They remained therefore on the open sea during all Lent, living only on the water of the hermit's spring, and passed Easter and Pentecost in the usual places. But this was the last time. Their provider came to them and said, 'Get ye up into the ship and fill your bottles with the water of this fountain. I also now will be the companion and leader of your journey, for without me ye cannot find the land which ye seek, even the land which is promised unto the Saints.' As they embarked, all the white birds sang in chorus, 'The God of our salvation make your way prosperous' (Ps. lxvii. 20, Vulg.). They went to their provider's island and there took in provision for other forty days and set forth. And now comes the discovery of the Land of Promise, which I had better read in full:—
'And when forty days were past, and the evening was drawing on, a great darkness covered them, so that scarcely could one see another. Then the provider saith to holy Brendan, "Father, knowest thou what is this darkness?" The Saint saith, "Brethren, I know not." Then saith the other, "This darkness is round about that island which ye have sought for seven years. Behold, ye see it; enter ye into it." And after the space of an hour, a great light shone round about them, and the ship stood upon the shore. When they went out of the ship, they saw a land, broad, and full of fruit-bearing trees, as in the time of autumn. They went round about that land as long as they were in it. They had no night there, but the light shone as the sun shineth in his season. And so for forty days they went about through that land, but they could not find the end thereof. But upon a certain day they found a great river which they could not pass, running through the midst of the island. Then saith the holy man unto the brethren, "We cannot pass over this river, and we know not how large is this land." While they thought upon these things, behold, there came to meet them a young man with glorious countenance and comely to look upon, who kisseth them with great joy, and calleth them every one by his own name, and saith, "O brethren, peace be unto you, and unto all who have followed after the peace of Christ," and after this he said, moreover, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thine house, O Lord: they will be still praising Thee." After these words, he saith unto holy Brendan, "Behold the land which ye have sought of a long time. But for this cause have ye not been able to find it since ye began to seek it, because the Lord Christ hath willed to show unto thee divers of His hidden things in this great and wide sea. Return thou therefore unto the land of thy birth, and take with thee of these fruits, and of precious stones as much as thy ship may hold. For the days of thy pilgrimage are drawing near at hand, that thou mayest sleep with thine holy brethren. But after many times this land shall be made known unto them that shall come after thee, when it shall be helpful in the tribulation of the Christians. The river which ye see divideth this island, and even as now it appeareth unto you ripe in fruits, so is it at every time without shadow or foulness. For the light shineth in it without failing." Then holy Brendan saith unto the young man, "Lord father, tell me if this land shall be ever revealed unto men." And he saith, "When the Almighty Creator shall have made all nations subject unto Him, then shall this land be made known unto all His elect." And after these things, Father Brendan took a blessing from the young man, and began to return by his way whereby he had come, taking of the fruits of that land and of sorts of precious stones; and when he had sent away the man that provided for them, who had prepared meat for him and for the brethren season by season, he went up into the ship with the brethren, through the darkness, whence he had begun to sail. And when they had passed through it, they came unto the Isle Delight some, and when he had been entertained there for the space of three days, he took a blessing from the father of the monastery, and then under God's leading came straight to his own monastery.'
It remains to make some remark upon the character and possible sources of this curious composition.
In connection with fabulous voyages, it is natural to think not only of Lucian's Traveller's True Tale, but also of Gulliver's Travels, but these are skits, satirizing with wild wit certain features of life which lay before the authors. The gravity of Brendan's Voyage renders it impossible to place it in any such category. It can hardly be said to contain any grotesque adventure except that of the monster's back, and from the way in which this is told, it is evident that it did not appear grotesque to the narrator; and the religious tone of the whole thing forbids any such explanation.
On the other hand, I cannot perceive any hidden meaning in it which would assign it to the same class of allegorical romance of which Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is the most famous example.
It is impossible that it could ever have been intended to be believed. Some of the incidents are so obviously fabulous—for instance, that of Judas,—that such an hypothesis would be simply to condemn the author as a profane forger, and his tone is much too pious for that; besides which, there would have been no possible motive; and again, although this romance stands alone or nearly alone in the popularity which it has attained outside its own country, as Professor O'Curry remarks, it does not stand by any means alone within the native literature of that country, albeit its literary merit may place it above all or nearly all the old Irish compositions of its class. It is, however, an extraordinary fact that it has actually been sometimes taken for sober truth. This has not been, I think, so much the case in Ireland. There are, it is true, one or two incidents in the Life which may be remotely identified at bottom with incidents in the Voyage, there is even mention of the Land of Promise, but I am more inclined to regard these as, more or less, distorted legendary statements about Brendan's real career, afterwards seized upon, magnified, and worked in by the romancer, than as incidents of the romancer appropriated and nationalized into comparative possibility by the biographer. Thus the Land of Promise may have been a fond title for the imaginary site of a monastery for which he was seeking in the Western Isles. But even in Ireland the son of Finnlogh O' Alta seemingly obtained a character for certain adventures which must have been taken from the fable, and the Martyrology of Donegal gravely refers to the Voyage as well as to the Life as an authority upon the subject, although I confess I can hardly believe that Cuimin of Condeire was not jesting when he wrote the verse—
'Brenainn loves constant piety,
According to the synod and congregation;
Seven years on a whale's back he spent;
It was a difficult mode of piety.'
