Attempts to Explain the Origin of the Brendan Narratives
It has been intimated that the narratives of “St. Brendan’s Navigation” may have originated in misunderstood tales of his early sea wanderings around the coasts of Ireland seeking for a monastery site. He was successful in this at least, being best known (excepting as a discoverer) for the great religious establishment at Clonfert, not the first which he founded in the sixth century but the most widely known and the greatest.
Another explanation casts doubts upon his real existence and supposes the story of the discoveries to have arisen by confusion of language with the well-known pagan “Voyage of Bran,” perhaps the earliest of the ancient Irish Imrama, or sea sagas.
It has also been said that the origin of the Brendan narratives may be found in “a ninth-century sermon elaborated up to its present form by the eleventh century.”[46] A ninth-century manuscript is said to be in the Vatican library.