[kenney] the legend OF ST. BRENDAN 65 



ninth century onwards Irish associations with the Norse were very 

 close, make the northern origin of these elements most probable, 

 although it must be remembered on the one hand that Norse borrow- 

 ings from Irish are being found to be much greater than hitherto had 

 been suspected,^ and on the other that the monster who lies in the 

 outer ocean forming a circle around the world is one of the oldest of 

 oriental ideas, going far back into early Babylonian mythology. 

 The other element of the story, the mistaking of the monster for an 

 island, until he alarms his visitors by beginning to move, seems to be 

 of purely eastern origin. We know it through the story of Sinbad, 

 but it is said to be found in Persian sources long antedating the 

 Arabian Nights.^ 



From the east may also have come the idea of the miraculous 

 fire lighting the candles in the church of the Family of Ailbe. It bears 

 a suspicious resemblance to the Sacred Fire in the Church of the Holy 

 Sepulchre at Jerusalem. And the volcanic phenomena, if not of 

 Icelandic, are probably of Mediterranean provenance.^ 



Of literary sources the most obvious is the Bible: probably the 

 Apocalypse of St. John was especially familiar to the author of the 

 Navigatio. Heinrich Zimmer has shown that Vergil's ^neid served 

 as a model to Irish authors of voyage literature, and may have been a 

 direct inspiration for the story of Brendan. It would seem probable 

 also that in some way a slight knowledge of the Vera Historia of 

 Lucian and of the wanderings of Odysseus had reached early Christian 

 Ireland. In any case, the classical ideas of the Fortunate Isles, the 

 Islands of the Blest, were familiar, if not from older writings, then 

 from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, the favourite encyclopaedia 

 of the Irish as of other mediœval peoples.^ 



But the chief immediate sources and models of our legend were 

 undoubtedly the tales, in the Irish language, and largely pagan in 

 origin, known as immrama, "voyages." ^ In pagan Ireland there must 



^ Cf. Nansen, op. cit.; Sophus Bugge The Home of the Eddie Poems (London, 

 1899); Alexander Bugge "The Origin and Credibility of the Icelandic Saga," Ameri- 

 can Historical Review, vol. XIV, no. ii (Jan., 1909), pp. 249-261 ;C. W. von Sydow 

 "Tors Fard till Utgard," Danske Sludier, 1910. 



2 Blochet Sources orientales de la Divine Comédie, par. iv, noticed by Plummer. 



^ Other elements possibly oriental in origin are noted by M. J. de Goeje "La 

 Légende de St. Brandan" in Actes du Huitième Congres internationale des Orienta- 

 listes, 1889 (Leiden, 1891). 



* Cf. Nansen op. cit., vol. I, p. 345. 



s Such as the tales designated "the Voyage of Bran, son of Febal," "the Adven- 

 tures of Connla the Fair," "the Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise," and 

 portions of "the Sick-bed of Cuchullain." 



Sec. II, Sig. 5 



