The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature: An Anthology of Criticism 1851822461, 9781851822461, 1846825563, 9781846825569

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Alsofrom Four Courts Press The Seafaring Saint

Sources and Analogues o f the Twelfth-Century Voyage o f Saint Brendan Clara Strijbosch Early Irish Kingship and Succession Bart Jaski King o f Mysteries

Early Irish Religious Writings John Carey The Voyage o f Brendan Daniel D e’Angeli & J.J. O’Meara Early Irish Lyrics

Eighth-Twelfth Century Gerard Murphy Seanchas

Studies in Early and M edieval Irish Archaeology, History and Literature in Honour o f Francis J Byrne Alfred P. Smyth, Editor Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis Carl Selmer, Editor

THE OTHERWORLD VOYAGE IN EARLY IRISH LI TERATURE

The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature A n Anthology o f Criticism

Jonathan M . Wooding E D ITO R

FO U R CO U RTS P R E SS

T his book was set in 10.5 on 12 .5 point Ehrhardt by Carrigboy Typesetting Services for FOUR COURTS PRESS Fumbally Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland Email: [email protected] and in North America for FOUR COURTS PRESS c /o I S B S , 5804 N .E . Hassalo Street, Portland, O R 9 7 2 13.

© T h e various contributors and Four Courts Press 2000

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

I S B N i—8 518 2 —246—i

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Printed in Great Britain by M P G Books L td , Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix PREFACE

xi I NTRODUCTI ON I

Some New Light on the Brendan Legend C HA R LES PLUMMER

15 Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama WI L LI A M F L I N T T H R A L L 22

On the Punishment o f Sending Adrift MARY E. BYRNE

27 An Apocryphal ‘Book o f Enoch and Elias’ as a Possible Source o f the Navigatio Sancti Brendani MARIO ESPOSITO

42 Review o f Navigatio sancti Brendani Abbatis J A M E S CA RNE Y

52 The Sinless Otherworld o f Immratn Brain PROINSIAS MAC CANA

73 The Earliest Bran Material J A ME S C ARNEY

91

Two Observations Concerning the Navigatio Brendani LUDWI G BIELER

94 The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio THOMAS C HA R L E S - E D W A R D S

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109 In the Wake o f the Saint: The Brendan Voyage, an Epic Crossing o f the Atlantic by Leather Boat J . J . O’ MEARA

1 13 The Location o f the Otherworld in Irish Tradition JOHN CAREY

120 Two Approaches to the Dating of Nauigatio Sancti Brendani DAVID N. D U M V I L L E

133 Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy o f Virgil o f Salzburg JOHN CARE Y

143

Some Analogues o f the Old English Seafarer from Hiberno-Latin Sources COLIN A. I RE LA ND

157

Contributions to a Study o f the Voyages o f St Brendan and St Malo S É A MU S MAC MATHÚNA

175

Allegory in Navigatio Sancti Brendani DOROTHY ANN BRAY

187

The Role o f the Cuilebad in Immram Snédgusa 7 M aic Riagla KEVI N MURRAY

194 Subversion at Sea: Structure, Style and Intent in the Immrama THOMAS OWEN C L A N C Y 22Ó

Monastic Voyaging and the Nauigatio J ON A THA N M. WOODING

246 APPENDIX

251 BIBLI OGRAPHY

279 I NDEX

Acknowledgments The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for permission to reprint M ario Esposito’s article A n Apocryphal “ Book o f Enoch and Elias” as a Possible Source o f the Navigatio Sancti Brendani\ which first appeared in Celticay volume 5. Professor Proinsias Mac Cana and the Royal Irish Academy for permission to reprint ‘The Sinless Otherworld o f Immram Brain’ , which first appeared in EriUy volume 27. The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for permission to reprint the late Professor Jam es Carney’s Review o f Selmer, Navigatio, which first appeared in Medium Æ vum , volume 32 and ‘The Earliest Bran Material’ , which first appeared in J J . O’Meara and B. Naumann, eds, Latin Script and Letters AD 400-çoo, Festschrift presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion o f his joth Birthday (Leiden, 1976). The estate o f Professor Ludwig Bieler and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for permission to reprint ‘Two Observations Concerning the Navigatio Brendani\ which first appeared in Celtica, volume 1 1 . Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for permission to reprint ‘The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio\ which first appeared in Celtica, volume 1 1 . Professor P A . Breatnach and D r John Carey for permission to reprint ‘The Location o f the Otherworld in Irish Tradition’, which first appeared in Eigsey volume 19. David Dumville and Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo for permission to reprint ‘Two Approaches to the Dating o f Nauigatio Sancti Brendani \ which first appeared in Studi Medievali, volume 29. Tim es Supplements Ltd and Professor J.J. O’Meara for permission to reprint his review o f Severin’s Brendan Voyage, which first appeared in Times Literary Supplement 14 /7 /19 7 8 . The Medieval Academy o f America and D r John Carey for permission to reprint ‘Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy o f Virgil o f Salzburg’ , which first appeared in Speculum, volume 64. Colin Ireland and the board o f the Modern Language Society o f Helsinki for permission to reprint ‘ Some Analogues o f the O.E. Seafarer from Hiberno-

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Acknowledgments

Latin Sources’ , which first appeared in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, volume 92. Terre de Brume Editions and Professor Séamus Mac Mathúna for permission to reprint ‘Contributions to a Study o f the Voyages o f Saint Brendan and Saint M alo’, which first appeared in C. Laurent and H. Davis (eds), Irlande et Bretagne, vingt siècles d'histoire (Rennes, 1994). The University o f California Press and D r Dorothy Bray for permission to reprint ‘Allegory in Navigatio sancti Brendanf, which first appeared in Viator, volume 26. We have been unable to locate copyright holders for the late M ary Byrne, William Flint Thrall and Mario Esposito.

Preface his volume was first envisaged during a conference at Maynooth in 1995. On that occasion a number o f medievalists especially interested in the Hiberno-Latin and early Irish voyage literature noted the need for a guide to these tales, for the undergraduate and professional medievalist alike. Th e extraordinarily widely scattered and often obscurely published secondary literature concerning the genre contributes to its relative neglect, despite the interest o f the voyages for general medieval literary and theological as well as Celtic studies. Some items of criticism, such as the seminal articles o f Thrall one of which is reprinted here - are of almost legendary unobtainability. Others, such as Dum ville’s article on dating the Nauigatio Brendani, seem to have escaped the attention o f a great many critics. Many readers would not think to look for James Carney’s most focused criticism of the structure o f the Nauigatio Brendani in a book review. In view o f this diaspora o f criticism, a work o f reference for the subject woul(J seem to be desirable. The present volume is an attempt to provide, in lieu o f a full study o f the voyages, a representative selection o f past and present criticism concerning the voyage tales and their context. M y immediate model was Lewis Nicholson, An Anthology o f Beow ulf Criticism (1963), a volume which through reprinting a balanced selection o f critical articles provided the reader with an impression o f the evolving critical discourse concerning a topic. I f my collection is able to be half as useful as Nicholson’s has proved to be I will feel the effort to be more than justified. Along with Nicholson, I have chosen to re-set all the items rather than to print facsimiles, as one of the pleasures o f his anthology was the opportunity it offered to read the articles afresh in a new print-face - causing one to notice new aspects of each work in the process. Re-setting has also allowed the opportunity to correct a few literals and minor errors and made possible the provision of cross-references to the other items also reprinted in the volume. I have refrained, however, from updating or standardising orthography - for example immram for Thrall’s dated imramy or medieval Latin nauigatio for classical Latin navigatio. The articles are to be understood as artefacts particular to their era, though it is to be noted that nothing has been selected for purely historical interest: all items in this volume have in some way or other provided a perspective which has not been entirely superseded by later work. In view o f likely readership it was decided only to include items in English. This, fortunately, has not led to the omission o f too much that is indispensable. D r Karen Jankulak has kindly translated the Latin passages from Mario Esposito’s article, which will serve to make his argument clearer for those who

T

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Preface

do not read Latin. These are to be found separately in an appendix to the book. It was decided, reluctantly, not to take excerpts from entire published books and monographs, but simply to confine the selection to discrete articles. Some articles were also too long to be included. In particular, two recent articles by Séamus Mac Mathúna represent fundamental studies o f the structure o f the immrama.1 It is to be hoped that they will soon appear in more accessible form as parts of his forthcoming book on early Irish voyages. The reader’s attention is drawn especially to these, as well as to the recent articles by Herbert and O’Loughlin, which appeared just prior to this volume going to press.2 It was decided after much consideration not to reprint any actual texts or translations. The translations of the immrama by Whitley Stokes are long out of print and would be o f use to students, but it was felt that to reprint them here would unbalance a volume which is intended primarily to provide a status quaestionum. What are badly needed are new editions and translations o f the immrama and it is to be hoped that such will appear soon. A guide to the extant editions and translations, appended to the introduction, should serve to direct readers to the best available sources. For advice on selection o f articles I would like to thank especially John Carey, David Dumville, Hugh Fogarty, Kevin M urray and Máirín N i Dhonnchadha. They are not to be held responsible for the final selection which appears here. To Michael Adams, Martin Fanning and the other staff at Four Courts Press are due especial thanks for their forbearance as two changes o f job and sundry other delays dragged out the editorial process. D r Karen Jankulak has collaborated in many aspects o f this volume, especially in proof-reading, compiling most of the index and in the compilation of a research bibliography which I hope will make the book a more useful reference. Without her support, as in so many aspects of my life, it would not have been possible.

1 2

M ac Mathúna, ‘T h e Structure’ ; idem., ‘M o tif and Episodic Clustering’ . Herbert, ‘ Literary Sea-Voyages’ : O ’ Loughlin, ‘ Distant Islands’ . T h e reader is also directed to chapter 9 o f O ’ Loughlin’s, Celtic Theology, which discusses theological aspects o f the Nauigatio Brendani.

Introduction

T

his volume presents a selection o f studies, spanning nearly a century, concerning early Irish voyage literature and its social as well as religious context. If, in the words of Walahfrid Strabo, exile in foreign lands (peregrinatio) was ‘second nature’ for the Irish, the voyage tales are the powerful literary evocation o f that exile.1 Medieval Europeans evidently found the vision of the Irish as pilgrims and exiles to be an attractive one. 125 manuscript copies of the most famous o f the voyage tales, the Latin Nauigatio sancti Brendani abbatis (‘Voyage o f St Brendan the Abbot’), are scattered across the length and breadth o f Europe. These bear witness to the impact o f the voyage genre upon European literature.2 T he Irish voyage tale was one o f the most frequently adapted and bowdlerised of medieval European genres and has continued in its popularity from the middle ages to the present day.3 Through the medium of iconography and popular literature, St Brendan remains the archetype o f the Irish exile for a more recent Irish diaspora. This continuing reputation of the ‘navigator saint’ and the popularity of his legend, however, has perhaps had the effect o f relegating the actual voyage narratives to the margins o f critical attention. The Latin Nauigatio Brendani and the four lengthy immram tales in Irish are still available only in cumbersome or dated editions. They mostly remain texts with which even students o f Celtic literature are more familiar in general terms than through focused reading. This is curious for works which are amongst the most attractive and accessible o f early Irish narratives.

THE VOYAGE GENRE

T h e itnmratna (literally ‘rowings about’) were envisaged as a distinct genre in literature in the early Irish language. What most distinguishes the immrama in structural terms is their leitmotiv o f the sea voyage, acting as a framing concept for a voyage which takes in encounters on a number o f islands in the ocean. This structure is central to the immram genre in a way which it arguably is not to tales o f the echtrat (‘adventure’ ),4 or loinges (‘exile’) genres, which may also

1 2 3 4

Vita Sancti Galli II §47. See the list by Orlandi and Burgess, in Burgess and Strijbosch, The Voyage o f S t Brendan, forthcoming. See Blamires, Herzog Ernst, Introduction; Strijbosch, De bronnen. Literally ‘outing’ . XI

XU

Introduction

accomplish their respective themes o f journeys to an otherworld and penitential exile via a sea voyage, but a voyage the detail o f which is not o f central interest. The A recension o f the early Irish tale lists (Trinity College H. 3. 17 and the Book of Leinster) catalogues eight tales under the incipit ‘ Imrama annso .i.’ (‘Here the voyages .. .’).5 Only three o f these tales carry the headword immram in their title: Immram curaig Máele Dúin (‘Voyage o f Máel D úin’s Boat’), Immram curaig Ua Corra (‘Voyage o f the U í Corra’) and ‘Imram Luinge Murcertaig maic Eared* (‘Voyage o f the ship o f Muirchertach son o f Ere’) - the five other tales under the general heading carry the headword loinges (‘exile’). T he first two o f these listed immrama are extant tales. An immram o f Muirchertach mac Ere, if it was separate from the surviving tale Aided Muirchertaig (‘Death o f Muircetach’), has not survived.6 Two extant immrama do not appear in this list: Immram Brain mac Febuil (‘Voyage o f Bran son o f FebuP) and Immram Snédgusa ocus Maic Riagla (‘Voyage o f Snédgus and M ac Riagla’). The ambiguity o f the head-words in recension A, along with the absence o f the immrama altogether from recension B, may suggest a late or unresolved development o f their identity as a separate genre. Irish tales were evidently rewritten to suit new genres or reclassified to highlight features which made them appropriate to a particular genre.7 Immram Brain appears in the Yellow Book o f Lecan under the incipit ‘Imram Bruin meic Febail andso 7 a eachtra annso sis’ (‘the voyage o f Bran son o f Febul here and his adventure here below’); in the tale lists it appears as ‘Echtra Brain’ (‘Adventure o f Bran’).8 T he extant tale has features in common both with other immrama and with some tales classified as echtrai. In such cases these genre classifications may not be absolute and M cCone has described as ‘a futile taxonomic exercise’ the attempts to rigidly define them.9 The confidence o f some critics in excluding Immram Brain from the immram genre may, accordingly, reflect a misplaced certainty as to the structural criteria by which early Irish genres are defined.10 All the immrama, as well as the Nauigatio and Vita Brendani, have in common the framing feature o f a voyage to more than one island and, with the exception o f Immram Snédgusa, the abandonment o f supernumerary

5 M ac Cana, The Learned Tales, 43. 6 Aided Muirchertaig § 3 6 -7 (ed. N ie Dhonnchada, 26) contains a dream sea-voyage sequence as a metaphor for Muirchertach’s life and princedom, which may be the reason for its genre attribution as an immram. 7 For example, the tale Fitigal Rónáin, which survives as a fingal (‘kin slaying’ ), but appears in the tale lists as an aided (‘death tale’ ). 8 M ac Cana, The Learned Tales, 53. 9 M cCone, Pagan Past, 79. 10 See Dumville, iEchtrae and Immram\ 87; Dillon, Early Irish Literature, 107.

