Brendans Fabulous Voyage | Page 3

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 called the Land of Promise of the Saints, which God will give unto them that come after us in the latter time." We went up into the ship therefore,