232 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



sojoura) ; the rock where Judas enjoys each year a brief respite' from the ever- 

 lastiucr bonfire, and the island, surrounded by darkness, save once iu seven 

 years, as is stQl believed of Brasil, Kilstuitheen, and Manister Ladra. In 

 the end Brendan reaches his goal — ^the island of fruit-trees, where the sun 

 sets not, with no limits, and its great, still river, flowing from the north — 

 the Land of Promise — " when the Most High brings all nations under sub- 

 jection that land will be revealed." It is hard to blame those who imagined 

 that America and the Ohio were intended.* 



Some of the northern features may have been derived from monks who 

 visited Iceland and left there the books and crosses found by the Norsemen 

 when they "discovered" that island about 868.' Dicuil, the Irish 

 geographer, knew of it, and wrote of " Thile " and the frozen ocean before 825.* 

 An Anglo-Saxon map of the tenth century shows " Tylen " to the north- 

 west of Ireland, and." Island" north of "Norveci."* It is less easy to see 

 whence the accurate ideas of the tropical isles were derived save from eastern 

 pilgrims met at Jerusalem, or from pure imagination. [Since writing this, 

 I see the suggestion that the description by St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, 

 relating to the Fortunate Isles, about 599-636, originated the " Insula 

 Uvarum " of St. Brendan and the grapes of Vineland, but Jerusalem pilgrims 

 may have exchanged notes, or Irish wanderers seen the isles of the Mediter- 

 ranean. The passage in the works of Isidorus Hispalensis tells of the 

 Fortunate Isles : " Fovtunatae Insulae faelices et beatae f ructuum ubertate 

 . . . poma sylvarum parturiuut, fortuitis vitibus juga colUum vestiuntur."^ 

 This certainly has much in common with the Sagas and Iiiirama. Copies of 

 Isidore's maps exist of the seventh and tenth centuries.] The Irish lay on 

 " the fringe of things " of the Old World; it is unendurable to live in mist on . 

 the edge of a precipice, so they mentally and actually strove to penetrate the 

 gloom beyond them, and, in the words of Seneca, " Thule was no longer earth's 

 bounds." Then every suggestion was welcomed and expanded into detailed 

 assertion, tiU the whole took shape round the nucleus of St. Brendan's 

 expedition to the "gardens ever blossoming across the western sea where 

 none grows old." 



' One of the tcnderest thoughts of some " humble and holy man of heart " that cotild nut leave 

 even Judas to suffer without mitigation. Matthew Arnold has versified it in modern times. 



- I have seen some eighteen years since a Christmas supplement to a Clare newspaper showing 

 the saint in modern pontificals preaching to several Indian chiefs of conventional costume and 

 aspect 



2 For the Norse equivalents see Eireks Saga Vidforla of the fourteenth century. Eric, son of 

 King Thrand, seeks the Deathless land. Many of the Brendan episodes recur, such as the inaccessible 

 tower or island and the isle of purple flowers. It may have a historic basis in the fact of King Eric 

 in 128S sending a certain Eolf to explore beyond Iceland. 



* Dicuil, " De Mensura Orbis Terrae." 



^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, xvii, p. 63S. 



' Opera, ed. 1617. Originum, liber xiv, cap. vi. 



