Brendans Fabulous Voyage | Page 3

by some unknown antient
Irish novelist as the hero of a romance of the wildest kind, which has
certainly spread his name, if not his fame, in quarters which in all his
travels he could never have anticipated. Even in the Canary Islands, the

natives apply the term 'Isla de San Borondon' to a peculiar effect like
mirage, showing a shadowy presentiment of land, which is sometimes
seen off their coasts. His character as an hero of romance, somewhat of
the type of Sinbad the Sailor, if not of that of Gulliver, has even injured
him as a subject of serious study. There has been a sort of custom, to
which may be applied a celebrated phrase of Newman, 'aged but not
venerable,' of confounding the hero of the romance with the real man. It
would be just as proper to identify the hero of the Pickwick Papers with
a certain Mr. Pickwick, whom it was, oddly enough, the duty of one of
Dickens' sons to call as a witness in an English law-suit not many years
ago. Even Homer sometimes nods--at least according to the critics, of
whose opinion Lucian credits him with so low an estimation--and the
great Bollandists had their historical equanimity--much as experience
must have already taught it to bear--so upset by the brilliancy of the
fable that they have omitted to print the real life at all, a life which is, at
the worst, no more startling than a good many with which they have
enriched their pages--e.g., those of Patrick, Brigid, and Columba--and
after a denunciation of what their authorities call the _vana, fictaque vel
apocrypha deliramenta_, 'the silly, lying, or apocryphal ravings,' simply
proceed to give a compilation of isolated notices drawn from a variety
of different sources.
Prof. O'Curry, in his _Lectures on the MS. Material of Ancient Irish
History_, page 289, mentions four ancient Irish romances in the form
of voyages, of which the voyage of Brendan is one. He gives an
epitome of that of the sons of Ua Corra, which seems at least in parts to
be almost equally wild. But that of Brendan has certainly been the most
popular. M. Achille Jubinal, who edited one Latin and two French
translations of it, says that it also exists in Irish, Welsh, Spanish,
English, and Anglo-Norman. The Spanish, English, and Anglo-Norman
I have never read, and of the Welsh I have never heard. Of the Latin I
once made a complete translation from the Latin text published by
Jubinal, but I have lost it, and have had to do the work again so far as
necessary for the present lecture. I remember, however, that from
several features, I came to the conclusion that the Latin text was a
translation from Irish, and the Irish text must present considerable
variants, as Dr. Todd in his book on _St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland_,

page 460, cites from 'An Irish Life of St. Brendan,' but which must
evidently be the fabulous voyage, four incidents, of which one is about
the finding of a dead mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being
devoured alive by sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large
as an ox which swam after them to destroy them, until another
sea-monster rose up and fought with the cat, and both were drowned,
none of which incidents occur in the Latin. However, to the Latin
version my defective knowledge must confine me, and there is enough
of it for one lecture, and to spare. I may, however, say that by the Latin
text I do not here mean only the text published by Jubinal. The present
Bollandists were good enough, some years ago, to edit for me the
'Codex Salmanticensis,' which contains both the romance and the Life,
and I find in the romance serious divergences from the text given by
Jubinal; they are of a kind which, in my judgment, stamp it beyond all
doubt as a later and corrupt edition, but I have largely compared the
texts, although not word for word.
Well, I am now going to deal with the 'silly, lying, or apocryphal
ravings.' The romance relates that on one occasion when Brendan was
in a place called the Thicket, there came to him a man called Barint
O'Neil, of the race of King Neil of IX. Hostages. This man told him
that his disciple Marnock had left him, and founded an hermitage of his
own in an island called Delight some, whither he himself afterwards
went to visit him. While he was there, they were one day together upon
the shore, where there was a small boat, and then, to translate the
precise words, 'he said unto me, "Father, go up into the ship, and let us
sail westward unto the island which is