It was, however, outside Ireland, in countries where less was known of the facts, and the Voyage was isolated from other works of its class, that this romance was most largely accepted as serious matter of fact. The possession of St. Brendan's Isle whenever it should be discovered was, according to M. Jubinal, actually made the subject of State documents, and he names no less than four maritime expeditions which were despatched in search of it, the last from Santa Cruz in Tenerife in 1721, at the instance of Don Juan de Mur, Governor of the Canaries, and under the command of Caspar Dominguez. I must, however, avow that I have great difficulty in believing that such an expedition as this could have been motived by any other hypothesis than that the romance was the legendary record of some really existing island in the Atlantic.
The mention of such a belief brings me to the consideration of another and very different form of what I may call the naturalistic school of interpretation. This theory throws overboard the whole of the elements of the class commonly called supernatural, and even treats the identity of the voyagers as a matter of comparative indifference, but it sees in the wild narrative a distorted and legendary account of some actual voyage and some actual adventures and discoveries in the Atlantic. By some the Canary Archipelago, with perhaps Madeira, the Cape de Verde Islands, and some parts of the African coast, if not even the Azores, have been supposed to be the original scene of the wanderings of some early navigators, even if not of Brendan, and the Burning Island with its savage inhabitants, and the infernal volcano would of course be interpreted of the great volcano of Tenerife. But a more interesting interpretation is that which sees in the voyage of Brendan a distorted account of some ancient voyage by the Western Islands, the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and finally to the coast of America. I need not remind you that the earliest voyages to America of which we have historical accounts are those of the Norsemen, who, as early as the year 1001, proceeded so far South as to come into a land where the vine was growing wild, and which they consequently named Vineland. It matters comparatively little to the naturalistic interpretation of this romance whether it be based upon mutilated and gossiping accounts of the voyages of the Norsemen, or upon some still earlier adventures of which all truly historical record has perished. The shores of America here become the Land of Promise, the clouds which veil it are the fogs of the coasts of Newfoundland or Labrador, the great and impassable river which divides it, perhaps the St. Lawrence: the crystal column is an iceberg: the rough and rocky island, and the black, cloud-piercing volcano, which burnt in the midst of the Northern Ocean, are Iceland and its volcanoes; the Eden of white birds in some region, perhaps the Faroes, where sea-fowl congregate in vast flocks: and the minor isles are to be more or less identified with some of those of the several archipelagos, many of which, in the time of the romancer, if not in that of Brendan, possessed halls, monasteries, and hermits. It may be urged as one of the main objections to this theory that it is almost outside the bounds of possibility that a corach could make such a voyage, but it is perhaps only fair to remark that in the Life, although not in the Voyage, it is stated that after the first five years of the wanderings Brendan returned to Ireland, where, among other things, he went to see Ita, and the narrative then continues: 'She received him with joy and honour, and said, "O my beloved, wherefore hast thou tried without my counsel? Thou wilt not gain the Land of Promise borne in the hides of dead beasts. Thou wilt find it with a ship made of boards." So he went into Connaught, and embarked with 60 disciples in a ship skilfully made of boards, and toiled in voyaging for two years; and at length came to the island where he would be.' This island, however, is only one with an old man dressed in feathers, who calls it 'an holy land, polluted by no blood, open for the burial of no sinner, ... a land like Eden,' but this seems to be the only Land of Promise which was known to the biographer.
While, however, I willingly make a present of this passage to the naturalistic interpreters, I do not accept their interpretation. As I have said, I look upon Brendan's wanderings in the Western Isles soon after his ordination, in search of a place wherein to found a monastery, as the only scrap of historical basis, at any rate as far as he was concerned, which the romance possesses. The Life says that he reached many islands, but instances only two, one of these being the so-called Land of Promise as above, and the incidents are not of a very startling character. No one on the other hand will deny that the Voyage narrates a series of incidents of a very startling character indeed, and it seems to me beyond possibility that some of them, such as the Judas episode, can have even a legendary basis, or be anything but pure, unmitigated, intentional, avowed, undisguised fiction, like the incidents of any novel of the present day. It seems to me that there is in the romance more resemblance to Lucian's Traveller's True Tale than is likely to be accidental, and the Land of Promise indeed occupies a position somewhat similar to that held by the Islands of the Blest in that remarkable skit. Again I think that the Burning Island with its forges, and its monstrous inhabitants hurling rocks into the sea after the voyagers, and the great black volcano piercing the clouds, is very suggestive of Etna and the Cyclopes as described in the Odyssey. It must be remembered that Greek scholarship was a good deal cultivated in antient Ireland. My own impression is that the author, whoever he was, was a very pious man, who had read Homer and Lucian, and to whom it occurred that it would be a nice thing to write an imaginary voyage which might unite similar elements of interest and excitement with the inculcation of Christian, religious, and moral sentiments. For his own purposes he plagiarized them a little, and I am very far from wishing to contend that it is impossible that he may also have worked in some vague accounts of the wonders of America, which had reached his ears from the adventurous voyages of the Norsemen, if indeed his date were late enough, possibly of even earlier navigators, now to us unknown. But as an whole, I look upon the Fabulous Voyage as a composition which is really only differentiated by the elements due to the time and place of birth from religious novels such as those which enrich the pages of the Leisure Hour or the Sunday at Home.