Delos was a floating island like the floating island of the Nile, “the green bed of Horus” on which that son of Osiris and Isis hid from Set. The most ancient Apollo was the son of cripple Hephaistos. Cripple [[123]]Horus was, in one of his forms, a Hephaistos and a metal-worker. Homer knew of the fabled island of Apollo. The swineherd, addressing Odysseus, says,[18] “There is a certain isle called Syria … over above Ortygia, and there are the turning places of the sun. It is not very great in compass, though a goodly isle, rich in herds, rich in flocks, with plenty of corn and wine. Dearth never enters the land, and no hateful sickness falls on wretched mortals.”
The later Greeks located the island Paradise in the Atlantic, and it is referred to as “Atlantis”, the Islands of the Blest and the Fortunate Isles (fortunatae insulae). Hercules set out to search for the golden apples, the fruit of immortality that grow in
those Hesperian gardens famed of old,
Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales.
The garden of Paradise, cared for by those celebrated nymphs, the daughters of Hesperus, brother of Atlas—Hesperus is the planet Venus as an evening star—was also located among the Atlas mountains in Africa. There the tree of life, which bore the golden apples, was guarded by the nymphs and by a sleepless dragon, like the gem-trees in the Paradises of China and Japan.
According to Diodorus, the Phœnicians discovered the island Paradise. Plutarch placed it at a distance of five days’ voyage to the west of Brittia (England and Scotland), apparently confusing it with Ireland (the “sacred isle” of the ancients), or with an island in the Hebrides.
The island of immortals in the western ocean is found in Gaelic folk- and manuscript-literature.
Among the Gaelic names of Paradise is that of [[124]]“Emain Ablach” (Emain rich in apples). In one description a youth named Conla and his bride Veniusa are referred to. “Now the youth was so that in his hand he held a fragrant apple having the hue of gold; a third part of it he would eat, and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished. The fruit it was that supported the pair of them and when once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could affect them.” A part of this Paradise was reserved for “monarchs, kings, and tribal chiefs”. Teigue, a Celtic Gilgamesh who visited the island, saw there “a thickly furnished wide-spreading apple tree that bore blossom and ripe fruit” at the same time. He asked regarding the great tree and was informed that its fruit was “meat” intended to “serve the congregation” which was to inhabit the mansion.[19] The rowan berry and hazel nut were also to the Gaels fruits of immortality. There once came to St. Patrick “from the south” a youth wearing a crimson mantle fixed by a fibula of gold over a yellow shirt. He brought “a double armful of round yellow-headed nuts and of beautiful golden-yellow apples”.[20] The Gaelic Islands of the Blest are pictured in glowing colours:
Splendours of every colour glisten
Throughout the gentle-voiced plains.