WicSTKOPP — Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the ISf. Athmtic. 22f) 



his brothers ; after a year's study they insisted on being given a penance. 

 They were told to rebuild the churches, and, at the end of the year, came 

 to that of Sen Comman at Oenn mara (Kinvarra), on the border of Clare and 

 Galway. Impressed by a glorious sunset and the unfrozen sea, when the 

 lakes were sheeted with ice, they got a boat of skins and sailed forty days 

 westward " to meet the Lord on the sea." They, too, visited the Isle of 

 Weepers, the Isle on a Pillar, the Eainbow Stream and the Island of Hell. They 

 meet the anchorite Dega, disciple of St. Andrew, and the monks of St. Ailbe. 

 They reached an island full of purple and red iiowers, shining grass, and 

 gorgeous birds, woods full of honey, and sweet-flavoured lakes. A hermit, a 

 disciple of Christ Himself, sent them to the Point of Spain to build a church, 

 the fame of which reached the comarh of St. Peter at Rome. The survivor, a 

 bishop, told the tale to St. Mocholmoc of Aran in Galway Bay. 



Snedgus.' — Certain men of Eoss (on the borders of Monaghan and Louth) 

 murdered King Domnall (a..d. 6-39 to 642) for his tyranny, and were sentenced 

 to be burned in a house. Snedgus and Mac Eiagla, sent by St. Columba, 

 commuted this doom to being set adrift in little boats^ ; and while themselves 

 returning in a currach to lona, determined to explore the outer sea to the 

 north-west of Erin. They visited a river of milk, a walled island, islands of 

 catheads, houndheads, and swineheads, an island of birds singing canticles, 

 and an island where the men of Eoss, saved from the sea, dwelt with Elijah 

 and Enoch till the last battle of Doomsday. At last they came to an island 

 of devout folk, whose king bid them to go back. In a year and a day they 

 reached Erin, with the prophetic message that foreigners will overcome and 

 dwell in half that island, " because of the great neglect the men of Erin show 

 to God's testament and his teaching." 



Brendan. — The greatest Imram is that of the Navigcdio. It exists in 

 various stages,^ and is possibly a ninth-century sermon,* elaborated up to 



^ Revue Celiique, vol, ix, p. 14, from the " Yellow Book of Lecan." 



' Punishment ofsetting adrift on the sea in a hoat of one hide is recognized in other Irish 

 writings. See " Tripartite Life of St. Patrick" (ed. Whitley Stokes, vol. i, pp. cbfxiv, 222-288). 

 MacCuill, a son of death, on his repentance so goes on the sea. One recalls the verse in the 

 " Chronieon Scotoruni," 622, on the death of Conaing, son of Ardan, " Great bright sea-waves and 

 the s>m that punished him in his weak wicker sltift." See also Adamnan's " Life of St. Columba," 

 lib. ii, ch. Ixiii, for the stinging marine animals {? jellyfish) hustling the skin-currachs. Caesar, it 

 may be remembered, describes curraclis, " DeBeU. Civil.," 1, liv. See also Pliny, " Nat. Hist.," vii.lvi; 

 Solinus, cap. xxxv, for other descriptions of these hide-boats. For the intervention of clerics on 

 behalf of prisoners, see St. Patrick's "Epistle to Coroticus," and Ann. Four Masters, 684, 

 " Adamnan went to Saxon Land " to request a restoration of the prisoners from Magh Breagh. 



' "Early English Poetiy " (Percy Society), Thomas Wright, F.S.A., 1844, and Ozanan, loc. oil. 

 British Museum, Cotton Vesp. D xi Bx. Also " Anglo-Norman Trouveres " ("Blackwood's 

 Edinburgh Magazine," vol. xxxix). 



* A ninth-century ms. is said to exist in Rome (Vatican Library). There is also a twelfth- 