Introduction

xiii

voyagers.11 Each o f the immrama and Latin voyage tales is, however, very much a distinct artefact. Immram Brain, the oldest o f the immrama, is a journey to the otherworld Ttr inna mBan (‘Land o f Women’), in this case an island, via one other island named Inis Subai (‘Island o f Jo y ’). The quest is inspired by a flowering branch being brought from the otherworld to Bran. Immram M ade Dúin, by contrast, is an Odyssey-like tale which takes in visits to some thirty-one islands. Máel Dúin, the child o f a warrior and a nun, pursues his father’s murderers over the sea. However he goes against the counsel o f a druid in taking with him on the ocean three foster-brothers and is fated to wander for many years.12 Immram Snédgusa is a very different tale again, which takes two brethren o f the fam ilia o f St Columcille (Columba) to eight islands, of which the ultimate is the Ttr Tairngire (‘Land o f Promise’ ), where Enoch and Elijah await the Day o f Judgement. Immram Ua Corray as it stands, is a late text involving three brothers who go upon the ocean as a penance for their crimes of brigandage.1314 Genre features as well as stock episodes and motifs are shared between the immrama. Tir inna mBan appears in Immram M ad e Dúin where it is clearly a borrowing from Immram Brain. Some incidents from Immram Snédgusa appear to derive from Immram Máele Dúin. Mac Mathúna has shown the dependence of Immram Ua Corra upon Immram Máele Dúin.H Carney has also convincingly demonstrated the dependence o f Immram Máele Dúin on the Nauigatio Brendani.IS Voyage episodes with ‘immram’ motifs also occur in Hiberno-Latin saints’ uitae (‘lives’) o f Sts Brendan and Ailbe.16 These uitae may be distinguished in their use o f such motifs, however, from Nauigatio Brendani, which is unique in terms o f genre in its abandonment o f the formulae o f the classic uita to focus exclusively upon an adventure by the saint on the ocean. In every respect, apart

11

12

13

14 15 16

In the Nauigatio Brendani these are three monks who have left without permission o f their abbot; in Immram Máele Dúin they are three foster-brothers who cast themselves into the sea after the voyagers; in Immram Ua Corra they are a crosán (‘jester’ ) a wright and a gillie. In Immram Brain the person who is left in Inis Subai is not explicitly a supernumerary. In Immram Snédgusa, the brethren themselves go onto the ocean without permission o f their abbot, which is the basic m otif o f the supernumerary. T h is is very similar to Nauigatio Brendani, where S t Brendan is aware o f the location o f the Terra repromissionis near to Ireland, but is forced to wander the sea before reaching it. T h e crime may be specifically that o f robbing the church: cf. Cain Adomndin § 15 (ed. Meyer, 3 0 - 3 1 ) ; Immram Mdele Dúin §33 (ed. Stokes, 8 2 -3). T h e voyage o f the U i Corra is referred to in the Litany o f Pilgrim Saints, which would suggest there may have been an earlier tale. See Hughes, ‘On an Irish Litany’ , 327. M ac Mathúna, ‘M o tif and Episodic Clustering’ , 2 5 0 -7 . Carney, Review o f Selmer, Navigatio [q.v.]. See M ac Mathúna, ‘T h e Structure’ ; Herbert, ‘ Literary Sea-Voyages’ .

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from its language, Nauigatio Brendani, is an immram. Along with the immrama, Nauigatio Brendani does not dwell on details outside o f the voyage: it is the story of the saint’s selection o f fourteen companions, with the addition o f three late-coming supernumeraries, and his journey for seven years upon the ocean, visiting a variety o f islands. This affinity o f the Nauigatio Brendani with the immrama, over the more conventional episodes o f voyaging in saints’ uitaey has fuelled debate concerning the priority o f the Nauigatio Brendani vis-à-vis the immrama. The problems involved with collating texts across language barriers defeat normal principles o f text edition and comparison, however, and many issues remain unresolved. However if, as we might suspect, immram is a rendering into Irish o f Latin nauigatio the possibility is that all the tales bearing the title immram are later than Nauigatio Brendani which, either in its current form (c. AD 800) or an earlier version, may thus have formed the archetype for the immram genre. Whether or not this may be the case, the matter is made a great deal clearer if we abandon any expectation that the immram tales are necessarily secular voyages to an ‘otherworld’ which is ambiguously Christian.17 Immram Snédgusa is a voyage o f monks to a Tir Tairngire - which the Wurzburg glosses make clear is the Promised Land of the ‘saints in the desert o f life’, probably the same destination as is visited by St Brendan in the Nauigatio Brendani.1* Immrama thus appear to be either journeys o f monks or of secular pilgrims, the latter maybe an allegory, perhaps a satire, upon the monastic peregrini.19 I f all the elements need not necessarily be o f Christian origin it is necessary to understand them nonetheless as products o f a Christian milieu. We will return to this question below.

THE RISE OF THE VOYAGE GENRE

At what point did the voyage genre emerge? T he priority o f the Latin voyage tradition must be noted. T h e earliest voyage tales which include the genre features o f the immrama are short episodes in saints’ uitae o f the late seventh and early eighth centuries. In M uirchú’s Vita Patricii (late seventh century) Maccuill, a sinner, is put out to sea in a craft o f one hide.20 This exile in a hide

17 18 19

20

For example Oskamp, The Voyage o f M ael Duiny 16. See D u m ville, 4Echtrae and Immram , 75fr. Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Paleohihernicus, 566. Esposito, 4A n Apocryphal’ [q.v.]. Dumville, ‘Tw o Approaches’ [q.v.]. There is an irreverence to the transference o f episodes from Immram Máele Dum to the Nauigatio Brendani which is occasionally striking: cf. Immram Máele Dúin §3 (ed. Stokes, 4 6 4 -5 ), where the travellers eat the birds, which in Nauigatio Brendani chant the Hours. M uirchú, Vita Patricii (ed. Bieler, The Patrician Texts, 104).

Introduction

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boat is the commencing motif o f all the immrama - whether as an exile for real crimes, or as a metaphor for the penitential element in monastic peregrinatio.2I In Adomnán’s Vita Columbae (before 704) Cormac Ua Liatháin and Baitán ua Nia Taloirc seek a hermitage in the ocean.22 Cormac, in particular, undergoes adventures which recur in immram tales. He takes with him a supernumerary voyager who brings one voyage to grief; he encounters a sea full o f living beasts in the very far north.23 In the Vita Albei, which Herbert would date to the early eighth century (r.721-2), the saint voyages from Corcomruad to an otherworld island, from which he returns with a flowering branch.24 These episodes are earlier than any o f the surviving immrama and have caused recent scholarship to seek the origins o f the voyage tale in the shorter episodes in the uitae, which were then drawn out in the Nauigatio Brendani and the immrama to form the basis o f entire narratives.25 This thesis is in contrast to the early tradition o f criticism, which saw the otherworld islands of the immrama as quintessential^ ‘pre-Christian’ in origin - despite such features in Immram Brain as birds which chant the canonical hours and references to Christ. How this expansion o f the episode into a narrative was accomplished remains uncertain. John Carey, in a recent article, has argued that the compiler o f the lost manuscript Cin Dromma Snechtai, perhaps in the ninth or tenth century, took the extant texts Immacallam in Druad Brain 7 inna Banfátho Febuil (‘Dialogue o f the Druid o f Bran and the Prophetess o f FebuP) and Immacallam Choluim Chille 7 ind Oclaig (‘Dialogue o f Columcille and the Youth’ ), which describe a land underneath Loch Foyle, and used these dialogues as a basis for a new tale o f a voyage to the same otherworld land - but located it across the ocean.26 Carey has also argued a strong case for Echtrae Condle being dependent on Immram Brain and the latter therefore being the oldest tale in Irish o f a voyage to an otherworld.27 T h e question central to this debate on origins becomes the status o f the Nauigatio Brendani in this transition of the otherworld from being a land under the earth or water to being a land in the ocean. Jam es Carney argued that the model for Immram Brain was a version o f the Nauigatio Brendani earlier than

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Wooding, ‘ S t Brendan’s Boat; Hillers, ‘ Voyages Between Heaven and Hell’ , 69. Adomnán, Vita Columbae 1 §20 (ed. Anderson and Anderson, 46); II §42 (ed. Anderson and Anderson, 16 8 -9 ). Adomnán, Vita Columbae II §42 (ed. Anderson and Anderson, 16 8 -7 1). Cf. Immram Ua Corra LXVI (ed. Stokes, 54-5). Vita Albei §44 (ed. Heist, Vitaey 1 3 0 -1 ) ; Herbert, ‘Literary Sea-Voyages’, 182. Wooding, ‘Navigatio’ , forthcoming; Herbert, ‘ Literary Sea-Voyages’ . M áel D úin also sets out from Corcomruad. Carey, ‘On the Interrelationships’ , 80. Carey, ‘On the Interrelationships’, 8 3 -6 ; see now also idem., A Single Ray o f the Sun , 3ff. Also see Carney, Studies, 2 9 2 -3 .

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that which we now possess.28 Carney thought this ur-Nauigatio was a voyage o f St Brendan of Birr, rather than Brendan the abbot o f Clonfert who is the hero of the extant Nauigatio. We may infer from references to his unpublished views on this matter that he saw this voyage as being from a starting point in the north o f Ireland, taking in only two islands: which are represented in the surviving Nauigatio by Insula deliciarum and the Terra repromissionis - and paralleled in Immram Brain by Inis Subai and Tir inna mBan respectively.2930 This sort of literary archaeology is intriguing but unresolveable, although it must be admitted that a plausible case can be made for Immram Brain*s construction from the immacollama materials regarding Lough Foyle, on the basis o f imitation o f the Nauigatio or an earlier Hiberno-Latin saint’s voyage. Th is argument would again return the origins o f the immrama to a Christian model, begging the question o f how it became amplifed into a tale o f many episodes. One possibility is the influence o f the Aeneid which, despite the overstatement o f its influence by Zimmer, has perhaps been neglected as a possible source for the immrama and Nauigatio Brendani*0 Another source o f inspiration for this amplification which should not be ruled out is the coincidence, around the same time as the extant Nauigatio Brendani and Immram Maele Duin were written, of lands being discovered in the north-west ocean. These new islands, which do appear to feature in the Nauigatio Brendani and immrama, may have inspired the inclusion o f further locations - real and imaginary - into the stories.31

28

Carn ey Review o f Selmer, Navigatio, 44 [q.v. 5 1]; Dumville, ‘Tw o Approaches’ , 88 n. 7 [q.v. 12 1J. 29 I presume that the reconstruction is on the basis o f the following considerations: 1) Immram Máele Duin refers to a voyage o f the brethren o f Brendan o f Birr; 2) the text Da Apstol décc na hErenn (‘Twelve Apostles o f Ireland’ ) depicts a debate as to whether S t Brendan of Birr or St Brendan o f Clonfert should go on a voyage to seek a paradise from which a flower has floated on the breeze; 3) the Munster departure and wanderings o f St Brendan may be contrasted with the entirely northern path followed by Barrind, who reaches a paradise which is adjacent to an island (Insula deliciosa/-arum [calqued in Immram Bran as Inis Subai]) o ff Slieve League in Donegal. From this we might reconstruct a simpler voyage tale from Slieve League to the Terra repromissionis, in response to a token and regard the M unster elements as an addition to the original content. Bran’s flowering branch and voyage would therefore be secularisations o f this archaic Brendan tale. 30

See the views o f Borsje, From Chaos, 164. On Zim m er’s view, see T h rall, ‘ Virgil’ s A en eid .

31

Sec Wooding, ‘T h e Latin Version’ , forthcoming; also idem., ‘Monastic Voyaging’ [q.v.J.

Introduction

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LI TE R AR Y C RI TI CI S M AND THE VOYAGE T A L E S

The voyage tales have received relatively limited critical attention. This is not surprising, perhaps, for the immrama which are after all works in a minority vernacular language. A comparison between two recent bibliographies compiled on similar criteria for the immrama and the Old English Seafarer, a lyric on the same subject matter as the immrama, is, however, telling. For the Seafarer, which represents only 126 lines o f verse, over 250 items are listed. B y comparison, the entire corpus o f immrama warrants barely 50 items.32 We might see this as circumstantial: a small corpus o f literature (Old English), fortuitously established as part o f the standard university English syllabus around the turn o f the twentieth century; compared with a much larger corpus in a more difficult language (Old and Middle Irish) which was o f limited priority to university syllabuses until the advent o f Gaelic nationalism - and then tales such as the immrama took second-billing to other more martial and ‘national’ stories, such as the Ulster Cycle tales. The Nauigatio Brendani, by contrast an internationally renowned tale in the common language o f the medieval church, has suffered from a more surprising critical neglect. Burgess and Strijbosch’s forthcoming bibliography of the entire Brendan legend lists items running into the hundreds.33 When we come to the items concerned with the early medieval sources, however, few enough o f these deal with other than literary historical questions. Only a handful o f articles look in a satisfactory way at the structure and themes o f the Nauigatio. For a text on a religious theme it has attracted only limited attention from theology and religious studies.34 We might consider some o f the reasons for this state o f the criticism as they provide the raison d'être for this volume, which brings together selected items out o f an extraordinarily scattered corpus o f critical writings. The Nauigatio Brendani has been almost continuously copied and published since the early middle ages. Its manuscript witness is copious and it was also amongst the earliest printed works in any language. No early manuscript survives from Ireland. This widespread, extra-Irish, appeal may serve to explain why the critics who have considered the voyages represent an extraordinary

32

33 34

M ary Clayton, ‘ Selected Bibliography’ , in Gordon, The Seafarer, 49 -64 . T h e immrama bibliography is for a projected reprint o f Van Hamel, Immrama, by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Clayton’s biography takes in a range of older literature than mine, but the comparison is still striking. Burgess and Strijbosch, The Legend o f S t Brendan, forthcoming. For recent study from this perspective see O ’Loughlin, ‘ Distant Islands’ ; Wooding, ‘St Brendan’s Boat’; Hillers, ‘Voyages to Heaven’ . Brief statements in Borsje, From Chaos, esp. Chapter 2; Curran, The Antiphonary, 16 9 -7 7 .

xvin

Introduction

Community of nations. It also serves to explain why edition o f the text has proved such a laborious process. The Bollandists were amongst the first to single Nauigatio Brendani out as a fiction, from a body o f hagiography which was still then accepted as broadly historical in character.35 This then may be seen to mark the commencement o f study o f the voyage tales as primarily literary phenomena. Editions o f the Nauigatio Brendani by Jubinal (1836), Schröder (18 7 1) and Moran (1872) inspired the first systematic study of the text tradition. The first edition to take account of more than a few manuscripts of the Nauigatio Brendani was Selmer’s edition (1959), based on 18 selected manuscripts, which was three decades in production. A new edition promised by Giovanni Orlandi in 1968, when a preliminary printing appeared on a very limited basis, has still not appeared. The principal immrama were edited by Whitley Stokes and Kuno M eyer between 1888 and 1905.36 That these very early editions were not in the course o f time all replaced by more satisfactory editions might attributed to mis­ adventure. A new edition o f the immrama was commissioned in the 1930s for the canonical Medieval and M odern Irish Series.37 Work on this edition, by Anton Van Hamel, proceeded throughout the 1930s and proofs had been set up by the beginning o f the war, in time to be corrected by Van Hamel. Wartime conditions prevented communication between the editor, in the Netherlands, and the publishers in Ireland. In 1941 the edition went to press without its glossary as well as the projected notes.38 Van Hamel’s death in November 1945 prevented revision o f the edition. Due to lack o f a glossary and satisfactory apparatus it is the only volume in its series which has never been reprinted. The consequence of the inadequacy of this beginner’s edition has been that a generation of students brought to the study o f Old Irish through the Medieval and Modern Irish editions o f such texts as Scéla mucc M eic Da Thó, Fingal Róndin and Crtth Gablach has not similarly been brought into contact with the immrama. A direct indicator of this nexus between the absence o f a teaching edition and critical neglect might be seen in the fact that the only immram for which a glossary is available, Immram Brain, is the only immram to attract more than passing attention since 19 4 1. A more recent edition o f Immram Mdele Diíin, amongst other short-comings, also fails to include a glossary.39 Immram Ua Corra and Immram Snédgusa remain principally accessible only through

35 36 37 38 39

Esposito, lSur la Navigatio\ 344. Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f Snedgus and M ac Riagla’; Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f Mael D uin’ ; Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage of the Hui Corra’ ; M eyer and Nutt, The Voyage o f Bran. Published by the Stationer’s Office and, after 1940, by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Van Hamel, Immrama. Oskamp, The Voyage o f M ael Duin.

Introduction

XIX

Stokes’s editions.40 Th is is a very unsatisfactory state o f affairs and confusing even for the professional student o f Celtic literature.

