THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAINS. 99 



Divina Commedia of the Flemish school," (The Journey 

 of St. Brandaen), 1 the saint is driven by a storm into the 

 L,everzee (the old German Lebermeer), where he saw a 

 mast rise from the water and heard a mysterious voice 

 bidding him sail to the eastward to avoid the magnetic 

 rocks, which drew to them all that passed too near. Ogier, 

 the Dane, is wrecked upon Avalou Island by the attraction 

 of the lodestone mountain or castle thereon. 2 Although 

 the masts crack and many a sail is stretched by the brisk 

 breeze, the vessels of the Norse-German fleet are held 

 motionless by the magnet rock at Gyfers, says the L,ay of 

 Gudrun. 3 Magnus Magnussen, on his voyage to discover 

 Greenland, finds his ship stopped by a lodestone at the 

 bottom of the sea. And there is that most redoubtable 

 of travelers, Sir John Maundevile, Knight/ who not only 

 depicts the perils which ships searching for the "Yle of 

 Prestre John" encounter from the "grete Roches of Stones 

 of the Adamant that of his proper nature draweth Iren to 

 him," but gives his flamboyant imagination full play in 

 describing the "Buscaylle and Thornes and Breres and 

 grene Grasse " which spring up from the fragments of the 

 wrecked vessels and clothe the rocks as with a u grete 

 Wode or Grove." "And therefore," he concludes, "dtir 

 not the Marchauntes passen there, but zif thei knowen wel 

 the passages or elle that thei han gode Lodesmen." 



The magnet rocks are frequently mentioned by the 

 Arab writers of the I2th and I3th centuries. Cherif- 

 Edrisi, the geographer, speaks, with great particularity, 

 of an archipelago in the Red Sea, near the straits of 



1 Reis van Sinte Brandaen : Longfellow: Poets and Poetry of Europe, 

 Phila., 1845, 37 2 ' Oudulaemsche Gedichten derxiie xiiieenxiveEeuwen, 

 n itgege ven door Jonkhr, Ph. Blommaert. Ghent, 1838-41. 



2 Keary: Outlines of Primitive Belief. New York, 1882. 



3 Ludlow: Epics of the Middle Ages. London, 1865. 



4 Halliwell: The Voiage and Travaile. London, 1866. See also Olaus 

 Magnus: Hist, de Gent. Sept., 1. ii., cxxvi. H. Von Valdeck: Herzog 

 Ernest von Bayern's Erhotung, 1858. , Spenser: Faerie Queene, ii., canto 

 12. Also Encyclo. Metropol., XXI. article, Magnet. 





