About six centuries lie between St. Brendan’s experiences and the earliest writing purporting to relate them and generally accepted as to date. Doubtful manuscripts and miscellaneous allusions—also often doubtful—may lessen the gap; but at best we have several centuries bridged by tradition only, and that rather inferred than known. It seems likely that he really visited and enjoyed some remote lovely islands, not very often reached from the mainland, such as could in any age have been discovered among the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes. In doing so he might well meet with surprising adventures, readily distorted and magnified; and the first tales of them would be basis enough for the florid fancy of Celtic and medieval romancers, growing in extravagance with passing generations.

The Cartographic Evidence

That he found some island or islands was certainly believed, for his name is on many maps in full confidence. But as to the particular islands thereby identified we find that conjecture had a wide range, varying in different periods and even with individual bias.

The Hereford Map of circa 1275

Probably its first appearance is on the Hereford map of 1275 or not much later,[49] the inscription being “Fortunate Insulae sex sunt Insulae Sct Brandani.” It is about on the site of the Canary group, and the elliptical island Junonia is just below. The showing is uncertain and conventional; also the number six misses the mark by one; still there can be no doubt that the Canaries as a whole were intended. Concerning them Edrisi[50] had observed, about 1154: “The Fortunate Islands are two in number and are in the Sea of Darkness.” Perhaps he had Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, the most accessible pair, especially in mind. The surviving derivatives of the last eighth-century Beatus map[51] also bear the inscription “Insulae Fortunate” where the Canary Islands should be, but they assert nothing of “St. Brandan.” Doubtless, dimly known, they had been reputed Isles of the Blest from prehistoric times. If St. Brendan found them, he found them already the “Fortunate Isles.”

A tradition long survived—perhaps survives still—in the Canary archipelago supporting this identification by the Hereford map. Thus Father Espinosa,[52] who long dwelt in Teneriffe and wrote his book there between 1580 and 1590, avers that St. Brendan and his companions spent several years in that archipelago and quotes a still earlier “calendar,” date not given, as authority for their mighty works done there “in the time of the Emperor Justinian.” Even as late as the eighteenth century an expedition sailed from among them for an island believed to be outside of those already known and to be the one discovered by St. Brendan.

Fig. 2—Section, in two continuous parts, of the Pizigani map of 1367 showing St. Brendan’s Islands, Mayda, Brazil, Daculi, and other legendary islands. (After Jomard’s hand-copied reproduction.)

[(Top panel)]([(Bottom panel)]

The Dulcert Map of 1339