KEY T H E M E S IN C RI TI CI S M OF THE VOYAGE L I TE R A T U R E

Heinrich Zimmer’s characteristically brilliant but eccentric study ‘Brendans M eerfahrt’ (1889) was the first significant attempt to establish the order o f evolution of the voyage genre. On the basis, in particular, o f a reference to the Aeneid and episodes such as the island of giant sheep in Immram Máelc Dúin^1 he concluded that the Aeneid had formed the basis o f Immram Máele Dúin which in turn inspired Nauigatio Brendani. This order o f evolution, which fitted his developing vision o f an easy availability o f classical models in early medieval Ireland, was demolished by Thrall in 19 17 .42 The voyages in this way represented an early focal point for what would later become the ‘nativist/antinativist’ polemic, which debated the possible Christian inspiration of texts, such as the otherworld tales, which depicted what might be interpreted as preChristian Irish culture.43 M oran had published the Vita as well as the Nauigatio Brendani from the Dublin collection in 1872. Denis O’Donoghue, the parish priest o f Ardfert, made use o f these in an occasionally critical discussion o f the texts.44 Zimmer, also explored some aspects of the relationship between the Nauigatio Brendani and Vita Brendani, using the editions by Moran and Schröder.45 It was Charles Plummer, however, through his work on the Oxford manuscripts o f the Vita, who first fully investigated this relationship and, correcting the work o f his teacher Zimmer, established that the various versions o f the Vita Brendani are, with two unfortunately abbreviated exceptions, conflated with the Nauigatio to the extent that the recovery of a separate early Vita with a voyage episode is mostly impossible. His 1905 article, ‘Some New Light on the Brendan Legend’ (q.v. 1- 14 ) represents virtually the first and last word on the subject, though his views were supplemented by a few further details in his

40 41

42 43 44 45

See below, xxv-xxvii. Immram Mdele Dúin §53 4Haec ollim meminisse iuuabif (Virgil, Aeneid 1 1.203): ‘ some day it will please (you) to remember’ . T h e context in both texts is o f recalling the adventures through which the travellers have passed - including the Cyclops and other episodes which have parallels in Immram Máele Dúin. Thrall, ‘Virgil’s Aeneid and the Irish Imrama\ 4 4 9 -74 . On the Zimmer thesis o f refugee scholars see James, ‘Ireland and Western G aul’ , 3 6 2 -6 . See M cCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present, esp. 79 -80 . O ’Donoghue, Brendaniana. Zimmer, ‘Keltische Beiträge II’ .

XX

Introduction

introduction to Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae ,46 T h e textual relationships o f the Vita are tentatively examined by the recent work o f Sharpe and by Herbert’s discussion o f the links between the uitae o f Brendan and Ailbe.47 Séamus Mac Mathúna has also entered into this topic.48 His ‘Contributions to a Study o f the Voyages o f Saint Brendan and Saint M alo’ (q.v. 157-74 ), a study o f the important early Vita Brendani material in the different versions o f Vita MachutiSy is printed here. Despite the appearance o f editions by Stokes and Meyer, the immrama inspired little literary criticism in the early twentieth century. German and Irish efforts concentrated upon further edition o f the texts. A handful o f articles between 19 17 and 1923 by William Flint Thrall, a brilliant comparative critic whose work remains o f value, went almost unnoticed - yet they raised themes which remain fundamental to the literary history o f the immrama 49 T h e studies o f Thrall highlighted the possible Christian origin o f the immramay especially his 1923 article ‘Clerical Sea Voyages and the Imrama’ (q.v. 1 5 -2 1) which emphasised the setting o f the immrama in the context o f known voyages o f peregrinatio and first pointed out the genre links o f the voyages o f Cormac U a Liatháin with the immrama. Jam es F. Kenney remained non­ committal in his judgement upon the priority o f Immram Máele Dúin over the voyages o f the Brendan dossier,50 but M ary Byrne continued the anti-nativist interpretation in her 1937 article ‘The Punishment o f Setting A drift’ (q.v. 22-8) in which she disputed that the punishment o f voyaging itself, the commencing m otif o f all but one o f the immram tales, was o f anything other than Christian origin.51 The encounter o f these pioneering critics with the voyage genre was characterised by its brevity. Zimmer, Stokes, Plummer, M eyer and Kenney all made studies o f the voyages, but, apart from text editions, they stopped short o f producing a comprehensive study. The more lengthy monographs o f Nutt and Seymour, by contrast, tackled the central religious questions, but their authors’s lack o f competence in text edition led them to eschew questions o f the interrelationship of the texts. Seymour, for example, preferred to defend the orthodoxy that the immrama were ‘pagan’ texts with Christian ‘modifications’

46

Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, I xxxvi-xliii. A thesis in progress by F r Tom ás Ó Caoimh will hopefully further clarify the relationship between the uitae. See his earlier study, Ó Caoimh, ‘S t Brendan Sources’ .

47 48

Sharpe, Medieval Irish Saints' Lives, esp. 3 9 0 -1 ; Herbert, ‘Literary Sea Voyages’ . See especially, ‘T h e Structure’ .

49

Thrall, ‘ Virgil’s Aeneid and the Irish Imrama’ ; ‘ Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama*, [q.v.]; ‘T h e Historical Setting’ .

50 51

Kenney, ‘T h e Legend o f S t Brendan’, 5 1 - 6 7 ; Kenney, Sources, 40 6-20. Latterly Borsje has questioned this interpretation: ‘Die tragédie van Fergus de koning’ , 2 2 2 -6 .

Introduction

XXI

despite the evidence which he mustered for their being works with strong patristic and apocryphal relations.52 Subsequent to Zimmer, no one scholar appears to have felt, in the words o f Plummer, that it lay ‘within my province to pursue the Brendan legend further into the vernaculars’,53 or, conversely, to trace the sources o f the immrama in the Latin tradition. Where these polymaths feared to tread, few others followed. Van Hamel’s edition o f the Immrama did not serve to spark new enthusiasm. It was left to Selmer’s edition o f the Nauigatio Brendani (1959) to usher in a new era o f interest in the voyages. In i960 Esposito’s article ‘An Apocryphal “ Book o f Enoch and Elias” as a Possible Source o f the Navigatio Sancti Brendani (q.v. 2 7 -4 1) identified a fully Christian voyage tale, preserved in Godfrey o f Viterbo’s Pantheon, which he argued was the source o f the Nauigatio. While the specific identification remains a controversial case, the work o f Esposito reaffirmed the need to see the Terra repromissionis as a fully Christian eschatology.54 At the same time, in his review o f Selmer’s Nauigatio (q.v. 4 2 -5 1) Jam es Carney outlined a case for Immram Máele Dúin being wholly derivative o f the Nauigatio, reinforcing Thrall’s thesis - whose article he does not appear to have read - that the entire genre is .derived from the sorts o f voyage episodes which are found in the uitae written by Adomnán and M uirchú.55 This matter was never fully explored, but Carney’s conviction that Immram Brain was in origin a Christian tale led to a polemic between Carney and Proinsias M ac Cana in the 1970s. Two items from this debate are reprinted here: M ac Cana’s ‘The Sinless Otherworld o f Immram Brain’ (q.v. 52-72), in which he sketches the case for a non-Christian Tir inna mBan (‘Land of Women’), was one o f three articles in Eriu which opposed Carney’s view that this land is a Christian vision.56 Carney’s discussion o f the Lough Foyle texts ‘The Earliest Bran Material’ (q.v. 73-90) also sketched the model for the origins o f Immram Brain which has been articulated by John Carey in a series of studies.

52

N utt in M eyer and N utt, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. II; Seymour, Irish Visions o f the Otherworld, 6 2-96 . 53 Plummer, ‘Some N ew L igh t’, 4 1 [q.v. 14]. 54 Dumville, ‘Two Approaches’, 8 9 -9 5 [q*v. 1 2 2 - 1 2 7 ] restates Esposito’s case with respect to Immram Snédgusa as well as the Nauigatio, but does not necessarily favour Esposito’s solution - the term Terra repromissionis and the presence o f Enoch and Elijah are found in other texts, for example the Visio Pauli, apart from the specific apocryphon printed by Esposito. 55 A dissent from Carney’s view on the equation o f Insula deliciosa/-arum was published by Bieler: ‘ Two Observations Concerning the Navigatio Brendani' (q.v. 9 1 -3 ) . 56 M ac Cana, ‘M ongán M ac Fiachna and Immram Brain '; idem., ‘On the ‘ Prehistory’ o f Immram B ra in id e m ., ‘T h e Sinless Otherworld o f Immram Brain'.

XXll

Introduction

This polemic between M ac Cana and Carney arguably cleared the ground for a series o f new critiques o f Immram Brain in particular. Dumville, in an article which was unfortunately unavailable to be reprinted here, reconsidered the terms o f genre classification o f the tales.57 John Carey, in ‘The Location o f the Otherworld in Irish Tradition’ (q.v. 1 13-9) argued strongly for the entirely Christian context o f the location of an otherworld over the sea. Almost immediately following the appearance o f Selmer’s edition Giovanni Orlandi commenced a separate edition, based on a selection o f manuscripts different to that used by Selmer. T h e first fruits o f this were a monograph in Italian and a preliminary edition o f the text, both appearing in 1968 and long out o f print.58 This monograph was the first systematic study o f the literary history o f the Nauigatio Brendani. It is perhaps characteristic o f the study o f voyages that this monograph has been frequently overlooked, is now difficult to obtain and a project to translate it appears to have fallen through.59 Orlandi focused attention on the criteria for dating the Nauigatio and Dum ville’s 1988 article ‘Two Approaches to the Dating o f Nauigatio Sancti Brendani’ (q.v. 120-32) is a thorough critique of Orlandi’s criteria - for which he offers an alternative in the form o f Munster historiography.60 It is to be regretted, however, that the lead which Orlandi took in comparing the Nauigatio with the Vita Brendani has not been followed up. 1976 saw a new interest in St Brendan, however, with the appearance o f O’M eara’s translation o f Nauigatio Brendani and Tim Severin’s voyage in a reconstruction o f a medieval curragh ‘ to test the truth o f this remarkable story’ .61 Appearing in the Times Literary Suppplement in 1978 John O’M eara’s review o f Severin’s 1976 book, Brendan Voyage (q.v. 10 9 - 112 ) recalls a time when St Brendan was also newsworthy in the daily print media, on account o f Severin’s engaging and dramatic voyage. O’Meara, however, stresses the general absence of historicity in Severin’s reconstruction o f the events o f the Nauigatio, especially the claim which would see St Brendan’s voyage as having taken in North America. The debate concerning the supposed ‘ transatlantic voyage’ o f St Brendan brought to the fore the inadequacies o f the critical approaches to this text, which served to down-play its status as a monastic tale. Cynthia Bourgealt’s initial excursion in this field has now been built upon by B ray’s ‘Allegory in

57 58

Dumville, ‘Echtrae and Immram\ 87. Orlandi, Navigatio, vol i. T h e edition was printed as a limited edition in the same livery for student use. 59 Orlandi, Navigatio S. Brendani. A translation was undertaken by Michael Lapidge for the ‘Studies in Celtic History Series’ , but has not been completed. 60 Herbert, ‘ Literary Sea Voyages’ ; Wooding, ‘T h e Latin Version’ , forthcoming. 61 Severin, The Brendan Voyage, 3.

Introduction

xxiii

Navigatio sancti Brendani’ (q.v. 175-86).62 These studies focus upon the unique literary qualities of the Nauigatio, demonstrating it to be far from an historical account, but one which uses rich detail from monastic life upon the ocean to create an allegory in which the monks must live in stasis as a preparation for the revelation o f the last things. Viewed in its own right, and neither as a bowdlerisation o f Immram Máele Dúin nor o f a story o f an actual historical voyage, the Nauigatic Brendani emerges as a work o f literary genius with its symmetrical, oddly restrained, narrative o f a voyage as a metaphor for peregrinatio and the human existence in anticipation o f the life to come. Perhaps the failure o f criticism to see the allegory of the monastic life in the voyage in Nauigatio Brendani, as well as in the Old English poem Seafarer, was the consequence o f the failure to adequately define peregrinatio. Kathleen Hughes’s ‘The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage’ (i960) had laid the ground for a reassessment o f the tension between peregrinatio as an actual and also a literary phenomenon. Thomas Charles-Edwards’s ‘The Social Background of Irish Peregrinatio’ (q.v. 94-108) explored the heroic image o f the holy man in the early Irish church along lines well-established by Peter Brown.63 Though it is not concerned with the voyage literature directly it represents a fundamental text for the understanding of the status o f exiles who went out upon the ocean and for that reason is reprinted here. Colin Ireland’s ‘Hiberno-Latin Analogues o f the Seafarer’ (q.v. 143-56) is a little-known article which reaffirms the acceptance that the Old English poem Seafarer is on the subject o f peregrinatio.6* There is a need to investigate further the Christian milieu in which voyage literature was written. John Carey’s ‘Ireland and the Antipodes: the Heterodoxy o f Virgil o f Salzburg’ (q.v. 133-42) demonstrates the way in which the voyage and vision texts derive from a cosmography which may be reconstructed from a variety o f sources. Jacqueline Borsje’s work on the monsters in the Nauigatio Brendani and Immram Ua Corra also indicates many potential lines of interpretation.65 Tom O’Loughlin’s recent study of the Nauigatio has suggested that its Terra repromissionis sanctorum is a vision of the last things and o f the New Jerusalem. These studies point the way to rich themes of investigation of the religious content o f the voyages.66 Study o f the religious context o f voyage literature increasingly suggests the likelihood that the immram/nauigatio concept is largely a Christian allegory. As

62 Bourgealt, T h e Monastic Archetype’ . 63 See Brown, T h e Rise and Function’ . 64 See also Pope, ‘Second Thoughts’, 7 5 -6 . 65 Borsje, From Chaos. 66 A thorough investigation o f the relationship of insular vision tales such as Fis Adomnáin (‘ Vision o f Adomnán’ ) and In Tenga Bithnua ( T h e Evernew Tongue’ ) to the voyage literature, with which they share cosmographical details, is a desideratum.

XXIV

Introduction

Sir Richard Southern observed in his classic essay on the ‘journey m otif’ in the twelfth-century, romance literature adapted the allegory o f the monastic journey in the wilderness (desertum) to create a secular literature o f ‘desert land’ adventure.67 T he desertum in ociano (‘desert in the ocean’) o f the early Irish seems to have crossed over into secular literature at an earlier date than the twelfth century and, in the form o f the voyage narratives, produced an allegorical literature with a similarly sophisticated metaphor. In Aided Muirchertaig a druid interprets M urchertach’s dream voyage which the tale lists imply may have been the source for an immram6S - as a metaphor for his life and deeds. Various analogues are made in voyage literature between the mortal body and boats o f dead hide used by the voyagers.6^ T h e voyages require changes o f personnel, changes o f the covering of the vessel and the journeys cause actual temporal dislocation. T he travellers journey out o f their own time to come close to the ‘last things’ . The three immrama which do not feature monks as protagonists may be seen as early explorations o f the ‘journey m otif’, as secularisations o f the monastic concept to become a metaphor for life as a journey. T he later immrama, in this light, warrant attention as more than half-remembered versions o f the earlier tales. The articles by M urray and Clancy, printed for the first time in this volume, return our attention to these complex tales. Criticism o f the voyage genre emerges, in this brief survey, as an engagement with texts o f unusually rich and complex character and origins. The immrama are, in the words o f Dumville, ‘a small group o f texts which, though delightful, cannot be said to belong to the mainstream of medieval Irish literature’ .70 This is their strength, as much as weakness. They are texts which cross boundaries; rich in cosmographical and historical, as well imaginative detail. The notion o f exile was the leitmotiv o f the vision o f the early Irish peregrini. These tales are the literary visualisation o f that exile and o f the encounter o f Ireland with the world beyond its shores.

OBTAINI NG T E X T S OF THE VOYAGE T A L E S

The student whose interest is chiefly in the literary or religious aspects of these tales requires some guidance as to where to obtain access to texts and translations.

67 68 69 70

Southern, The Making, 20 9-44. See note 8 above. See Wooding, ‘S t Brendan’s Boat’ . ‘Echtrae and Immram\ 94.

