238 



Proceedings 0/ the Roijal Irish Academi). 



all records of voyages,' with the result that Madeira was rediscovered 

 (or discovered if the alleged Bristol settler be mythic), and the voyages 

 commenced which at last doubled the Cape of Good Hope. 



The nearest neighbours of the early Irish were not without similar beliefs. 

 The Britons believed in the elusive Isle of Avalon, Avilion, or Ynys yr Afallon. 

 Some have derived it from Avalloc, god of death ; but from the apples of Eden 



l.KHALift. CEmptj Isles). 6.C«I^RAT ANCILTARA- 



z.nRST PAMOF/^cu>M(rt 7. Cm'irai SQ^OOSia . 



S-GHMTrAT BIRUNOA- %.M-BftHFl.MMU5UnA5H- 

 /^-KHARAB. tp«ert). 9. CAl'lRAT ISLANBA • 

 S.CMSoRVALSl'toles) lOGAllRAI OANAMARKHA- 



and the Hesperides to those of the Edda legend and the Isles in the Irish 

 Tales the apple has been symbolic, and the name is probably merely the 

 " Apple Island."- It was also the Isle of Glass, Isle de Yoirre, and so confused 

 with Glastonbury, " urbs vitrae "'; one recalls the cun-ach of glass in the story 

 of Gonnla, the bridge of glass in " Maelduin," and the great ciystal tower (or 

 iceberg) with fringes of crystal. 



The Welsh, too, had their great lost land sunk by a drunken, careless 

 prince. ' There was also the lost land of Lyoness, or Lennoys, of which the 

 Scilly Isles are said to be the last remnants. Florence of Worcester (died 

 1118) teUs of its flourishing condition and how it sank, like Atlantis, beneath 

 the waves. It, like Avalon, was never placed on the early maps, and there is 

 no e"\ddence that it affected either the Irish or Iberian beliefs, though it secured 

 a place in English literature through Tennyson and Swinburne. The voyage 

 of Madoe, son of Owen Gwynned, about 1170, though told of a historic prince 

 of Xorth Wales, has not hitherto been shown to be earlier than the version 

 of Humphrey Lloyd (about 1.560), published twenty-four years later in 

 Powell's " Histoxie of Cambria,"* and did not affect other coimtries. " If you 



' Abbe fiaynal, " History of Settlement, &c., of Europeans " ; .Major's " Life of Prince Henry 

 the IfaWgator." 



- Eendered " Insula Pojnonim " in Tita Merlini. 



■'• Vita St. Gildae, twelfth centuiy. 



' Hakluyt's " Voyage^' toI. iii (pub. 1600j, p. I, gives the tale of Madoc. Meredith ap Rhys, 

 a batd who died in 1477, told part of Modoc's Voyage, which makes the tale pre-Columbian. 



