn-balls caught the saint ; he was not fished 

 for by any kind of Circe or Calypso. The reasons are not given. 

 Only once a faint semblance of peril may seem to threaten, in his 

 visit to an island monastery of some easy order, where angels lighted 

 the tapers and served meals for the brethren, exciting only a 

 reverent astonishment in the pious guest. Very humanely and 

 winningly, though, he warns off the tormenting swarms of devils 

 from hapless Judas, bidding them let the poor creature have that one 

 night in peace. And about the loveliest fantasy in literature is that 

 of the divinely singing birds, who were really unlucky angels, doomed 

 only to serve God in this delightful way, " because our sins had been 

 but little. Then all the birds began to sing evensong, so that it was 

 an heavenly noise to hear." 



The legend was a liberal dealer in matters of myth, borrowing 

 and lending. Under one of these heads and as proof of Irish-Arab 

 interchanges already alluded to, either direct or through others, we 

 must rank the island-monster, which punished the building of a fire on 

 it in mistake, and the roc-like bird that began life again after the 

 manner of the phoenix. Only, this was by immersion in a Pool of 

 Youth, which passed on to later times, prompting, it may be (with 



^he Celtic Review, 1909, p. 273. 



2 P. De Roo: History of America before Columbus. 



3 E. Cantwell : Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America. Mag. West. History, 

 vol. 13, p. 141. 