Introduction

XXV

Nauigatio sancti Brendani abbatis The standard edition o f Nauigatio Brendani is that o f Carl Selmer (1959). The edition is mostly satisfactory, but should be used in conjunction with the corrigenda o f Carney.71 New editions are in progress by Giovanni Orlandi (Milan) and Michaela Zelzer (Vienna).72 Two translations have been published o f this edition, o f which that by J J . O’Meara is the superior and takes account o f Carney’s corrigenda.73 Immram Brain Two complete editions with translation and glossary have been made o f Immram Brain. The more recent, by Séamus Mac Mathúna, consists o f a textus restitutus, translation, diplomatic texts and glossary.74 The earlier, by Kuno Meyer, is an edition with parallel translation and glossary, based on Rawlinson B 5 12 with variae lectiones from other manuscripts.75 Anton Van Hamel provides a critical text o f Immram Brain based on a variety o f manuscripts, but no translation or glossary.76 Richard Best and Osborn Bergin, as well as Vernam Hull, also edited fragments o f the text.77 M eyer’s translation is generally reliable and was reprinted by Llanerch Press in 1995. Gerard M urphy also edited and translated quatrains 33-60 from Royal Irish Academy M S 23 N 10 in a readily obtainable edition.78 Immram curaig Máele Dúin The prose text o f Immram curaig Máele Dúin is edited in three complete editions: by Whitley Stokes, based on Lebor na hUidre collated with the Yellow Book o f Lecan;79 by Hans Oskamp, based on the Yellow Book o f Lecan;80 and by Van Hamel.81 There is also a diplomatic edition o f the

71 72 73

Carney, Review o f Selmer, Navigatio, 3 7 -4 0 [q.v. 4 2 -4 5 ]. D. Stifter, pen. comm. O ’Meara, The Voyage; reprinted with introduction by J.M . Wooding in Barron and Burgess, The Voyage. Another translation is by Webb in Lives o f the Saints, 3 3 - 6 7 , reprinted as The Age o f Bede. 74 M ac Mathúna, Immram Brain: critical textus restitutus 33-45; translation 4 6 -5 8 ; diplomatic texts 5 9 - 1 1 8 ; glossary 2 1 5 - 3 2 . 75 M eyer and Nutt, The Voyage o f Bran: text and translation, vol. 1, 2 - 4 5 ; glossary vol. I, 9 1-8 . 76 Van Hamel, Immrama, 9 -1 9 . 77 Best and Bergin, Lebor na hUidre: edition o f fragment at 306, corresponds to Van Hamel 11. 2 7 3 -3 0 2 - from: HU in chertle ... Hull, ‘An Incomplete Version’, 4 0 9 -19 is an edition o f T C D H 4.22. 78 Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics, 9 2 -10 0 . 79 Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f M ael D uin’ . 80 Oskamp, The Voyage o f M áel Dúin, 9 9 -17 9 . 81 Van Hamel, Immrama, 2 6 -5 3 .

XXVI

Introduction

Lebor na hUidre version.82 Stokes and Ferdinand Lot also made a French edition with translation.83 Both Oskamp and Stokes provide parallel translation, but no complete glossary. The poetic version o f Immram curaig Máele Dúin, which is derivative o f the prose, is also edited and translated by Oskamp. M urphy provides edition and translation o f stanzas 8 6 -10 3 .84 Van Hamel and M eyer also provide edition but no translation o f the poetry.85 Immram Snédgusa ocus M aic Riagla This exists in a poetic version, which is earlier than the prose, and two prose versions, A and B. Van Hamel edited the poetic version without translation.86 Thurneysen edited it with German translation.87 An English translation, based on these editions with additional readings has been published by Donncha O hAodha.88 It is highly recommended. Stokes edited and translated prose version A from the Yellow Book o f Lecan,89 and later edited and translated prose version B (Merugud cléirech Choluim Chille) from the same manuscript.90 Van Hamel edited prose version A without translation.91 Tomás O Maille also edited prose version B with later poetry from B M Additional M S 30, 5 12 and the Book o f Fermoy.92 Thurneysen published an edition o f B and Germ an translations o f A93 and B.94 Kevin Murray has completed a critical edition o f prose (A and B) and poetry with translation and glossary (for the degree of M Phil at University College Dublin). It is hoped that it will be published shortly. Immram curaig Ua Corra Whitley Stokes’ remains the only complete edition and translation o f the early text, printed from the Book o f Fermoy with the addition o f the first

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Best and Bergin, Lebor na hUidre, 58 -6 6 . L o t and Stokes, ‘ Voyage de M ael-D uin’ . Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics, 10 0 -5. Meyer, ‘ Maeldúins Meerfahrt’ , 14 8 -6 5 ; Van Hamel, Immrama, 5 4 -7 7 . Van Hamel, Immramay 8 6 -9 2. Thurneysen, Zwei Versionen, 2 - 1 4 . Ó hAodha ‘T h e Poetic Version’ . Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f Snedgus and M ac Riagla’ . Stokes ‘T h e Adventure o f S t Columba’s Clerics’ . Van Hamel, Immrama, 8 2 -5 . O Máille, ‘ M erugud cléirech Choluim Chille’ . Thurneysen, ‘ Wie Snedgus und M ac Riagla’ . Thurneysen, Zwei Versionen, 3 1 - 4 2 .

Introduction

xxvii

lines 2-7 3 from the Early Modern version in Royal Irish Academy 23 M 50.95 Van Hamel’s edition, without translation, follows the same model.969 78 Séamus M ac Mathúna has now edited the Early M odern version in full.9? The student who wishes to study these texts is in many ways best served by the editions o f Stokes and Meyer, though some o f the conventions used by them, such as word-division, differ from modern standards. Their translations also tend to archaism, which make them uncomfortable to read. The Vita Brendani and Betha Brénnain Versions o f the Life o f Saint Brendan survive in both Latin ( Vita Brendani) and Irish {Betha Brénainn). These, with two exceptions, have been separately conflated with the Nauigatio Brendani at some point in their transmission, mostly in the process unfortunately displacing the separate voyage story o f the V it a * Charles Plummer, and some later critics, refer to the Vita by Codex (Salmanticensis, Insulensis, Kilkenniensis), or by manuscript shelf-mark. James F. Kenney lists the Vita versions as V B 1 - V B 7 ." M ac Mathúna maintains Kenney’s divisions, but he designates V B7 as VB8, inserting Da apstol décc na hErenn (Kenney’s NB6) as V B 7 .100 Richard Sharpe has revised this taxonomy, naming the Latin versions Salmanticensis (S i and S2), Oxoniensis (O) and Dubliniensis (D), which I will follow here.101 Four main Vita versions in Latin, three conflated with the Nauigatio ( S i, O and D) and one unconflated, but heavily abbreviated (S2), have survived. S i and S2 are edited by Heist.10210 3O is edited by Plummer.101 D is edited in full by Grosjean and in part by M oran.104 None o f these are translated, apart from sections o f D which were translated by Denis O’Donoghue.105

95 96 97 98

99 100 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 105

Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f the Húi Corra’ . Van Hamel, Immrama, 9 6 - 1 1 1 . M ac Mathúna, 'Clann Ua gCorra'. T h a t there was an early medieval Vita Brendani with a separate voyage tale to the Nauigatio is suggested by the Litany o f Pilgrim Saints, which cites details unique to the Vita. See Hughes, ‘On an Irish Litany’, 32 3. Kenney, Sources, 4 1 2 - 1 4 . M ac Mathúna, ‘T h e Structure and Transmission’ , 3 2 1 - 4 . Sharpe, Medieval Irish Saints ’ Lives, 3 9 0 -1. Heist, Vitae, 5 6 -7 8 ( S i ‘ Vita et Navigatio’ ); 3 2 4 - 3 1 (S 2 ‘ Vita Altera’ ). Plummer, Vitae, vol. 1, 9 8 - 1 5 1 . Grosjean, ‘ Vita S. Brendani’; M oran, Acta Sancti Brendani, 1-2 6 . Brendaniana, 17 8 -2 6 3 .

XXVlll

Introduction

Also extant are two recensions o f the Irish Betha and a third Irish text entitled Da apstol décc na hErenn which has links to both the Vita and the Navigatio traditions. The principal Betha is edited and translated by Plummer.106 Da Apstol is edited and translated by Plummer.107 T h e Lism ore Betha o f St Brendan is edited and translated by Stokes.108 Stokes’s translation is reprinted by Llanerch Press. The earliest version o f Vita Albei, o f interest to the study o f Vita Brendani, is edited by W.W. Heist.109 A later version, edited by Plummer, is translated by De Paor.110

106 10 7 108 109 1 10

Plummer, Bethada, ed. 4 4 -9 5 ; trans., vol. II, 4 4 -9 2 . Plummer, Bethada, ed. 9 6 -10 2 ; trans., vol II, 9 3 -8 . Stokes, Lives o f the Saints, trans., 2 4 7 -6 1. Heist, Vitae y 1 1 8 - 3 1 . D e Paor, St Patrick 's World, 2 2 6 -4 3 .

Some New Light on the Brendan Legend* Charles Plummer

H

aving lately had occasion to examine carefully the two collections o f Latin Lives o f Irish Saints contained in the Bodleian M S S . Rawlinson B 485 and 505,1 I have come to some conclusions which I hope to lay before the readers o f this Zeitschrift in a subsequent article. On the present occasion I desire to direct their attention to the life o f St Brendan contained in these M S S 2 which is o f exceptional interest. It is a highly conflate structure and comprises elements which I have not found in any other Latin source; and some which I'have not found anywhere else. Th e general scheme o f the work is the conflation o f a Vita Brendani (VB) with the Navigatio Brendani (NB). So far as this goes it is not peculiar. The same is true of the life printed by Cardinal Moran in his Acta Brendani from the Codex Kilkenniensis;3 o f the L ife by Capgrave,4 and (to some extent) o f the first life o f Brendan in Codex Salmanticensis.5 But the recension o f R differs, as we shall see, from all o f these in important points. * i 2 3

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First published in Z C P 5 (1905), 1 2 4 - 4 1 . I call these two M S S for shortness R 1 and R 2 respectively. T h e recension common to both I cite as R. R 1 fo. 72ff, R 2 fo. io icff. M oran, Acta, 10, note. (I cite this work as M .) T h e editor has detached the Navigatio from the Vita and printed it separately, 8 5 - 1 3 1 . Seeing that in the works o f Schröder (Sanct Brandan, cited as S by pages and lines) and Jubinal (La légende) we have texts o f the Navigatio in its uncompounded form, it would have been more interesting for purposes o f comparison, had the editor printed the text o f Cod. Kilk. continuously. In N B the text o f R is nearer to that o f Jubinal than to S. Schroder’s text seems to me inferior to Jubinal’s. I cite this by the pages and lines o f vol. I o f D r Horstmann’s new edition o f Capgrave (Nova Legenda Anglie). Ed. de Sm edt and de Backer, Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae; cited as C S . There are two lives o f Brendan in C S , cc. 1 1 3 - 5 4 and 7 5 9 - 7 2 .1 cite these (by their sections) as C S 1 and C S II respectively. O f the former the first four and a half sections are taken from N B . (At the bottom o f c. 1 2 1 there is a long lacuna in the text, extending from S 10 ,35 t0 S 16 ,2 7. O f this lacuna there seems to be no indication in the M S , if we may judge from the silence o f the editors.) C S 11 is an unconflated text o f V B . It has however been a good deal abridged to make it more suitable for reading aloud (cf. §17: iectionalis modus multa cogit nos transilire’ ).

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It will be well to give an outline o f the V B and N B respectively, so far as regards the wanderings o f Brendan. The V B 6 after giving an account o f Brendan’s birth, his education by St Ita and St Ere, and his early miracles, tells how on his ordination as priest he was filled with the longing to go on pilgrimage, and prayed to God to show him some terra secreta7 to which he might retire. In answer to this prayer he is shown from the summit o f Slieve Aughty8 a distant island, the attainment o f which is promised to him.9 Accordingly he builds three skin covered coracles each holding thirty men,10 and with these he sets forth. They wander about for five years,11 seeing many islands, but not the one which they sought. They are nearly engulfed by a

6 I have not yet discovered a text o f V B in its unabridged and uncompounded form. For the determination o f its contents we have: C S I § 1 - 5 ; C S 11 (abridged recension); the elements (or most o f them) in M ., R., and Capgrave which cannot be traced to N B ; and the Irish Life printed by Stokes from the Book o f Lismore (cited by the lines o f Stokes’ edition, Lives o f Saints, as L S ). T h is is however incomplete, the latter part being taken, as Stokes has pointed out, from the Fis Adamnain. T h e part so taken does not however begin, as Stokes says (354), with 1. 3882, but in 1. 3880 with the words ‘ocus no æmdis’ , cf. Windisch, ed., ‘Die Vision’, 1 9 3 , 1. 10. It is plain that in L S these words do not cohere with the context, for they involve, inter alia, a transition from the preterite (‘ ni ra laimset’) to the secondary present (‘no æmdis’ ). I cannot therefore agree with Zim m er (‘ Keltische Beiträge if , 140), that this is a ‘ geschickter Übergangssatz’ . Z . has seen correctly the point o f junction o f the two narratives, but he has failed to see how the two narratives came to be conjoined; and this failure vitiates, as we shall see, several o f his arguments. T h e true explanation I suspect to be simply this: that in the ‘Vorlage’ o f the Lismore scribe the Life of Brendan was followed by Fis Adamnain, but that owing to some mutilation the end o f the former and the beginning o f the latter were lost. T h e scribe however copied straight ahead without noticing the lacuna. (We have an exact parallel to this in the omission o f mediaeval and modern cataloguers to notice that owing to a similar mutilation o f R 1 there is at fo. 50 a sudden transition from the life o f Fursa to that o f Moling.) As far as it goes L S gives a recension o f V B , though there are contaminations due to N B . (See below.) 7 So C S I §4; Capgrave 138 ,22; ‘talam derrit’ , L S 3556. 8 ‘ M ons Aitche’ C S II §8; (‘ mons quidam’ C S I §4) ‘i sliabh ndaidche’ L S 35 6 5 , which puzzles Stokes, 3 5 1 , 4 1 1 . We have only to treat the d as assimilated to the n and superfluous. Read: ‘i sliab n-Aidche’ . 9 In L S (above) he is promised, not this island, but the tir tairngire, terra repromissionis. This is a contamination with N B . 10 C S I §5; C S II §9; L S 3573ff. Not in M or R because, as we shall see, they have, prior to this point, made the transition to the text of N B . C S 1 makes the transition just here; and it shows the crudeness o f the conflation that immediately after the mention o f the building o f the three coracles it continues from N B : ‘T u n c Brandanus suis precepit nauem intrare’ ; and we never hear o f the three coracles again. In L S the boats are mentioned in the plural at 3608 and 36 19 . 1 1 C S il §9, L S 359 4; though the latter 360 i f f inconsistently gives an account o f how they celebrated Easter on the whale’s back for seven successive years. T h is is a contamination with N B . (See below, note 17.)

