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Voyage of St Brendan

tr. O’Donoghue, 1893

intro

THE earliest version of the “Voyage” that has come down to us is undoubtedly that contained in the Betha Brenainn, as we find it in the Book of Lismore, and other MSS. I have already given the commencement of this, as far as the beautiful prayer, whereby Brendan hushed the storm-lashed ocean and saved his companions from all hurt. Then it goes on to tell that on a certain day the demon appeared in “awful, hideous form” on the sail of Brendan’s vessel, visible only to the saint, who asked him why he had come there before his proper time. Satan answered that he sought his hell in the gloomy abysses of the dark sea. He was then permitted to reveal to Brendan “the gate of hell;” and a lengthened description is given of the horrors and terrors of that place of torments, in terms that show the wonderful copiousness of the Irish language.. The brethren asked Brendan with whom he conversed; he told them, and related some of the awful torments he had witnessed. Thereupon one of the brethren desired through curiosity to behold some of those torments. On being permitted, he was seized with terror, crying out: “Woe, woe, woe, to him who may come into that prison,” and died immediately, but was at once restored to life by the prayers of Brendan.

Another day they found a beautiful flaxen-haired maiden, “whiter than the snow, or the foam of the sea,” but of a preternatural size. She was dead, being pierced through the body with a spear. Brendan restored her to life, and ascertaining from her that “she was of the dwellers in the sea, who pray and expect their resurrection,” he gave her baptism. Then he asked her whether she preferred to go at once to heaven or return to her people. “To heaven,” she said in language that Brendan alone understood, “for I hear the voices of the angels praising the mighty Lord.” After receiving the holy Viaticum she breathed forth her spirit and received Christian burial there.

Soon after they came to an island beautiful and lofty, but could find no landing-place, though they searched for twelve days. They saw a splendid church upon it, and they heard the chanting of men who were praising the Lord therein, but the voices only lulled them all to sleep. At length a waxed tablet was cast down to them, inscribed with the words: “Waste no more time or toil in seeking to enter this island, for you cannot come in, but the island you are in quest of, you will find elsewhere.” They turn away from the island, taking with them reverently the waxed tablet, in remembrance of the visit.

On another occasion the crew were tormented with a great thirst, and they discovered a stream of limpid water gushing from a rock, from which they desired to drink. “First bless it,” said Brendan, “that you may test its quality.” Then Brendan pronounced a blessing, and instantly the stream dried up, and the devil appeared, mocking their thirst, which, however, at once left them.

The version then relates the return of Brendan and his brethren again to their own country, after their five years’ voyaging, and the cordial welcome they received everywhere from their people, especially St. Brendan, who is said to have then “performed many miracles, healing the sick and expelling demons and vices.” After some stay at home, he visits his foster-mother St. Ita, who, after an affectionate greeting, reminds him that he had not taken counsel with her about his voyage, and assures him that he could not find the “Land of Promise” in vessels made of the skins of dead beasts— but in wooden vessels, properly constructed for his voyage. Thereupon Brendan proceeded to Connaught, where a large and commodious ship was built and provided with the needful equipment for a voyage. Then he embarked, having a crew of sixty men, among whom were the shipwright and the smith, who had worked at the construction of the ship. A man called “Crosan,” which Dr. W. Stokes translates “Buffoon,” besought Brendan, on his knees, that he might go with him, and he was admitted into the ship at the last moment. Then they sailed forth into the ocean, calling first to Aran, where St. Enda dwelt; and here they stay for the space of a month. Proceeding on their voyage westwards, they soon reached a large, lofty, beautiful island, on the shore of which they saw a great number of sea-cats, which threatened to devour them. To save the rest of the crew from destruction, the Crosan consented to sacrifice himself, and having received the last sacraments, leaps ashore with joy, and is instantly devoured by those monsters; thus, as the text has it, “the notoriously sinful man, who came last into the ship, should be chosen the first to go to heaven . . . . in illustration of the words of Christ. ‘The first shall be last, and the last first.’” Soon after the smith falls grievously ill and likely to die. Brendan asked him whether he preferred a longer life to an immediate admission into heaven. The smith declares that “he has heard the voice of the Lord calling him,” and therefore choses to go to heaven at once. After receiving the Viaticum he dies, and is buried in the sea, as no land was near; where his body, wonderful to relate, lay peaceably, without sinking or moving in any direction.

