[kenney] the legend OF ST. BRENDAN 61 



and has awaited Brendan's arrival. He is fed by a bird which on this occasion brings 

 half a loaf and part of a fish for each. [This is the only passage in the Vita dealing 

 with the food problem, a problem which troubled at least one redactor. The author 

 of the Navigatio makes a special point of solving the difficulty.'] After giving good 

 precept and example to Brendan he bids him abandon his desire to spend the remain- 

 der of his days on the island, and return to teach the way of life to the Irish. His 

 relics and those of his monks will be brought hither seven years before the day 

 of judgment. [The final resting place of a saint's relics is always a matter of import- 

 ance in Irish hagiography. The author has in mind the belief, which finds expression 

 in the Book of Armagh,^ written early in the ninth century, that Ireland would 

 sink beneath the sea seven years before the judgment]. The hermit dies and is 

 buried, and Brendan and his companions sail for home. 



It would appear that we have here two traditions which have 

 become attached to Brendan's name, one of an unsuccessful voyage 

 in search of a place of hermitage, such as those of Baitan and Cormac 

 ua Liathain, and the other a semi-Christianised myth of an expedition 

 made in accordance with certain magical formula to a wonderful 

 supernatural land lying in the ocean. These stories, decked out with 

 Christian ideas regarding hell and the devils, and some accretions 

 drawn from other sea myths, and the whole rather crudely joined 

 together, were adopted by the monks of the churches which claimed 

 Brendan as founder and inserted in his Life, partly because the fame 

 of their patron was thereby exalted, partly, perhaps, because of the 

 authority this imparted to their monastic rule, which would be the 

 permanent record of that "way of life" to teach w^hich Brendan had 

 been ordered back from the supernatural land. 



The Navigatio Brendani is a very different composition. It 

 manifestly is a version of the same legend, but has been worked up 

 to produce another result. Several of its episodes are evidently 

 doublets of incidents occurring in the Vita, but for the greater part the 

 details of the two narratives are quite distinct. The Navigatio is the 

 work of a literary artist of high merit. The theme is the voyage only, 

 not the life, of the saicit, and the plot is much simpler and better 

 worked out, while the narrative is enriched with an amplitude of 

 incident and detail quite unknown to the other versions. Even yet 

 the story has sufficient literary power to hold the reader's interest; in 

 its own day this tale of the wonders of the sea — then to all minds the 

 region of mystery and terror — told in a simple and free-flowing style, 

 with its matter-of-fact tone and unfaltering resourcefulness of imagin- 

 ation, must have been most impressive. The author — or authors — 

 drew freely from the resources which the geographical knowledge, the 



' Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae ex Codice Salmanticensi col. 767. 

 * Edition by Dr. John Gwynn (Dublin, 1913), p. 30. Also in Whitley Stokes 

 The Tripartite Life oj Patrick, Part II (Rolls Series: London, 1887), p. 331. 