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whirlpool, but Brendan calms it.12 The Devil alights upon the mast, and shows Brendan the entrance to hell. One o f his disciples asks to be allowed to see it, and dies at the sight. Brendan revives him, ‘non sine magno labore’ .13 They reach a shore on which they find a dead girl ioo feet long. Brendan raises her and baptises her, after which she dies again.14 At length they reach a lofty island in which they see a church and hear singing. But they fail to find an entrance, and a tablet is let down to them which bids them return home.15 They see a limpid stream, o f which they desire to drink; but Brendan shows them that it really issues from the D evil.16 After five years’ wandering they return;1718and Brendan visits his former fosterers St Ere and St Ita.lS The latter tells him that his failure is due to the fact that he had sought the sacred land in the skins o f dead animals; and bids him build a ship o f boards. This he does.19 His ‘artifices et fabri’ ask to go with him as a reward for their labours, which he grants; also a preco or crosan, making sixty in all.20 After a visit to St Enda in Aran, they come to an island full o f mice as large as cats. The preco sacrifices himself, and receives heaven in return.21 Their smith dies at sea. They reach a small island full o f pigmy-shaped demons. They anchor o ff it seven days,22 and lose their anchor. Brendan blesses the hands o f the priest who ministered to them, and he made an excellent anchor, though he had never done smith’s work before.23

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L S 3617fr (not in R). R 1 fo. 85d, R 2 fo. 112 a ; L S 3625fr. R 1 86a, R 2 112 a ; L S 3678fr. Zim m er (‘Keltische Beiträge il’ , 14 2 ) points out that this seems to be a reminiscence o f the part which Brendan plays in the Liban legend, LU . 40a 3o ff C S II §9; R 1 86b, R 2 1 12b; L S 3 6 9 1fr ‘Benedicentes uero aquas ... alleluia dicentes ... uiderunt dyabolum immundos liquores effundentem ut bibentes mortificaret’ , R 1 86b, R 2 112 b ; L S 3 70 7fr So R , rightly; L S 3 7 1 7 (by contamination) says seven years; see above note 1 1 . C S II §10; M §12; R 1 86c, R 2 1 12b ; L S 3 7 1 7 f r ‘Terram enim a Domino tibi ostensam non inuenies in pellibus mortuorum animalium, quia terra sancta est ualde, in qua sanguis humanus non est effusus’ , etc. H e therefore goes to Connacht, ‘quia ibi magis apta ligna esse pro hoc opere credidit’, R 1 86c, R 2 112 c ; L S 3725fr R 1 86c, R 2 1 12c: ‘quidam preconis in populo gerens officium ... et totondit [BrendanusJ eum ... ut signum religionis in capite deferret’ (this o f the tonsure is peculiar to R); L S 3735fr Cf. CS II §10. R 1 R 2 (above); L S 3741fr Brendan says: ‘mittite ancoram hic in mare, nemo enim ascendit in terram istam nisi is qui bella humana gerit, et sanguinem fundit’ , R 1 86d, R 2 1 i2d . T h is island therefore is the very antithesis o f the stainless island which they were seeking. R 1 86d, R 2 1 1 2d; L S 37 6 0 fr Note that though both texts speak o f taking with him ‘ fabros et artifices’, ‘ soera ocus gobhuinn’ in the plural, it seems here to be implied that they had only one smith. T h is is probably truer to the original text o f V B , in which 1 suspect that Brendan took with him a smith, a carpenter, and a preco, answering to the three additional monks in N B ; cf. S 6, 2 5 -3 0 . In the Imram curaig Ua Corra, the smith

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They reach another island where they find a stone church and a very aged man praying in it. He warns them to fly from a monstrous cat living on the island. They embark, but the cat pursues them. At Brendan’s prayer a beast arises from the deep and fights with the cat, and both sink. They return to the old man, who tells them that he was the last o f twelve who had come from Ireland. He shows them how to find the land which they sought, receives the Eucharist from Brendan and dies.24 They reach a lovely land where an old man bids them stop as they have reached their goal.25 Brendan wishes to stay altogether, but he is bidden to return to Ireland and preach to the Irish. The aged man receives the Eucharist and dies. After two years’ wandering they return.26 Then follow in R various incidents o f Brendan’s life in Ireland and Britain up to the time o f Brendan’s death. These do not so much concern us, as they do not affect the question o f the conflation o f the Vita with the Navigation and they are almost all to be found either in M , C S n, or Capgrave.27

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asks to be taken on the voyage in return for his labour in building the coracle, Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f the Húi Corra’, 38; cf. Zimmer, ‘ Keltische Beiträge ll’ , 18 7, 200. R 1 87a, R 2 1 13a; L S 3787ff. T h is incident is in the Litany, L L . 3 7 3c 60; and it should be noted that this agrees with V B against N B as to the number o f Brendan’s companions, ‘ trifichit fer’ . Zim m er has pointed out (‘ Keltische Beiträge n’ , 132 —3) that this incident is a variant o f the story in L L . 283a i4ff; and the connexion is seen very clearly in the R version. T h e monstrous cat had developed from ‘unus catus nobis ualde amabilis’, which the pilgrims had brought with them to the Island. This is clearly the cattine o f L L . 283a 17. T h e pilgrims o f the latter story however were only three; the Litany agrees with V B in making them twelve. T h is is important. ‘ En cernitis terram bonam ualde et sanctam, et nullo humano sanguine pollutam, nec ad sepulturam alicuius hominis exaratam’ , R* 87b, R 2 1 13a; a passage which should be connected with the words o f S t ha cited above; c.f. C S II § 11; L S 3 8 4 3 fr Yet. rather inconsistently, the old man himself is buried there when he dies. Here, after a description o f the land and o f the old man, L S practically ends; for we have seen that the remainder belongs to a different work. This old man, as Zimmer points out, ‘ Keltische Beiträge il’ , 3 0 1, is very different from the youth (iuuenis) who welcomes the pilgrims to the Land o f Promise in N B . R 1 87c, R 2 1 13b; C S II §12. Yet even in these cases R is often clearer and better than any o f the other texts; e. g. the penitential object o f Brendan’s voyage to Britain comes out much more clearly in R. Brendan on reaching Britain consults Gildas as to what his penance should be; and the conflict with the lions (C S II, §14) is the penance imposed on him by Gildas. After leaving Gildas, ‘peruenit ad insulam Britannie nomine Auerech, et ibi fundauit ecclesiam proponens ibi manere usque in finem’ . Here ‘ in rupe eminenti prope mare’ he saw the two beasts fighting, one o f which was saved by calling on Brigit. H e goes to Ireland in order to enquire the reason. After this he returns to Britain, ‘et fundauit ecclesiam nomine Beldach in regione cui nomen Heth. Uidit quoque ibi mirabilem uisionem quam fratribus non reuelauit nisi quod Britannia maximam heresim ante iudicium ultimum teneret’ . In consequence o f this he returns to Ireland. R 1 88d, R 2 114 a . T h e order o f events is much clearer here than in the other sources. There are also some incidents peculiar to R: a seven days’ fast in which seven o f Brendan’s monks die, R ' 87d, R 2 1 13c. T h e fishermen o f the River Fergus refuse him fish, and the fish desert the river, ibid.;

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I turn now to the N B. This need not detain us so long, partly because it is better known, owing to the publication o f the text by Jubinal in 1836, by Schröder in 18 7 1, and by M oran in 1872; partly because, though the travel incidents are more numerous, the general structure o f the narrative is much simpler. The N B , without any reference to Brendan’s earlier life, tells how he received a visit from Barrinthus (Barrfind) and heard from him the story o f his visit to the land o f promise with his disciple M ernoc.28 Fired by this tale, Brendan resolves to imitate his example; and fourteen o f his monks (to whom three are subsequently added), agree to accompany him. Th ey make a skincovered coracle and set forth. They wander for seven years and meet with various adventures, always however returning to certain points at certain seasons o f the ecclesiastical year, at Maundy Thursday to the Sheep Island, at Easter Eve to the Whale, at Easter Day to the Paradise o f Birds, at Christmas to the Isle o f the family of Ailbe.29 At length they successfully reach their goal, and return to Ireland where Brendan relates their adventures to his other monks, and shortly afterwards dies. Thus as far as regards the travels of Brendan the chief points o f difference between the two narratives V B and N B are as follows: -

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In V B Brendan sets out in search of a distant island revealed to him in answer to his prayer for a terra secreta to which he might retire.

fifty royal towns are made desolate by his word, because they offended him, R 1 88a, R 2 T13c; Brendan tells how he left a bronze cup on the back o f the whale, and found it again the next year, R 1 90a, R 2 1 1 5b. (I doubt if this really belongs to the text o f V B ; it looks like an interpolation from N B ; cf. S 20, 1 0 - 1 4 ; we have already seen reason to suspect that the mention o f the whale in L S 30 0 4ff is due to contamination with N B . If this surmise is correct, the whale disappears from V B altogether.) In the curious story, given also by Capgrave (15 2 ,3 1), o f the man with two wives, R inserts the explanation, that this was ‘ secundum legem illius temporis’ , R 1 90b, R 2 1 15 c ; the story how they sailed under an island supported by columns (M §26), was told by Brendan to his disciples ‘in desertis Gallie’, R 1 90c, R 2 1 15c. T h is is interesting as extending Brendan’s travels to Gaul, and might be cited in their favour by the adherents o f the untenable theory that the Britannia to which Brendan voyaged was Britanny. T h e mutilated verses in L L . 366 lower margin, seem to take Brendan to Tabropane, Jordan, and M ount Zion. T h e latter part may be due to an interpretation o f the phrase ‘Land o f Promise’ in a biblical sense. R has the parallel form Ternoc; S and Codex Kilkenniensis give M ernocat, with an additional suffix. I do not know whether he can be identified with any of the numerous Ernans, Em ins, M ernocs, Ternocs, or M omernocs o f the Irish Calendars. He had a monastery in an island ‘ iuxta montem lapidis’ . T h is is a translation o f Sliab Liac, i.e. Slieve League in Co. Donegal. Barrfm d’s name is preserved in Kilbarron, N . o f Bally shannon. Further north is a place called S t Ernan’s. T h e island therefore must be sought in the Bay o f Donegal. ‘Deus proposuit [disposuit R, predestinauit M J uobis quatuor loca per quatuor tempora usque dum finiantur septem anni peregrinationis uestre’ , etc. S 2 1 , 2 - 4 .

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In N B he sets out in search of the terra repromissionis o f which he had been told by Barrinthus.30 In V B he sets out in the first instance with three skin-covered coracles and ninety companions, returning later to Ireland and starting afresh with a single wooden boat and sixty companions. In N B he sets out with a single skin-covered coracle, and only seventeen companions. In both narratives the wanderings cover a period o f seven years. But in V B this period is divided into (a) period o f five years ending in failure owing to the character o f the boats; (b) a period o f two years, ultimately crowned with success. In N B the seven years are continuous.

We have now to see the different ways in which these two narratives have been conflated by the authorities which have combined them. A. We have already seen31 the crude mechanical way in which this is done in C S I. This authority follows V B up to and including the building o f the three coracles. Then it suddenly takes up the narrative o f N B at the point where Brendan embarks in the single coracle. Here the whole o f the V B narrative is sacrificed except the introductory § 1-5 ; while the introductory part o f N B containing the visit of Barrinthus and his narrative is sacrificed, the remainder being retained.32 B. In M the conflation is effected in the following way: This authority follows the V B up to and including Brendan’s ordination as priest.33 It then says that Brendan founded many monasteries and cells, adding however that the majority of these were not founded till after his return from his voyage in search o f the land of promise.34 It then inserts the text o f the N B ;35 after which it takes up the story of Brendan’s foundations at Inis-da-Drommand and Clonfert, and so continues the story o f V B up to Brendan’s death and burial.36 In other words, M retains the narrative of V B for Brendan’s life before and after his voyage, merely substituting for the travel incidents o f V B those of N B. In this way the inconsistencies o f C S I and the still more serious inconsistencies o f R are avoided, and the junction is not unskilfully made. There remains however the

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In an Irish Life o f Brendan in the Brussels M S . 5 10 0 -4 , 13 his voyage is occasioned by the sight o f a wonderful flower from the Land o f Promise; see Stokes, ed., Félire H úi Gor main, IX, X. See above note 10. We have seen, above note 5, that there is a considerable lacuna in the text o f N B in C S I; but this is probably accidental, not intentional. M §1—1 1. M § 11; cf. Zimmer, ‘Keltische Beiträge II’ , 293.

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inconsistency, which is common to M and R, that whereas the conclusion o f N B implies that Brendan’s death took place shortly after his return to Ireland, the incidents appended to it by M and R from V B imply a considerable period o f activity subsequent to that return. Capgrave has avoided this. C. And perhaps the most ingenious mode o f combination is that adopted by Capgrave or the authority which he followed. Capgrave’s narrative follows the V B up to and including Brendan’s prayer for a terra secreta to which he might retire.3536 37 It then makes the visit of Barrinthus the answer to this prayer,38 and so leads into the narrative o f the N B which is followed to the end, after which a few o f the incidents o f Brendan’s later life are added from V B .39 In this way also inconsistencies are avoided, except the not very salient one, that what Brendan obtained was not precisely what he had asked for. D. But the account which involves the most serious inconsistency is that given or adopted by R. We ought however to be very grateful to this compiler, since, owing to his blindness to this inconsistency, he has preserved for us a nearly complete version o f V B, which so far has not been discovered in any Latin source (C S II being considerably abridged), and only imperfectly in the Irish Life printed by Stokes. R follows V B up to and including the vision o f the distant island from the mountain-top.40 It then makes Brendan address his monks and say: ‘my heart is fixed on seeking the land o f promise, for this is the land o f which Barrinchus (sic) spoke when he visited’ - we expect ‘when he visited me’ - but no, it runs: ‘when he visited S t Brendan’ . And so the text o f the N B is introduced and continued to the end.41 We have seen that near the end o f the N B it is stated that Brendan on his return narrated to his other monks the adventures which he had had. R takes advantage o f this to tack on here the remainder o f V B ;42 including the travel portion of it, which C S i, M , and Capgrave have omitted.

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Moran states, Acta, io, that the text o f N B in Cod. Kilk. is ‘ imperfect’ ; but he does not tell us in what respects it is so. M § 12 -2 9 . 138, 2 2 -6 . Ibid. 27fr. One o f the M S S . o f the Irish Life seems to have taken a step in this direction, the visit o f Barrinthus following the prayer for the ‘talam derrit’, see L S 3 5 1. 1 5 2 ,2 0 -15 3 ,3 7 . ‘ M ons longe a mari positus’ , R 1 74d, R 2 103b. It is characteristic o f R to omit names o f places and persons. Hence, after Barrinthus’ departure has been mentioned, Brendan addresses his monks announcing his intention o f seeking the promised land, S 5, 26ff, although in R he had already done so. This device was probably suggested to the compilator by V B itself, as he had it, in which three or four o f the travel-incidents, instead o f being given in their proper place in the

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For a line or two he keeps up the device o f making Brendan the narrator: ‘quadam die apparuit nobis Sathanas’ etc.43 But, as in the case o f the Barrinthus episode of the N B, he soon slips into the third person: ‘cui Brendanus (dixit)’, not ‘cui ego dixi’ . This mode o f conflation avoids, it is true, the inconsistency about the boats into which C S I has fallen;44 R also avoids mentioning in the portion taken from V B the number o f Brendan’s companions, while the inconsistency between what Brendan asked for, according to V B, and what, according to N B , he ultimately attained, is toned down by making him desire not a terra secreta, but, more vaguely, peregre proficisci.45 It involves however the most glaring inconsistency o f all, viz. that after relating how Brendan had reached the land o f promise in a skin covered coracle, the compiler goes on to tell how he failed for five years to find the blessed island o f his vision, because he sought it ‘on the skins o f dead animals’ . Owing moreover to the fact that several o f the travel incidents in V B are evidently only different versions o f parallel incidents in N B there are obvious doublets in the narrative o f R .46 travel narrative, are (for the sake o f variety, or because, as Zimmer has suggested, ‘Keltische Beiträge if , 2 9 4 -5 , they are later additions) narrated subsequently by Brendan to some o f his disciples; M §25, 26; Capgrave, 15 2 , 3 iff; cf. R 1 90, R 2 1 1 5 . Brendan also appears as narrator o f his own adventures in the story already cited from L L . 283a which ends: ‘conid hé Brenaind adfét in scél sin', i.e. it was Brendan himself who told the story. R makes one substantial omission in the narrative o f the N B , viz. the episode o f Judas Iscariot, S 2 9 , 3 0 - 1 , 3 3 ; the reason being that this incident occurs (in a much less developed form) in the V B narrative, M §25. Conversely Capgrave omits the latter, and retains the former. M retains both. 43 R ' 85c!, R 2 112a . 44 Because R deserts the text o f V B just before the building o f the three coracles is mentioned. To this extent the text o f V B is imperfect in R. I f the story o f the whirlpool (above note 12 ) belongs to V B , this also is omitted in R. 45 This phrase occurs also in C S il §8, and therefore it probably belongs to the original text o f VB. Capgrave speaks both o f peregrinandi noluntas, and also of the prayer for a terra secreta. R and C S II omit the latter, though C S had no special motive (as R may have had) for doing so. It may have been already omitted in their common source. 46 Compare C S II §9; L S 3 6 9 iff; R 1 86b, R 2 1 12b (the lofty island, V B ) with S 6 ,3 5 -7 ,3 2 = R 1 76b, R 2 104b (N B). L S 370 7ff; R 1, R 2, above (the diabolic stream, V B ) with S 18, 3 1 - 1 9 , 5 = R 1 80c, R 2 io7d (N B). L S 3 7 3 2 ff; R 1 86c, R 2 11 2 c (the additional companions, V B ) with S 6, 2 5 - 3 4 = R 1 76b, R 2 104b (N B). L S 3774ff; R 1 86d, R 2 1 12d (isle o f pigmy demons, V B ) with S 28, 1 to 29, 9 = R ' 83d, R 2 109b (isle o f Smiths, N B). L S 3787fr; R 1 87a, R 2 1 13a (conflict between the monster cat and the marine beast, V B ) with S 2 1 ,2 4 - 2 2 ,7 = R 1 8 id , R 2 io8d (N B). R 1 90a, R 2 1 15a (bronze cup left on whale’s back, V B ) with S 20, 10 to 14 = R 1 81 a, R 2 1 08b (N B). Capgrave 15 2 , 3 1 ff; R 1 90b, R 2 1 1 5 c (old man on island to whom Brendan admin­ isters the Eucharist, V B ) with S 3 1 , 3 4 - 3 4 , 1 7 = R 1 84c, R 2 1 iod (N B ).