Soon after they come to a small island, but they are met at the landing-place by a crowd of demons, like coal-black pigmies, who opposed their landing. These they will not combat, according to Brendan’s advice, and after some delay they wished to weigh anchor and depart; but their anchor got so firmly fixed in the rocks, they could not hoist it up, and were obliged to sail on without it. This was a serious embarrassment, for the smith who could forge a new anchor was dead; but Brendan desired a priest in the company “to do smith’s work for a month:” and he blessed his hands for the purpose, so that in a short time he supplied an anchor of excellent workmanship.

They sailed on still westwards, and they reach a small but beautiful island, with its many bays well supplied with fish. Here they see a church built of stone, and an ancient penitent praying therein, without flesh or blood, and only the skin, like shrivelled leather, on his bones.” He warns them of their danger from the attack of a monstrous sea-cat that was on the island, and they sail quickly away, pursued by the monster. The rest of this story can be found in the Legend of the Three Students who went on a Pilgrimage.

This venerable hermit had revealed to Brendan the land he was seeking, even the Land of Promise; and soon afterwards, when the term of seven years had expired, the saint at last attained the object of his desires, and happily reached the earthly paradise. Here, while he and his companions search for a landingplace, they hear the voice of a venerable old man, who invited them to land, and to rest now from their toilsome quest, and enter upon and enjoy those “happy plains of paradise, and the delightful fields of this “radiant land.” Then follows an eloquent description of the beauties and delights of this Island of the Blessed, which closes with a declaration from the ancient dweller therein that: “Happy is he who through his well-deservings and good works merits, in union with Brendan, son of Finlug, to inhabit for ever this island whereon we stand.”

Here the narrative breaks off abruptly, and the Irish text concludes with a long passage from the Fis Adhamhnan (Vision of Adamnan), which has no relevance with the Voyage of Brendan.

This is a brief but accurate outline of the Irish version of the Voyage, from which it will be seen that the incidents of the story, as told therein, are few and baldly related, while the structure of the tale is rather disjointed and fragmentary, seemingly made up of scraps and fragments from two or more earlier versions in Irish that have been lost. It differs considerably in those respects from the Latin version (the Navigatio), of which I will now give a literal and complete translation into our modern English, the first of its kind that has been published. In this version the incidents related are numerous and consecutive, are told more circumstantially, and the current of the story runs on smoothly to the end. This was the most popular version during the Middle Ages, as the story itself was certainly the most popular of all the mediæval legends of which we have any account. Hence there is scarcely a public library in Europe that does not contain some MS. copies of it, and in one library, the Bibliothèque Royale, Paris, there are no less than eleven MS. copies, some of them written in the eleventh century; one MS. copy in the Vatican library, which Cardinal Moran consulted in preparing his edition of the Navigatio in his Acta Sti. Brendani, is referred by a competent judge to the ninth century. From this Latin version sprung many of the versions into early German, early French, and other languages. One of those composed in the Romanz language by an Anglo-Norman trouvere, “who wonned in the English court of King Henry Beauclerc, and basked in the smiles of his queen,” the beautiful Adelais of Louvain, was translated from the Latin, and addressed to the “Lady Adelais,” or “Auliz,” about the year 1121. There is a learned and interesting paper upon this in the number of Blackwood’s Magazine for June, 1836, in which the writer¹ gives a spirited translation from the “Romanz” into racy, if somewhat quaint, English, of many passages of this “Voyage of St. Brendan,” commencing thus:—

Lady Adelais, who queen
By the grace of heaven hath been
Ycrowned, who this land hath blest
With peace and wholesome laws, and rest,
Both by King Henry’s stalwart might
And by thy counsels mild and right—
For these, thy holy benison
May the Apostles shed each one
A thousand thousand-fold upon thee;
And, since thy mild command hath won me
To turn this goodly historie
Into romanz, and carefully
To write it out, and soothly tell
What to St. Brandan erst befel—
At thy comand I undertake
The task right gladly, but will make
No light or silly pleasantrie
Unfit in such grave work to be.

I will, in my translation, follow the division into chapters, and the headings thereof, as marked off in Cardinal Moran’s edition, and at the end of certain chapters I will append the corresponding translated passages from Blackwood’s Anglo-Norman Trouveres— as well as certain poems of modern English poets, who have treated in verse some incidents of our “goodly historie.”

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