Imram Curaig Mailduin is preserved, in each case imperfectly, in the Lebor na h Uidre, a MS. in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; and in the Yellow Book of Lecan, MS. H. 216 in the Trinity College Library, Dublin; fragments are in Harleian MS. 5280 and Egerton MS. 1782 in the British Museum. There are translations by Patrick Joyce, Old Celtic Romances (1879), by Whitley Stokes (a more critical version, printed together with the text) in Revue celtique, vols. ix. and x. (1888-1889). See H. Zimmer, “Brendan’s Meerfahrt” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, vol. xxxiii. (1889). Tennyson’s Voyage of Maeldune, suggested by the Irish romance, borrows little more than its framework.
MAELIUS, SPURIUS (d. 439 B.C.), a wealthy Roman plebeian, who during a severe famine bought up a large amount of corn and sold it at a low price to the people. Lucius (or Gaius) Minucius, the patrician praefectus annonae (president of the market), thereupon accused him of courting popularity with a view to making himself king. The cry was taken up. Maelius, summoned before the aged Cincinnatus (specially appointed dictator), refused to appear, and was slain by Gaius Servilius Ahala; his house was razed to the ground, his corn distributed amongst the people, and his property confiscated. The open space called Aequimaelium, on which his house had stood, preserved the memory of his death. Cicero calls Ahala’s deed a glorious one, but, whether Maelius entertained any ambitious projects or not, his summary execution was an act of murder, since by the Valerio-Horatian laws the dictator was bound to allow the right of appeal.
See Niebuhr’s History of Rome, ii. 418 (Eng. trans., 1851); G. Cornewall Lewis, Credibility of early Roman History, ii.; Livy, iv. 13; Cicero, De senectute 16, De amicitia 8, De republica, ii. 27; Floras, i. 26; Dion. Halic. xii. i.
MAELSTROM (whirlpool), a term originally applied to a strong current running past the south end of the island of Moskenaes, a member of the group of Lofoten Islands on the west coast of Norway. It is known also as the Moskenstrom. Though dangerous in certain states of wind and tide, the tales of ships being swallowed in this whirlpool are fables. The word is probably of Dutch origin, from malen, to grind or whirl, and strom or stroom, a stream or current. It appears on Mercator’s Atlas of 1595.
MAENADS (Gr. Μαινάδες, frenzied women), the female attendants of Dionysus. They are known by other names—Bacchae, Thyiades, Clodones and Mimallones (the last two probably of Thracian origin)—all more or less synonymous.
See the exhaustive articles by A. Legrand in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités and A. Rapp in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; also editions of Euripides, Bacchae (e.g. J. E. Sandys).