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Th is does not however amount to actual repetition or contradiction.47 While writing the above account o f the new light thrown upon the Brendan legend by the R recension, I deliberately abstained from referring to Prof. Zimmer’s interesting Essay on that Legend in the second of his ‘Keltische Beiträge’ . I had, o f course, read that Essay; but I wished as far as possible to work out my own results independently. After I had committed my own views to paper, I carefully re-read those parts o f Zim m er’s Essay which bear on the questions here discussed. This has enabled me both to strengthen my own argument in some respects, and also to mark clearly the points as to which I think Zimmer’s conclusions are modified by the new evidence here presented. 1 . 1 doubt Zimmer’s view (130, 292) that the scribe o f Cod. Kilk. (= M ) has simply inserted N B into a life of Brendan which contained no ocean voyage; the analogy o f C S I and o f R , combined with the existence of C S II (a life containing an ocean voyage though o f a different type from N B) makes it possible, if not probable that in M the later and more popular N B has been substituted for the ocean voyage o f VB. I do not of course deny the possibility and probability o f the former existence o f a life of Brendan containing no ocean voyage. Such a life lies however far behind Cod. Kilk., behind even the Book o f Leinster. We may if we like call the ocean voyage o f V B, with Zimmer, Imram

47

M §26; R 1 90c, R 2 1 12C (island supported on four columns, V B ) with S 27, 3 - 3 5 = R 1 83c, R 2 110 a (N B). But, on the whole, Zimmer is right in saying that the amount o f matter common to the two narratives is ‘auffallend gering’, ‘Keltische Beiträge II’, 14 1. (at 10) For the convenience o f students of the Brendan legend it may be well here to give an account o f some other M S S . which I have examined. T h e following all contain the ordinary text o f the N B as given by Schröder, though o f course with varieties o f readings. (1) Laud Mise. 4 10 , f. 40b, saec. XII. T h e commencement up to the end o f the visit o f Barrinthus, S 5, 25, is treated as an introduction; and there is a new incipit before S

5,26. (2) Laud Mise. 2 3 7 , f. 229, saec. xiii (lacuna o f 3 ff. between f. 2 3 1 and f. 232). (3) Laud Mise. 17 3 , f. 109, saec. x v. Th is has some very quaint little pictures drawn on the margins. (4) Laud Mise. 44, f. 27V. T h e bulk o f the text is in a 13th the hand but the latter part from S 3 0 ,12 , locum istum etc., is in a 15th century hand. On the margins are illustrations, evidently copied from No. 3; from which the latter part o f the text was also probably taken. (5) Laud Mise. 315, f. 165V, saec. xv. Omits the parentage and birth place o f Brendan at the beginning. (All these five M S S . belonged to the Carthusians of Mainz. Colgan, Acta sanctorum veteris, 721 quotes a life o f Brendan from Cod. M S . Carthusiae Moguine.) (6) Coll. Line. Oxon. 27, f. i86v, saec. x i-x ii. It also has illustrations, but quite distinct from Nos. 3 and 4. A t the end are the satirical verses cited by Hardy, Catalogue, vol. I, 162, deriding the N B as not merely absurd, but heretical.

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Charles Plum m er

Brendain, to distinguish it from N B. It would however be better to call it N B i, and the ordinary Navigatio, N B 2 for the Irish version in the Book o f Lism ore is certainly not an original work as Zimmer seems to imply (3 2 0 -1, 323) but is based on a Latin original. (See below.) 2. The omission o f Zimmer to perceive that the Irish L ife in the Book o f Lism ore is really imperfect, and that the appending to it o f the conclusion o f the Fis Adamnain is purely mechanical (see above note 6), has misled him into thinking that the Irish Life represents a tradition according to which Brendan remained permanently in the Land o f Promise. T h e analogy o f C S II and R shows that this is absolutely unfounded. Consequently all the inferences which Zimmer draws from the supposed difference between the ‘Imram’ and the ‘Nauigatio’ on this point, fall to the ground (142, 3 1 1 , 321). This also does away with Zimmer’s assertion, that the Irish Life substitutes for M §12-29 (321), the Imram Brenaind, and knows nothing o f Brendan’s voyage to Britain. I f the Irish life were complete, we should find that, like R and C S II, it brought Brendan back from the Land of Promise to Ireland, and then sent him to Britain etc. 3. But the most important point in which the evidence o f R and C S I and II obliges me to differ from Zimmer is his assertion that no document containing a connected account o f any ocean voyage o f Brendan existed even in Latin before the second half o f the n th century (315, 318). The non-existence o f the title Imram Brenanid in the mediaeval catalogues o f Irish Sagas is conclusive only as to the Irish version, and proves nothing as to the date o f the Latin version. Zimmer is doubtless right in saying that the Irish version is not earlier than 110 0 (3 15, 319 , 323). But it seems to me clear that the Irish version is based on the Latin version o f the V B not vice versa. Th is appears, inter alia, from the way in which the description o f hell and paradise are elaborated (L S 3625-68, 3855-75); and this Latin original is probably referred to in the words: ‘amal atberat na scribinn’ , ‘as writings affirm ’ (L S 3740), a passage to which Zimmer has called attention. Zimmer may also be right in saying that the N B is not earlier than 1050 (320). But N B is certainly later than the voyage sections o f VB. This is proved by: (a) the more developed character o f the narrative; (b) the way in which N B has ousted the travel sections o f VB, certainly in C S I, and probably in M . We must therefore place the composition of V B, i.e. a Latin life o f Brendan containing a voyage narrative differing from N B , earlier than the composition o f N B. Moreover the existence o f this V B (i) in an abridged form in C S II, (ii) in a conflate form in R and C S I, (iii) and in an Irish form in L S , tends to throw the date o f the unabridged, uncompounded, untranslated original some distance back. But more than this: in the Litany already cited three points occur connected with Brendan’s voyage: (a) the twelve pilgrims on

Som e Nem L igh t on the Brendan Legend

ii

the cat island; (b) the sixty companions o f Brendan; (c) the anchorite in the Land o f Promise. In all these three points the Litany agrees with V B against all other authorities. Th is does not prove, but it does I think, suggest, that these points already existed in a connected narrative; and Zimmer would date the Litany early in the ioth cent. (302). Lastly the lives o f Machutus published by M M . Plaine and de L a Borderie48 show that as early as the 9th century some incidents o f an ocean quest by Brendan had been combined into a connected story; the quest itself, the dis­ covery o f a dead giant, a wonderful fountain, the whale.49

48 49

‘Deux Vies’ . Vita Prima (‘ Deux Vies’ ), §XVI, x v n -x ix , XXH-XXV, XXVI. These incidents recur in the second life, which however differs from the first just as V B differs from N B , viz. by making the wanderers return to their home in the middle o f their wanderings: ‘cum iam prolixi temporis nauigio lassati quam querebant insulam non inuenirent, peragratis Orchadibus ceterisque aquilonensibus insulis, ad patriam redeunt’ , §VI1. T h e ‘ patria’ however is Wales, not Ireland; Brendan being represented as abbot o f Nantcarvan, and M achutus as his pupil. M oreover in these lives the quest is finally unsuccessful. From the Machutus Legend his name has been introduced into some M S S . o f the N B , among the companions o f Brendan, see Moran, ed., Acta, 89; Jubinal, ed., La légende, 5. T h e following interesting piece o f evidence on the Brendan Legend was pointed out to me by my friend M r T.A . Archer. Rodulfus Glaber, who finished his Histories between 1046 and 1049, in Book II, §2, after telling o f the appearance o f a whale o ff Berneval (dép. Seine Inférieure), continues thus: ‘Legitur in gestis ... Bendani [sic] orientalium ... Anglorum [!] quoniam isdem uir D e i ... cum pluribus monachis per ... insulas per aliquod temporis spatium heremiticam uitam [ducensj, hanc ... quondam obuiam haberet beluam. Nam cum remigando ... circumiret insulas, superueniente noctis crepusculo, cernens procul uelut maritimam insulam, ad quam ... diuertens cum omnibus qui secum erant ... Exeuntes de scafis conscendentesque turgentem belue dorsum, unius tantum modo noctis ibidem hospicio potituri. Cumque ... fratres ... induisissent membra quieti, solus ... Bendanus ... explorabat cautius uim uentorum et siderum cursus; q u i... repente intellexit quoniam illud promuntorium ... ad orientalem illos euehcret plagam. Luce ... reddita,... collegas exortans ... Deo [inquit] ... referamus gratias, qui ... nobis ... preparauit uehiculum non egens humano remigio ... Huius modi ergo per spacia plurimorum dierum usi euectione, ... tandem peruen[eruntj ad insulam ... speciosissimam. Illius quoque arborum habitudo atque auium dissimilitudinem gerit uniuersorum. Egressus ... uir sanctus ... repperit etiam ibi monachorum uel potius anacoritarum collectas ... multiplices ... A quibus ... suscepti plurimis diebus ibidem commanentes, ... postmodumque ad natiuum reuertentes solum, uniuersa que compererant... narrauerunt’ (ed. Prou, 2 7,2 8 ). Here the whale is used not merely as as resting place but as a ship by the wanderers; while the Paradise o f Birds and the Isle o f the Family o f Ailbe are fused into one. T h e curious mistake o f making Brendan an East Anglian is probably due to a confusion with Fursa, who o f course was connected with East Anglia. M . Blochet (Les sources, §IV), traces the story o f the fish island through Sindbad’s Voyage in the 1001 Nights back to pre-Christian Persian sources. These are regions into which 1cannot follow him. It is however interesting to note that this incident is almost the only one in the N B to which Zimmer could find no analogue in other Irish sources, secular or ecclesiastical, ‘Keltische Beiträge if, 177. (For the reference to Blochet I am also indebted to M r Archer.)

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It should however be borne in mind that when Zimmer wrote, neither the evidence o f R , nor that o f C S was available. On the other hand he was thoroughly justified in the scepticism which he expressed (298) as to the 9th century date assigned by Hardy, and others who have copied Hardy, to the Vatican M S. o f the N B , Palatin. 2 17 .50 M y friend the Rev. H .M . Bannister was good enough to make a special examination o f this M S. for my benefit when he was in Rome last year. He tells me that it cannot be earlier than the end o f the n th century, and more probably belongs to the beginning o f the 12th, as the script closely resembles that o f an inserted letter, which, from its contents, cannot be earlier than 1 1 1 1 . Th is is a fact o f some importance. The relation o f the Brendan legend to other elements in Irish literature lies outside the scope o f this Essay; nor have I anything to add to Zim m er’s masterly analysis. There is however another Bodleian M S. which is o f some importance to students o f the Brendan legend. This is Bodl. e Musaeo 3, a large folio M S. o f about AD 1200 formerly belonging to the monastery o f Valle Crucis in Wales. The bulk o f the volume consists o f commentaries on the prophets; but the last two articles are a life o f St Bernard (mutilated at the beginning), and a so called ‘Vita Brendani’,51 which contains a recension o f the N B quite distinct from the ordinary text. The Prologue begins: ‘Predecessorum sacra facta nostrorum4; the Life begins: ‘Fuit igitur uir iste Brendanus in insula occidentali Hibernia nomine’ . The contents are briefly as follows: Birth of Brendan. He desires to see Paradise and Hell. He visits Barrus (sic, not vice versa as in the ordinary NB). Chooses 14 brethren; the 3 extra companions. They reach an island, and find ‘castellum quoddam circumuallatum muro cristallino’ . The theft (but it is a ciphus aureus that is stolen, not a frenum as in the ordinary N B). The Sheep island. The whale. The Paradise o f Birds; the tree was white, with red leaves sprinkled with white. Jo y o f the birds because this was the first time that God had sent any human being to them in their exile. The wanderers mend their boat and put new skins over it (cf. S 6, 19-20). The island o f the family o f Ailbe. The coagulated sea. The sleep-inducing water. (The order o f these two incidents is reversed in the ordinary N B). Return to sheep island, to the whale, and to the Paradise of Birds. Fight between the two sea monsters etc. (The island with the three choirs is omitted, as also the island of grapes.) The gryphon conquered by a dragon. T h e mass on St Peter’s day. The column. The island o f the infernal smiths. The mountain o f smoke, loss of one o f their comrades. They have a glimpse o f H ell.52 T h e Judas incident,

50 51 52

N ot Regin. Christin, as Hardy, Catalogue, vol. 1,1 5 9 . T h is begins at 2 13 . Cf. V B ; L S 3625fr; R ' 83d, R 2 112a.

Som e N ew L igh t on the Brendan Legend

13

which is very much elaborated; he tells o f the two hells, one hot, one cold; he spends alternate days in them, with separate tortures for each day o f the week. In the morning they find that one of their comrades is missing; ‘cuius absentiam ammirantes, duos amisisse recordantur; sed quo istum tercium amiserunt, ignorant’ . (The reason for this is, that, the island of the three choirs having been omitted, some other means had to be invented o f getting rid o f the third supernumerary.) Island o f Paul the hermit. At length they reach the paradise which is surrounded by a wall o f precious stones, but unsculptured. T h e gate was guarded by dragons, and a spear overhung it threatening death to all who attempted to enter. (This is a very interesting touch, and recalls many folk tales.) A beautiful youth brings them safely within. Description of the place. He leads them to the top of a mountain, and then bids them return, as they are not yet capable o f comprehending more; ‘carnaliter enim nunc uenisti, sed spiritualiter cito uenies et iudicium hie expectabis’ . With a fair wind they return to Ireland in three months; and shortly afterwards Brendan ‘ad paradisum spiritualiter regressus est’ . Now this recension (which I may call B) is o f special interest as being the Latin original from which is derived the Anglo-Norman poem on Brendan published by Suchier, and in a more convenient form by Francisque M ichel, 1878. This, according to Suchier, is the earliest version o f the Brendan legend in any vernacular; and as it was made for Alix o f Louvain, the second wife o f Henry I o f England, its date must be about 1 12 1. That it is a translation there can be no doubt. The poet says that he has the story ‘En lettre mis e en romanz’ (1. 1 1). All the points peculiar to B are reproduced: the wish to see paradise and hell (11. 49, 50, 63); the visit to Barinz (11. 74, 75); the crystal wall, i e mur Qui tuz ert faiz de cristal dur’ (11. 2 7 1, 272); the theft o f a gold cup, ‘un hanap d’or’ (1. 315); the red and white tree (11. 490-493); the joy o f the birds (1. 362, 363); the mending o f the boat (11. 597-599); the omission o f the islands of the three choirs and o f the grapes; the separate tortures inflicted on Judas on each day o f the week (11. i354ff); the missing o f one o f their companions after the Judas incident (11. 1494-1498); the dragons and the sword guarding the entrance to the gate o f paradise (11. 17 0 6 -15 ); the command to return to Ireland because they were incapable o f seeing more: O or venis ci carnalment, Tost revendras spiritalment; Or ten reva, ci revendras, L e Juise ci atendras (11. 1796-9). The discovery o f the Latin original o f this poem ‘en romanz’ shows that Suchier was wrong in ascribing the elaboration o f the Judas incident, and the

14

Charles Plum m er

omission o f the story o f the three choirs to the Anglo-Norman poet, (‘Brandans Seefahrt’, 556, 558). Suchier has however pointed out (ibid., 557) that this Anglo-Norman poem is the source whence the Latin metrical life o f Brendan printed by Ernst Martin (‘Die Lateinische’), and Moran (Acta, 45-84), is mainly taken. In this too all the points peculiar to B are reproduced (Moran, Acta, 47, 48, 52, 56, 57, 58, 72-76, 82), though a biblical turn is given to the guarding sword, by bringing it into connexion with Gen. 3:24. The author himself indicates the principal source from which he borrowed: ‘Hunc in modum transferens, rithmo de Romano’ (Moran, Acta, 46). He had however also a copy o f the ordinary N B , for he inserts the incident of the Island of three choirs which the B-version omits (Moran, Acta, 65, 66). Moreover he himself comments on the divergence o f the two recensions in this and other points. For after the story o f the three choirs he adds: Hec Romallus praeterit, inserit Latinus, Quod uicissim disserunt, dissona plus minus, Certent inde iudices, etc. (Moran, Acta, 66). Moreover, in introducing that incident, he notes that it is an insertion which he had been specially requested to make: In latini texitur textus exemplari Rem a piis rithmice petor hanc effari (Moran, Acta, 64). Yet he follows the B-version in making one of Brendan’s companions disappear mysteriously after the Judas incident, and in stating that two had previously been lost (Moran, Acta, 76) athough in his story (retaining the three choirs incident) three o f Brendan’s companions had already been got rid o f (Moran, Acta, 53, 66, 71), and there was no need to dispose o f a fourth. On the other hand the French Poem published by Jubinal is based on the ordinary N B , o f which Jubinal’s French Prose version is a pretty close translation. It does not however lie within my province to pursue the Brendan legend further into the vernaculars.

Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama* William Flin t Thrall

he imram is marked o ff rather sharply from such other Celtic otherworld tales as Serglige Conculaind, Echtra Condla Chaim, and Imram Brain maic Febail1 by a centering o f interest upon a prolonged adventurous voyage at sea rather than upon the experiences o f a mortal in a single otherworld place. This difference in structure and the absence o f a satisfactory link2 suggest the danger o f regarding the otherworld journey as the germ o f the imram as a narrative form, in spite of important similarities in otherworld presentations. Elsewhere I have given reasons for rejecting Zim m er’s theory that the first imrama were modelled on the Aeneid .3 A third possible source o f inspiration for the genre is supplied by the romantic accounts o f actual experiences o f Irish clerics on the sea, as recorded in ecclesiastical literature. Zimmer and others have noted the importance of these accounts as sources o f much of the material in the imrama, but the significance o f the influence they may have exerted on the form itself has received little attention, in spite o f the fact that all the existing imrama are essentially Christian in character4 and that the sea-pilgrimage tradition is clearly older than the existing imrama. A recurring motive in all the imrama is the appearance o f an Irish cleric on an island where he awaits, without prospect o f death, the day o f judgement. A

T

* i 2

3 4

First published in The M anly Anniversary Studies in Language and Literature (Chicago, 19 23), 2 7 6 -8 3. See Best, Bibliography, for editions and translations o f these and other Celtic tales. Imram Brain (itself not a true imram) has been suggested as a link (Brown, ‘ Iwain’ , 56 -9 ), but there is no prolonged rowing about from island to island as in the imrama. A somewhat closer parallel to this imram motive may be found embodied in Fled Bricrend ocus Loinges mac n-Duil nDermait (ed. Windisch, ‘ Das Fest’ ), clearly a different type o f story. Thrall, ‘Vergil’s Aeneid. For Zim m er’s views see ‘Keltische Beiträge II’, 328ff. It is difficult to see how even Imram Maelduin, which contains much more non-Christian than Christian material and doubtless embodies episodes drawn from the otherworld journey, could have been originally a pagan imram, since the Christian conceptions appear not only at the beginning and end but are scattered about the last part o f the story. Th e hero is the son o f a nun and yields to the motive o f forgiveness. One cannot be certain, however, about the original character o f this tale. It has been much altered by compilers.

15

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W illiam F lin t T hrall

striking feature o f Celtic asceticism was the habit o f retiring to islands for rest or to find a hermitage. As a result o f this practice and the vogue o f exile, penitential, and missionary voyages, there arose a considerable tradition dealing with these remarkable pilgrimages upon the sea.5 ‘Eremum (or desertum) in oceano quaerere’ is the phrase frequently appearing in saints’ lives to indicate the pious adventure undertaken by clerics who hoped, under guidance o f God, to find somewhere in the sea a desert island where they might find their earthly paradise. Sometimes the specific goal, terra repromissionis sanctorum (built up from conceptions o f Eden and the biblical land o f promise, and not uncolored by borrowings from the Celtic land o f the living ones, tir inna m-béo), where Enoch and Elijah dwelt, was sought. The sixth century was a heroic period in Irish church history. It witnessed the flourishing o f the older establishments at Armagh and Emly, founded by Patrick and Ailbe, the development o f many new centers o f ecclesiastical culture, and the beginnings o f the missionary movement which was to exert a tremendous influence on continental civilization.6 Although apparently none of

5

6

Punishment by being set adrift on the ocean seems to have been common both under ecclesiastical and secular administration: A L I vol. i, 205; Wasserschieben, ed., Die irische, 17 6 -7 (xliv.8), 1 01 (xxix.7), cf. Nicholson, ‘Th e Origin’, 99ff; CáinAdámnáin (ed. Meyer), 24, 25, 30, 3 1 , 4 3 ; Bury, Life o f St Patrick, 207; Westropp, ‘Brasil’ , 229, n. 2; Reeves, ed., Vita Columbae, lxxiv, 19 3, 252. T h e custom is reflected in the imrama in Maelduin (the Torach cook in Episode 33: Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f Mael D uin’ ); in Imram Snedgusa ocus mic Riagla (the men o f Ross: Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f Snedgus’ , 14fr; cf. Stokes, ed., ‘The Adventure o f St Columba’s Clerics’, i3oflf); in Imram Húi Corra (the cleric Dega, the heroes themselves: Stokes, ed., ‘Th e Voyage o f the Húi Corra’, 22ff). Brendan’s voyage is sometimes treated as penitential (Vita Prima in Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, 140). See further Plummer, op. cit., vol. I, cxxii-cxxiii, n. 1; Plummer, Venerabilis Bedae Opera, vol. II, 170 ; Bede, H E 111:13; Zimmer, The Celtic Church, 7 1 - 2 . Note especially these facts: Finnian, ‘ father o f the twelve apostles o f Ireland’ , founded Clonard about 520; Colum cille founded Derry about 546, Durrow before 560, and made his famous pilgrimage, which resulted in the establishment o f Iona, in 563; Brendan the Navigator founded Clonfert about 55 2 ; Ciaran, Clonmacnoise, 5 4 1; Com gall, Ulster Bangor, 554 or 558; Ende, whose seat on Aran Island was a celebrated resort for saints from foreign countries as well as Ireland, was a contemporary o f Colum cille and Brendan; the Finnian who was the teacher o f Colum cille, founded Movella; Brendan, founder o f Birr, associate o f Brendan o f Clonfert, Ende, and Colum cille, died 565 or 57 2 ; there were two saints named Molaise, both o f whom are said to have imposed on Colum cille the penance which resulted in the founding o f Iona - one o f them founded Inishmurray; S t Bairre (Finnbarr, Barrfind), who is said to have met Brendan on the sea, flourished in the second half o f the century; St Ita, famous as foster-mother o f Brendan o f Clonfert, died 5 7 7 ; Columbanus left about 590 on his famous ‘ pilgrimage’ to the continent and founded Bobbio in 6 13; St Gallus, who founded St Gall at about the same time, was a member o f Columbanus’ party; Ailbe, although he is said to have been prominent before the time o f Patrick, probably died in the second quarter o f the sixth century. T h e list o f famous sixth-century saints might be further extended. Monastic schools flourished and the missionary movement destined to exert tremendous influence on continental civilisation was under way. See further the following works (from which

C lerical Sea Pilgrim ages and the Imrama

17

the imrama were composed before the eighth century,7 they all seem to have sixth-century settings.8 The sixth century seems also to be the age o f the first great vogue o f the sea pilgrim. One document, the famous Vita Sancti Columbae, written by Adamnan o f Iona late in the seventh century - hence almost certainly antedating all the known imrama9 - presents abundant evidence o f the existence o f a tradition o f adventurous clerical voyages (some o f them revealing an almost startling similarity with a typical imram), which became recorded in ecclesiastical literature as early as mid-seventh century.10 Cormac nepos Lethani, whose voyages are reflected incompletely by Adamnan,11 was an early rival o f St Brendan for fame as a seafarer. Like Brendan, Cormac desired ‘eremum in oceano quaerere’ . He made at least three efforts, only the last one, as in the case o f Brendan, being successful. The first voyage failed because an unauthorized monk was a member o f the crew, a fact which presents a striking parallel with a prominent motive appearing in three of the four imrama. In Bet ha Brennain, wrights and smiths and a buffoon; in Navigatio Brendani, three monks taken on at the last moment; in Hui Corra, a naked buffoon; and in Maelduin, the three foster-brothers o f the hero - all are ‘supernumeraries’ and must be lost somehow before the voyage can succeed.

7

8

9

10

11

the facts summarized in this note have been chiefly drawn): Zimmer, The Celtic Church and The Irish Element; Plummer, Reeves, Bury, Bede, op. cit.; Gougaud, Les chrétientés celtiques; Annals o f Ulster. Imram Maelduin is generally regarded as the oldest o f the group, although Zim m er thought H úi Corra retained parts o f an older version antedating Maelduin (‘ Keltische Beiträge ll\ 148, 18 2 , 2 0 1) and some students regard Navigatio Brendani as older than Maelduin. See infra, n. 25. Brendan died 577. T h e reference to Finnian o f Clonard in Imram Hui Corra and to the survivor o f the party led by Brendan o f Birr in Imram Maelduin indicate sixth-century settings. T h e participation o f Colum cille in the events o f Imram Snedgusa ocus mic Riagla is strong evidence for the sixth century, although Thurneysen thinks the original setting was late eighth century (Zwei Versionem, 1 - 8 , 2 6 -3 0 ; ‘ Wie Snedgus und M ac Riagla’ , 1 2 6 - 7 ; ‘Z u r irishen Grammatik’ , 79 -80 ). In a later paper 1 expect to give my reasons for regarding the era o f Colum cille as the original time setting for this legend. There is little evidence that any important genuine imram has been lost. As to the probable character o f the ‘lost’ tales listed under Imrama (only one bears the title imram) in the Li. list o f tales, see O ’Curry, Lectures, 2 5 1; O ’ Looney, ‘On Ancient Historic Tales’ , 226. Adamnan died 704 ad. Zimmer thought he wrote the Vita before he joined the Roman party in the Paschal dispute, 687 or 688 (The Celtic Church, 124.) The Vita is professedly based on an earlier life of Columba written by Cummene the Fair and on the testimony o f old men. Fortunately, the Vita is preserved in a manuscript (Schaffhausen 32) written before 7 13 (Stokes and Strachan, eds, Thesaurus Paleohihernicus, vol. II, xxxi; Reeves, op. cit., xvii-xix). Reeves’s 18 57 edition, 1:6; 11:42. See also the later edition by Fowler, Adamnani Vita. The passages are too long to quote here. Zimmer printed them in full in his discussion o f the early contacts of the Irish and Norse (‘Uber die frühesten Berührungen’ , 2 9 5 - 9 ) and called attention to their significance in connection with Imram Snedgusa ocus mic Riagla.

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W illiam F lin t T h rall

Zimmer thought the taking on of the Odyssean wretch with the subsequent loss of Palinurus, and the consulting of an augury by Aeneas suggested to the author of Maelduin the motives of the loss of a supernumerary and o f Maelduin’s resort to the druid before beginning the journey; but passages in Adamnan seem to provide an adequate basis for both characteristics, a fact which strongly suggests that the imrama structurally are deeply rooted in ecclesiastical tradition.12 Cormac’s third voyage was an especially adventurous one. In true imram style, it is made with a crew o f clerical companions in a skin-covered coracle. Fourteen days out from land, the voyagers are driven about by the winds till they find themselves in an unknown region in the north, ‘ultra humani excursus modum’ . They encounter strange otherworld monsters which threaten to destroy them. Some o f these animals, described as foul, stinging creatures, the size o f frogs, infest the oar blades, make a violent attack on the boat, and threaten to penetrate the hide covering.13 The monks encounter other monsters ‘quae non hujus est temporis narrare’ , are greatly terrified, and quite in the manner of Brendan’s companions, tearfully pray for aid (Navigatio, §14). As God answers Brendan’s prayers and brings deliverance, so here Columba, in distant Iona, having prophetic knowledge of the plight of the voyagers, success­ fully prays that a north wind be sent to drive the wretched voyagers home.14 It is probable that Adamnan was drawing upon a tradition much richer in detail and amount than is reflected in the Vitay since he does not seem to be interested in sea voyages as such. The confusion involved in Adamnan’s reference to Cormac’s first voyage suggests that there was a well-established tradition o f Cormac as a voyager when Adamnan wrote: ‘Hodie iterum Cormacus, desertum reperire cupiens, enavigare in cipit... nec tamen etiam hac vice quod quaerit inveniet’ (i:6).15

12

T h e motive perhaps goes back to the necessity o f a pilgrim’s securing the consent o f an ecclesiastical superior before undertaking his pilgrimage (Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, cxxii-cxiii). Compare the frequency o f Colum cille’s conferring a blessing on a pilgrim before his departure (Adamnan, Vita, 1:17 ,1 9 ,2 0 ; 11:39, etc)- I f this practice is really the basis for this motive, it would seem likely that Brendan’s resort to Bishop Ende sug­ gested Maelduin’s resort to the druid, rather than vice versa. Bran also loses a companion on the isle o f laughter (cf. Maelduin), but he does not seem to be an unauthorized companion, and he is later recovered. T h e situation suggests contamination in Bran from genuine imram tradition and lessens the likelihood that Imram Brain is a link between journey and imram. 13 Compare the ‘ worms’ which eat through the two outer hides o f the boat o f the H ui Corra (Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f the H úi Corra’ , 54, 55). 14 Compare the unique conclusion in Manus O ’ Donnell’s version o f the Snedgus and M acRiagla legend: the voyagers become homesick for Colum cille, and a wind springs up and drives them straight to Iona (O ’ Kelleher and Schoepperle, eds, Betha Colaim Chille, 401). 15

A n old Irish poem in the form o f a dialogue between Cormac and Colum cille, dated by Zimmer as tenth century, refers to Corm ac’s voyage as lasting two years and one month

C lerical S ea Pilgrim ages and the Imrama

19

Another sea pilgrim whose experiences were recorded by Adamnan is Baitan (1:20): Alio in tempore quidam Baitanus, gente Nepos Niath Taloirc, benedici a Sancto petivit, cum ceteris in mari eremum quaesiturus. Cui valedicens Sanctus hoc de ipso propheticum protulit verbum. Hic homo, qui ad quaerendum in oceano desertum pergit, non in deserto conditus jacebit; sed illo in loco sepelietur ubi oves femina trans sepulcrum ejus minabit. Idem itaque Baitanus, post longos per ventosa circuitus aequora, eremo non reperta, ad patriam reversus, multis ibidem annis cujusdam cellulae dominus permansit, quae Scotice Lathreginden dicitur ... The practice o f resort to islands for rest or pious exercise is often mentioned by Adamnan (1:21, 33,4 5 ; 11:18, 24, 26, 4 1; 111:5 ,1 7> i8, 23). The penitential sea voyage appears in the story o f Libran (11:9). Miraculous foreknowledge o f arrivals, and prophecies as to outcome o f voyages, both common motives in the imrama, appear (1:20,27, 30,45; 11:4). The devil-inspired destroyers o f churches and persecutors o f holy men, the sons of Conall (11:22), are much like the Húi Corra. Testimony concerning the vogue o f sea pilgrimages is not, o f course, confined to Adamnan. In some cases, details are given about the adventures and voyages o f island saints encountered in the imrama themselves, such as the old cleric on the isle o f the sea cat in Betha Brennain, the cook o f Torach in Maelduin, Dega and the cleric who fled ‘from Jesus’ in Húi Corra, the men o f Ross in the Snedgus and M ac Riagla legend, and Barinthus, Mernoc, and Paulus the Herm it16 in Navigatio Brendani. There must have been a considerable body o f sea-pilgrimage tradition connected with Ailbe o f Imliuch. Brendan and the Húi Corra both visit the island where Ailbe’s family await Doomsday. Some details are given in a Latin life.17 According to this account (§46), Ailbe departed from Corcomroe (Maelduin went to Corcomroe to consult Nuca, and Brendan to Aran nearby to see Ende before beginning their voyages). Ailbe brought back a palm branch as a

(Reeves, op. cit., 264). Cf. Stokes, ed., Félire Oengusso, notes, 156, 158; 15 7 , 159; and Stokes, ed., Félire H úi Gormain, 120. 16 Although treated as belonging to an Irish monastery, this figure doubtless goes back ultimately to the account o f Paulus o f Thebes (the ‘first hermit’ ) in Jerome’s Vita Pauli. Paulus spent his long life in a cave hermitage in the Egyptian desert, nourished and sheltered by a palm tree, and clothed only in his long hair (so in the Navigatio Paulus, like the hermits in Maelduin in Episodes 19, 20, 30, 3 3 , is clothed only in his hair another indication that Maelduin may have borrowed from Navigatio). H is presence in Irish legend recalls the debt o f the Celtic church to eastern monasticism (Zimmer, The Irish Element, 89, note). 17 Ed. Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum, vol. 1 , 46 -6 4.

