230 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academij. 



its present form by the eleventh century. It was known in some form to the 

 Arabian geographers in Spain about 1150. It spread beyond Ireland among 

 the Normans, being translated for King Henry Beauclerc and his wife' ; and 

 the Anglo-Norman Conquest spread' it more and more. It passed to the 

 Portuguese, and probably stimulated the designs of Prince Henry the 

 Navigator, and a little later those of Columbus. It affected monastic 

 eschatology, and was a source of Dante's great poem. 



What truth lies behind it is difficult to guess. Matter-of-fact writers have 

 treated it as a genuine log-book ; but poets, like Florence MacCarthy, have 

 more truly seen in it a revelation of great symbolic beauty. It is more than 

 probable that St. Brendan (like SS. Columba, Colman, and Flannan) was 

 actually a daring voyager ; and that in some lost " Life," his actual visits to 

 various islands were told. The present tapestry is embroidered with many 

 threads of other makers. liCgends of monks and hermits, who fled to the sea- 

 rocks from Skellig to Iceland ; tales, perhaps, of Helluland, " Vinland the 

 Good," and " Whiteman's Land," overheard from the Norse Viking" by Irish 

 friends and thralls ; behind all lay the vision of the first Christian saint, 

 who saw from an island-rock the sea of crystal ; the sea of glass mingled with 

 fire ; the great river, with its leafy trees, and their fruits ; the burning 

 mountain cast into the sea ; the angels holding the winds that they 

 should not blow on the sea, and the vast monster rising from the waves. 

 The Book of Lismore' has the simplest and probably the earliest version, 

 lacking many marvels ; but we are less concerned with the actual facts than 

 with the stories that so impressed the world.* Columbus was in touch not only 

 with the Portuguese, but with Bristol, the merchants of which sent seven 

 expeditions to search for Brazil before the fifteenth century ended. He also 

 (as we have often noted) had at least one 1 rish sailor with him on the great 

 voyage of 1492 ; from any or all of these he may have heard the Brendan 

 legends. 



century copy (Hardy's " Descriptive Catalogue of Matters relating to the History of Great Britain 

 and Ireland," vol. i, p. 169). 



1 Versified in France. The mild command of King Henri and Adlass his Queen won the poet to 

 write "What to St. Brandan erst befell." 



2 See infra. I do not attempt to decide whether the Irish or Noree tales had the precedence j 

 but the former probably had an earlier basis, and they helped each other. 



^ Anecdoia Oxoniensis, "Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore " (Whitley Stokes, 

 1890), p. 247. 



^ Besides the other works here quoted, see Cardinal Moran's "Acta Sancti Brecani " (1872), 

 andEev. J. O'Hanlon's " Brendaniana " (1893), and " lives of the Irish Saints," vol. v (May 16th), 

 p. 407. The literature is large ; some suggestive notes occur in a paper by Rev. T. Olden in 

 Journal Roy. Soc. Antt. Ireland, vol. xxi, p. 675 ; and "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages" 

 (Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould), p. 250, "The Terrestrial Paradise," and p. 624, "The Fortunate 



