[184] See, especially, Paradise Lost, ii. 587 sqq.
[185] ‘Now seeing that they who make this moan are the Saints, to whom are allotted everlasting mansions in the heavenly Kingdom, how much more meet were it for men that are yet on earth,’ etc., ch. 34. Cp. the similar passages in the Félire Oengusa and the Scéla Lái Brátha referred to in the preceding section.
[186] Verbal differences between the two versions are frequent throughout, though generally the later copy is the fuller, owing to the insertion of a certain amount of ‘padding.’ Far wider divergences exist between the different versions of most of the mediæval legends, e.g. the Vision of Paul, the Voyage of St. Brendan, and the Vision of Tundale. This circumstance strengthens the internal evidence of interpolations in the Fis Adamnáin. At the same time, it adds to the difficulty of determining the relative priority of the incidents contained in the several Visions.
[187] The Acts of St. Brendan, and the accounts of his voyages, have often been translated by modern scholars. Besides the collections of hagiologists and Church historians, standard works on the subject are Jubinal, La Légende latine de Saint Brendaines, Paris, 1836; Schröder, Sanct Brandan, Erlangen, 1871; Moran, Acta Sancti Brendani, Dublin, 1872. The Irish Life is edited, with a translation and notes, by Mr. Whitley Stokes, in Anecdota Oxoniensia (Mediæval and Modern Series, pt. 5). In the Rev. Denis O’Donoghue’s Brendaniana the subject is treated in an interesting and compendious manner. The summary of the principal incidents of the voyages given in the text, is taken, for the most part, from Mr. Stokes’s edition of the Irish life.
[188] The imaginary island of St. Brendan was delineated in the maps of the Middle Ages, and even of later periods. It was claimed by the Portuguese, but afterwards ceded to Spain. Many voyages were undertaken in quest of it, one so late as 1721.—Ancona, op. cit., p. 50.
[189] Father O’Donoghue points out that the whale episode appears too early in mediæval churches to be due to an imitation of Sinbad. It occurs in a mediæval life of St. Machutus, or Malo, which, however, Father O’Donoghue considers an imitation of St. Brendan, into whose legend the incident entered at a very early period, being mentioned in a poem by St. Cumin, who lived in the seventh century (Brendaniana, pp. 88-91), where the author refers to parallels occurring in the Mediæval Bestiaries. Signer D’Ancona (op. cit.) says that the episode occurs in the Romance of Alexander, which is likely to be the origin of the Western variants. However, the idea is one which may well have presented itself spontaneously in several distinct quarters.
[190] Apparently a travesty of Manannán Mac Lír as he appeared to Bran in the Imram Bráin, but quantum mutatus, or, literally, diablement changé en route. Already have the Celtic deities followed the Olympians, and become converted into demons.
[191] Cf. Virgil, Æneid, vi. 557-8, and Dante, Inferno, iii. 22-28.
[192] We may note one curious incident which illustrates the sympathy, before mentioned, with which Irish Churchmen treated the beings who pertained to that older faith which it was their mission to destroy. One day St. Brendan came upon a maiden of vast stature and exceeding beauty floating upon the sea, dead, and a spear through her. He restored her to life, and asked her who she was: she replied that she was one of the dwellers in the sea, who were praying for the Resurrection. He baptized her, and gave her the choice—to die, and go at once to Heaven, or to return to her own people. She chose to go direct to Heaven, so he administered to her the last Sacrament, and she died.
[193] Mr. Whitley Stokes suggests that ‘his feathers may be a reminiscence of some hermit’s dress of bird-skins’ (op. cit., p. 354). Or, maybe, of some anchorite who may have lived into extreme old age, as doubtless many did, in the condition of King Nebuchadnezzar after his fall, until his long white hair and beard suggested the plumage of a white bird. Or, again, it is just possible that this bird-like hermit, dwelling in an island Paradise, may be an attempt to euhemerise one of the many avatars of the sacred bird.