52 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



there were many stories of this western land, but only one, the Legend 

 of the Voyage of St. Brendan, passed into general European literature, 

 because it alone was written in the Latin language. Put in form 

 early in the tenth century, at latest, it was known very soon after- 

 wards to the hagiographers of Brittany. It would appear from a 

 quatrain in the old French Roman du renard that there was a lai of 

 St. Brendan in the Breton language : 



Je fot savoir bon lai Breton, 

 Et de Merlin et de Foucon, 

 Del roi Artu et de Tristan, 

 De chievre oil, de Saint Brendan. 



However, the earliest translation still extant is that written in 

 Norman French about 1121 for Alix, second wife of Henry I of Eng- 

 land. Translations followed into Old French, Middle English, Flem- 

 ish, Dutch, German, Italian, Norse. To the south it became one of 

 the sources which inspired Dante's Divine Comedy, to the north, as 

 Dr. Nansen has recently shown, ^ it probably exercised considerable 

 influence on the shaping of the sagas relating to the discovery of 

 "Wineland the Good." For these reasons the Legend of St. Brendan 

 has more than a local interest for students both of history and of folk- 

 lore. 



I 



The Historical Brendan 



St. Brendan "the Navigator" died, according to the Annals of 

 Ulster, in 577 or 583. The only other annalistic entry relating to him 

 states that he founded the monastery of Clonfert, west of the Shannon 

 river, in Galway county, in 558 or 564. 



The earliest document mentioning Brendan, to which an approxi- 

 mate date can be assigned, is Adamnan's Life of St. Columba. Adam- 

 nan was abbot of Columba's monastery on the island of lona, off the 

 west coast of Scotland, from 679 to 704. The Life was written probably 

 about 690. Adamnan mentions "Brendenus mocu Alti" in two places,* 

 once when speaking of a monk who was said to have served Brendan 

 twelve years, and again in connection with a visit which Brendan 

 himself, accompanied by three other famous Irish churchmen, paid to 

 Columba in the island of Hinba. Hinba has not been identified with 

 certainty, but was some island on the Scottish coast closely associated 



1 In Northern Mists, 2 vols. (London, 1911). Chap, ix, "Wineland the Good, 

 the Fortunate Isles, and the Discovery of America." 

 ^ Lib. I, cap. xxvi; lib. Ill, cap. xvii. 



