Columbus says in his diary that the inhabitants of Ferro and Gomera (Canary Isles) assert that every year they see land to the west. Afterwards expeditions were even sent out to search for it. The Dutchman Van Linschoten speaks in 1589 of this beautiful lost land under the name of “San Borondon” (St. Brandan), a hundred leagues to the west of the Canaries. Its inhabitants are said to be Christians, but it is not known of what nation they are, or what language they speak;[368] the Spaniards of the Canaries have made many vain attempts to find it. The same island, which sometimes shows itself near the Canaries, but withdraws when one tries to approach it, still lives in Spanish folk-lore under the name of “San Morondon.”[369]
On the coast of the English Channel sailors have stories of floating islands, which many of them have seen with their own eyes. They always fly before ships, and one can never land there. They are drawn along by the devil, who compels the souls of drowned men who have deserved Hell and are damned, to stay there till the Day of Judgment. On some of them the roar of a terrible beast is heard; and sailors look upon the meeting with such an island as a sinister warning.[370]
Curiously enough, there is said to be a myth of “a floating island” among the Iroquois Indians. In their mythology the earth is due to the Indian ruler of a great island which floats in space, and where there is eternal peace. In its abundance there are no burdens to bear, in its fertility all want is for ever precluded. Death never comes to its eternal quietude—and no desire, no sorrow, no pain disturbs its peace.[371] These ideas remind one strikingly of the Isles of the Blest, and are probably derived from European influence in recent times. Again, at Boston, in America, there is found a myth of an enchanted green land out in the sea to the east; it flies when one approaches, and no white man can reach this island, which is called “the island that flies.” An Indian, the last of his tribe, saw it a few times before his death, and set out in his canoe to row, as he said, to the isle of happy spirits. He disappeared in a storm the like of which had never been known, and after this the enchanted island was never seen again [cf. Sébillot, 1886, p. 349].
Even the Chinese have legends of the Isles of the Blest, which lie 700 miles from the Celestial Kingdom out in the Yellow Sea, and gleam in everlasting beauty, everlasting spring and everlasting gladness. The wizard Sun-Tshe is said once to have extorted from a good spirit the secret of their situation, and revealed the great mystery to the emperor Tshe-Huan-Ti (219 B.C.). Then the noblest youths and the most beautiful maidens of the Celestial Kingdom set out to search for Paradise, and lo! it suddenly rose above the distant horizon, wrapped in roseate glow. But a terrible storm drove the longing voyagers away with cruel violence, and since then no human eye has seen the Isles of the Blest [after Paul d’Enjoy, in “La Revue”].[372]
This is the same conception of the floating mirage that we meet with again in the Norse term “Villuland” (from “villa” == illusion, mirage, glamour), which is found, for instance, in Björn Jónsson of Skardsá applied to the fabulous country of Frisland (south of Iceland); it is called in one MS. “Villi-Skotland,” which is probably the mythical “Irland it Mikla” (Great-Ireland), since the Irish were called Scots. Are Mársson, according to the Landnáma, reached this “Villuland” and stayed there. It is remarkable that his mother Katla, according to the Icelandic legend in the poem “Kǫtlu-draumr” (Katla’s dream), was stolen by an elf-man, who kept her for four nights.[373] It may be this circumstance that led to its being Are who found the elf-country to the west of Ireland, although it is true that according to the Kǫtlu-draumr it was his one-year-older brother Kar who was the offspring of the four nights; but the elf-man had asked that his son should be called Are.
Fairylands which rise and fall
There are many such fairylands along the coast of Norway, which used to rise up from the sea at night, but sank in the daytime.[374] If one could bring fire or steel upon them, then the spell was broken and they remained up; but the huldrefolk avenged themselves on the person who did this, and he was turned to stone; therefore it was usually accomplished by domestic animals which swam across to these islands. Many of them have come up in this way, and for this reason they frequently bear the names of animals. The most probable explanation is doubtless that they were originally given the names of animals from a similarity in shape, or some other reason; and the myth is a later interpretation of the name. It was often a pig, preferably a sow, that had acquired the habit of swimming over to the fairyland, and it frequently had litters there; the people of the farm, who noticed that it occasionally stayed away, bound steel upon it, and the island was hindered from sinking; “therefore such fairy islands are often called Svinöi.” In this way Svinöi in Brönöi (in Nordland, Norway) came up, as well as Svinöi in the Faroes, and doubtless it was the same with Svinöi or Landegode in Sunnmör. It was also through a sow that Tautra, in Trondhjemsfjord, was raised, besides Jomfruland, and the north-western part of Andöi (in Vesterålen). Nay, even Oland in Limfjord (Jutland) became visible through a sow with steel bound on it, which had a litter. Other islands, like Vega and Sölen, were raised by a horse or an ox, etc. Gotland was also a fairyland, but it stayed up through a man bringing fire to it.[375] Some fairy islands lie so far out at sea that no domestic animal has been able to swim over to them, and therefore they have not yet come up; such are Utröst, west of Lofoten, Sandflesa, west of Trænen, Utvega, west of Vega, Hillerei-öi, and Ytter-Sklinna, in Nordre Trondhjems Amt, and hidden fairylands off Utsire, off Lister, and to the south-west of Jomfruland.[376]
It is interesting that the notion of a sow being the cause of people coming into possession of fertile islands can also be illustrated from mediæval England. William of Malmesbury relates in his “De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiæ” [cap. 1 and 2], which belongs to the twelfth century before 1143, that Glasteing “... went in search of his sow as far as Wellis, and followed her from Wellis by a difficult and boggy path, that is called ‘Sugewege,’ that is to say, ‘the sow’s way’; at last he found her occupied in suckling her young beneath the apple-tree beside the church of which we are speaking; from this are derived the names that have come down to our time, that the apples of this tree are called ‘ealdcyrcenes epple,’ that is to say, ‘the apples of the old church,’ and the sow ‘ealdcyrce suge.’ While other sows have four feet, this one, strangely enough, has eight. This Glasteing, then, who came to this island and saw that it was flowing with all good things, brought all his family and established himself there and dwelt there all his life. This place is said to be populated from his offspring and the race that sprang from him. This is taken from the ancient writings of the Britons.
“Of various names for this island. This island, then, was first called by the Britons ‘Ynisgwtrin’; later, when the Angles subdued the island, the name was translated into their language as ‘Glastynbury’ or Glasteing’s town, he of whom we have been speaking. The island also bears the famous name of ‘Avallonia.’ The origin of this word is the following: as we have related, Glasteing found his sow under an apple-tree by the old church; therefore he called ... the island in his language ‘Avallonia,’ that is ‘The isle of apples’ (for ‘avalla’ in British means ‘poma’ in Latin).... Or else the island has its name from a certain Avalloc, who is said to have dwelt here with his daughters on account of the solitude of the place.”[377]
This Somerset sow with its young and with eight legs, like Sleipner, must be Norse. The Norse myth of the sow must have found a favourable soil among the Celts, as according to the ideas of Celtic mythology the pig was a sacred animal in the religion of the Druids, specially connected with Ceridwen, the goddess of the lower world. The Celts must have heard of the pig that by the help of steel causes fairylands to remain visible; but regarded this as being connected with the animal’s sacred properties. It cannot have been an originally Celtic conception, otherwise we should meet with it in other Celtic legends. Moreover the island in this case is not invisible, nor has the sow any steel upon her; these are features that have been lost in transmission. On the other hand the incident of the sow becoming pregnant in the newly found land has been preserved.