66 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



have been a widespread belief in a happy oversea land where divine 

 beings dwelt and whither they sometimes invited mortals. Thither 

 in pursuit of fairy women went Connla son of the High King Conn, 

 and Oisin son of Finn, and Bran son of Febal. It was known by 

 many names — the "Land of the Young," "Land of the Living," 

 "Happy Plain," "Great Strand," and in more modern documents Hy 

 Brasil and Tir na Fer Fionn. This last would be the exact equivalent 

 of the Norse "White Men's Land," but it has not been shown to have 

 been in use in mediaeval times. Heinrich Zimmer, who made an 

 elaborate study of the Brendan Legend, elucidating in particular its 

 associations with Irish saga-literature, has pointed out that by the 

 eighth century the term tir tairngiri, "Land of Promise," the Christian 

 Irish designation of the Land of Canaan and of the Heavenly Kingdom, 

 was getting itself associated with the other title, tir innambeo, "Land 

 of the Living Ones," which meant the overseas pagan elysium. Such 

 an association is behind our "Land of Promise of the Saints," and 

 behind the whole conception of the Christian voyage literature.^ 



There are three such voyage tales in the Irish language each 

 containing many passages identical in substance with parts of the 

 Brendan Legend — "the Voyage of Maelduin," "the Voyage of the 

 Hui Corra," and "the Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla." The 

 last two are of much later date, and the resemblances in their case 

 may be due to direct borrowing. The relations between the Brendan 

 and the Maelduin story are not so clear. It seems certain that in the 

 main the Maelduin legend is older than that of Brendan: Zimmer has 

 argued that it was the model upon which and the quarry out of which 

 Brendan's Voyage and the later immrama were constructed. But it 

 appears probable that there was also a re-action, and that the Voyage 

 of Maelduin, which was evidently a pagan, or at least secular, tale 

 which passed through a Christianising development, contains in its 

 present text passages that are really later interpolations from the 

 Brendan story. 



The following brief summary of the more strikingly analogous 

 incidents in the romance of Maelduin will make clearer what has been 

 said: 



Maelduin'' wishes to go in pursuit of the murderer of his father, who lives in an 

 island near the Irish coast. He consults a druid and receives precise directions as 

 to how his ship is to be built. It is a coracle of three hides, and is to carry exactly 



^ A feeling of the need of reconciliation between the two ideas evidently inspired 

 some of the opening passages of the "voyage" section of Vita Brendani. 



* The prose version of Imtnram Curaig Maileduin was published, with transla- 

 tion, by Whitley Stokes in Revue Celtique, vol. IX (1888), pp. 447-495, X (1889) 

 50-95, 265. There is a French translation by Ferdinand Lot in Arbois de Jubain- 



