In childhood young Brendan inhaled the ocean breezes, and was familiar with the magnificent scenery of his native Kerry. At the foot of his mountain retreat was Brendan Bay, from which he sailed for this Western continent almost fourteen centuries ago.
The Sailor Saint is known as St. Brendan the Elder, in contradistinction to St. Brendin, the Abbot or Bishop of Birr. Some writers have confounded those two illustrious Irishmen who flourished in the same century.
Many beautiful poems on “The Sailor Saint” are to be found in the modern languages of Continental Europe, and some historical ballads by Denis Florence McCarthy, Thos. Darcy McGee and others in the English language. Here is one stanza from McGee’s well-known ballad:
“Mo-Brendan, Saint of Sailors, list to me,
And give thy benediction to our bark,
For still, they say, thou savest souls at sea,
And lightest signal fires in tempest dark.
Thou sought’st the Promised Land far in the West,
Earthing the Sun, chasing Hesperian on,
But we in our own Ireland have been blest