20

W illiam F lin t T hrall

token o f his visit to the otherworld.18 The Brussels life o f M acCreiche also refers to Ailbe’s voyage to the land o f promise.19 Another Celtic saint famous as a voyager was Machutes (Malo), a pupil of Brendan. The account in Deacon Bili’s life o f this saint and in an anonymous life is evidently an outgrowth o f the Brendan legend and reads much like a true imram. There is a first unsuccessful voyage. Frequent thirst o f the voyagers is stressed. A giant is brought to life as in Betha Brennain. The hero, like Brendan, quiets his frightened companions; like Brendan and Ailbe, persists in his determination to make the voyage and finally gets a blessing from his superior; and brings back an otherworld token.20 One cannot always distinguish in the early records, among pilgrimages made into the unknown sea in search o f a hermitage or paradise, penitential and punitive voyages o f indefinite destination, and pilgrimages overseas ‘for Christ’s sake,’ where there was a definite earthly destination and often missionary intent. Monastic and missionary establishments often resulted from pilgrimages not originally missionary in character.21 Voluntary expatriation was a primary feature o f the pilgrimage.22 The following entries, among others, all seemingly connected with sixthcentury saints, in the old ‘Litany o f Oengus,’ reflect tradition in which, I believe, the imram literature is deeply rooted:23 Thrice fifty true pilgrims who went with Buti beyond the sea. The Twelve pilgrims who went beyond the sea with Moedhog o f Ferns. Twelve men who went beyond the sea with Rioc, son o f Loega. Thrice twenty men who went with Brendan to seek the land o f promise. The twelve youths of whom Brendan found the survivor in the island o f the Cat.

1 8 A common motive in the imrama: Navigatio, §19, 24; Maelduin, Episode 26, and conclusion; H úi Corra, §51; Imram Snedgusa, Episode 5; Betha Brennain (Stokes, ed., Lives o f Saints, 110 , 256). Th e trait appears o f course in pagan tales as well; e.g., Echtra Nerai (ed. Meyer, ‘T h e Adventures o f N era’, 2 12 ). 19 Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, clxxxiii, n. 4. 20 For references to the literature about St Machutes, see Duchesne, ‘ L a vie de saint M alo’ , and Schirmer, Zur Brendanus-Legende, 7 1. T h e date is discussed later in this paper. 2 1 Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, cxxiii; Reeves, op. cit., P r a e f, 9; Bede, H E 111:4; Gougaud, op. cit., 13 5, n. 1; Stokes, ed., Lives o f Saints, 252. Lawlor, ‘T h e Cathach’ , 303fr, stoutly argues that Adamnan did not regard Colum cille’s motive in going to Iona as missionary in intent. The early Irish believed that his voyage was penitential - the saint had fomented domestic discord which resulted in bloodshed (Reeves, op. cit., 2 4 7 -8 ,2 7 5 ). Th e example o f Abraham is suggested as motivating some pilgrimages, including that o f Colum cille according to an Irish life (Stokes, ed., Lives o f Saints, i68ff). 22 Gougaud, op. cit., 136. 23 L L . 3 7 3 d\ Leabhor Breac, 23/7-240. I quote for convenience from the translation by M cCarthy, ‘T h e Litany o f Aengus’, 39 5 ,4 6 9 .

C lerical Sea Pilgrim ages and the Imrama

21

Three descendants o f Corra, with their seven companions. Twelve men who encountered death with Ailbe. Four-and-twenty from Munster who went with Ailbe upon the sea to find the land in which Christians ever dwell. Twelve youths who went to heaven with Molaise without sickness. T h e confessor whom Brendan met in the promised land, with all the saints who have perished in the isles of the ocean. That the Irish clerics actually visited not only the Hebrides but also the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and possibly the Faroes, in the sixth and seventh centuries, and that they ultimately reached Iceland, has long been known.24 Zimmer was convinced that the scenery in Maelduin reflected actual voyages in northern islands such as were undertaken by Ionan monks, and it is not unlikely that the Brendan legend goes back to similar tradition. Further study o f this legend, particularly its date and the relations of the Navigatio with Maelduin, should throw added light on the question of imram origins.25 Although it must be admitted as possible that the Christian elements in the imrama have been grafted on a pagan stock, the lack of conclusive evidence o f the existence o f a pre-Christian full-fledged imram leaves the question open. The purpose o f this paper is to suggest some reasons for thinking it more probable that the pagan materials, Celtic or classical, are borrowed embellishments for voyage tales which sprang originally from the rich soil o f religious legend in Ireland, particularly the legendary accounts o f adventurous sea pilgrimages made by sixth-century Irish clerics. 24

25

T he evidence rests largely on passages in Dicuil and the Landmmabok. See Zimmer, op. cit.; Beauvois, La découverte (reviewed by [Gaidoz], ‘Review of Beauvois’); Beazley, The Dawn o f Modern Geography, vol. 11, 2 7, n. 1; Jones, Celtic Britain, 62, n. 1; Hartig, ‘ Voyage o f S t Brendan’, 758. For other evidence, cf. Boquet, ed., Recueil des historiens, vol. vil, 563. T h e date o f the Brendan legend has not been determined. Existing versions seem to rest upon two diverse, though related, accounts, N B (Navigatio), preserved in numerous manuscripts and apparently the basis o f the many continental versions, and V B (Vita), represented by the Irish Bet ha Brennain and certain Latin lives (cf. Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, xxxviii). Zimmer thought N B to be not earlier than 1050 and made up largely from incidents in Maelduin (‘ Keltische Beiträge n’ , 298). Plummer has pointed out that Zim m er was wrong, since the British M useum has acquired a tenth-century manuscript o f N B , which itself seems to be a copy (Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, xli, n. 2 ). Am ong important pieces o f evidence for the antiquity o f the Brendan legend is the demonstrable age o f the legend o f S t Machutes, clearly an excresence on the Brendan tradition. Deacon Bili dedicated his Latin life o f Machutes to Ratwili (bishop 86 6-72) and says he used as a source a life composed ‘longo tempore antequam nos orti fuissemus’ by ‘alius sapiens’ . Further study may prove that the Brendan story is after all older than Maelduin, as some o f the older authorities thought (Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f Mael D uin’ , 450: L o t and Stokes, ‘Voyage de M ael-D uin ’ , 4 5 1; Schirmer, op. cit., 68. Cf. Boser, ‘Review o f Steinweg’, 583ff). I f so, the significance o f ecclesiastical origins for the imrama is heightened.

On the Punishment of Sending Adrift* M a ry E . Byrne

C

ormac’s Glossary no. 229 (Y B L .) reads: ‘ c i m b i t h 1 quasi cimba .i. on noi oensheiched’, i.e., ‘ Cimbith (a criminal) as if it were a boat, from the vessel of one hide’. The glossator fancifully equates cimbid, with late Lt. cymba ( or the author o f the description o f the Isles o f the Blessed summarized by Diodorus Siculus (11:55-60), the paradisaic concept was characterized by complete and uninhibited promiscuity, and since the concept, however varied its actual expressions, always projects a basic opposition between now and then, or here and there, it is apt to be pressed into the service o f artistic and ideological argument, as for example by the fourteenth-century Welsh poet who wrote: Before there was the law of a pope or his trouble, Each one made love Without blame to his loved one. Free and easy enjoyment will be without blame, Well has M ay made houses o f the leaves There will be two assignations, beneath trees, in concealment, For me, m yself and my dear one.11 - or indeed by the monastic authors in seventh and eighth-century Ireland, as I suggest later. For the poet o f Immram Brain sinlessness and chastity were far from being synonymous in the Otherworld setting however closely related they were in the historical view of Christian morality, but obviously it was open to later authors to equate the two if it served their purpose. This is precisely what the author of the Early Modern Irish tale of Echtra Taidg meic Céin does. In the course of his voyage over the sea Tadhg comes upon a fair and fruitful land, and despite the hardship he and his companions have endured they require neither food nor fire, being fully sustained by the sweet fragrance o f the laden branches. They come to a plain in which there are three hills and three forts. When they finally reach the third hill, they find before them a youthful couple beautifully arrayed. 9 Kramer, The Sumerians, 149. 10 Cf. Cohn, The Pursuit, 2i3ff. 11

The Poetry in the Red Book o f Hergest, ed. Evans, 83. Translation by Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 287.

The Sinless Otherworld o /Im m ra m B rain

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Tadhg addresses himself to the woman and asks her name, and she replies: ‘I am Veniusa and I am daughter to Adam; for we are four daughters in the four mysterious and magical countries which the woman told you o f earlier and our names are Veniusa and Letiusa and Aliusa and Eleusa. T h e guilt o f our mother’s transgression does not permit that we be in one place, but because o f our virginity and purity which we have consecrated to God we have been situated in these pleasant abodes.’ ‘Who is this handsome youth by your side?’ said Tadhg ... The young man had in his hand a fragrant apple o f the colour of gold; he would eat a third o f it and yet, for all that he ate, it was in no ways diminished, and that was the food that sustained the pair of them for ever and neither age nor decay could affect them when they had eaten o f it. The young man answered Tadhg saying: ‘I am son o f Conn Cétchathach.’ ‘Are you Connla then?’ said Tadhg. ‘I am indeed, and it was this beautiful woman who brought me here’ ... ‘I gave to him my sincere love and affection,’ said the woman, ‘and contrived to have him come to me here in this land, where it is our mutual delight ever to look on each other, and apart from that we commit no sin or impurity.’ In what follows the Otherworld is closely assimilated to and virtually identified with the Christian Heaven.12 Here the motif o f sinless sexuality has been reduced to a pious, puritanical, and somewhat extravagant exemplar o f Christian love, while the traditional Otherworld has become a kind o f wan préfiguration o f Paradise clouded in a Pre-Raphaelite sentimentality. The whole tone o f the text is reminiscent o f Altrom Tige Dá Medar, which I referred to earlier. Another good example of the religious reviser at work is Eachtra Airt meic Cuind ‘The Adventure of Art son o f Conn’ .13 As a result of Conn’s liaison with Bécuma, the unrighteous woman from the Land o f Promise, a blight had fallen on the land of Ireland and the druids declared that it could only be removed by bringing to Ireland the son of a sinless couple and mingling his blood with the soil of Tara. Conn sets out on a voyage to an Otherworld island and there he finds such a youth: ‘ his father and mother never came together except when that boy was conceived, nor did our fathers and mothers ever come together save at our own conception’ - this from the direct and irrefutable testimony of the boy’s father. Thus is the concept of the sinless sexuality of the Otherworld turned neatly - if not very convincingly - on its head. The three tales I have mentioned - Echtra Taidg meic Céin, Altrom Tige Dá M edar, and Eachtra A irt meic Cuind - represent a type o f Early M odern composition which seeks to give an edifying twist to traditional themes and which seems to reflect certain trends and external influences of the period after the coming o f the Normans and the reform o f the Irish Church. It comprises,

12 13

Silva Gadelica, ed. O ’ Grady, vol. 1 , 350. Ed. Best, ‘T h e Adventures o f A rt’ , i49ff.

Ó2

Proinsias M ac Cana

however, only a part o f the written prose o f the period dealing with mytho­ logical themes and is perhaps to be thought o f as a deviation from the main­ stream of tradition rather than as a transformation of it. Certainly in the present instance it is not implied that the notion of a primeval condition o f innocence in which there was sensuality without sin came to an end with the early monastic lyric literature: it is a familiar motif in the later literature as well, though here it is some times given a more human and more homely setting in keeping with the character of its new contexts. M y first example is from a fifteenth or sixteenthcentury tale about the legendary poet, lover and trickster figure, Cearbhall O Dálaigh. It tells, in a mixture of comedy and tragedy, of the love that Cearbhall and the daughter of the king of Scotland bore each other and how it was finally frustrated in a Tristan-style dénouement. The setting is superficially terrestrial, but, as with many o f the later romances in Irish, no boundary is set between the natural and the supernatural and most, if not all, the events appear to take place in the Otherworld of Irish storytelling. One episode tells o f a visit to Cearbhall by Fearbhlaidh and her conniving foster-mother. The latter leaves the two lovers together and the text continues as follows: He drew her towards him into the bed, put his arm around her neck and kissed her passionately. Three days and three nights they spent in this manner, with little food or drink or sleep, and without sin or blame.14 The main difference between this and its correspondent in Imtnram Brain is one o f temper: for the sincerity and Christian concern o f the early poet is substituted a note of wayward and tongue-in-cheek romanticism that is familiar in Early Modern Irish prose. But the m otif occurs elsewhere in M odern Irish traditional literature without this touch o f flippancy. Among the popular love songs to which I have already referred there are quite a few in which a young man invites a girl to accompany him (less often the roles are reversed) to a land which is variously named but which is obviously the blissful Otherworld o f tradition. It is a land o f peace and plenty, abounding in honey and mead and full of the sound o f bird music. There, freed from the restraints imposed by society, they can give themselves up to the consummation o f their love. This is how one poet puts it (allowing for the lameness o f my fairly literal translation): O God, that I and my love of the smooth white breast were together And none awake in the land o f Ireland; Men and women deep in sleep 14

O Neachtain, ed., ‘Tochmarc Fhearbhlaide’ , 54 §22; Walsh, ed., ‘ Bás CearbhailF, 35 §22. The text refers to the visit to Cearbhall’s dwelling place as if it were a visit to the Otherworld: ‘Do clos fon rioccht uile Farbhluidh 7 a buime do bhreith a siodhuiph’ .

The Sinless Otherworld 0 / Im m ram B rain

63

While my love and I make play! O fair-hued and loveliest o f women, 0 guiding star o f my destiny, 1 shall never believe from priest or brother That there is sin in making love.15 This verse contains two o f the three thematic elements which go to make up stanza 41 o f Immram Brain (p. 58 supra): the euphemistic expression ‘game, playing, amusement’ (duché, súgradh) for the act of making love and the assurance that it is innocent o f sin.16 We have seen that the third element, dalliance under a bush etc., is of frequent occurrence in these love-songs as well as being more or less universal in popular literature. More significantly, our love-song closes with the expectation or the promise that ‘Never never will death come near us in the middle o f the fragrant wood’ (‘Is go deó deó ni thiocfaidh an bás dár ghoire [sic]/I lár na coille cumhra’), which, if taken in isolation, might seem little more than a romantic hyperbole, but seen in context is an obvious echo o f the intimations o f immortality which are an essential part o f the Otherworld picture as found in Immram Brain and other early texts. One thing is clear beyond all doubt: the Irish Otherworld of Immram Brain and comparable early texts is not ‘characterised by an extreme o f chastity’ . What is less clear is the historical relationship between this Otherworld and its analogue in the Modern Irish love songs. Professor O Tuama has already adverted to the connexion between the two, showing that it is one of style as well as o f theme, but it was not part of his immediate purpose to define this connexion in historical terms, and indeed, given the inadequacy of the written materials for the intervening period, it is doubtful whether such a definition could be other than speculative. Because o f their mainly oral transmission the love songs we speak of are sparsely documented before the seventeenth century, but enough remains to show that they had already a considerable history behind them. In their themes and constituent motifs they are largely derivative o f the early French

15

O ’ Sullivan, The Bunting Collection, vol. V, 72; Ó Tuama, An Grá in Amhráin, 275fr: A Dhia gan mise ‘s mo ghrádh bhfuil a brollach min, bán, Is gan neach i gCríoch Fáil ‘n-a ndúsgadh, F ir agus mná ‘n-a gcodladh go sáimh A ch mise ‘gus mo ghrádh a’ súgradh! A ghéig chailce an áigh is deise do na mnáibh A réalt eolais a thóigear dhúmh-sa [sic], N i chreidiom-sa go bráth ó shagart nó ó bhráthair G o bhfuil peacadh ins a’ pháirt do dhúbladh!

16

It is true, as Professor O Tuama points out, that the idea that love is not a sin, but a virtue, is familiar in the poetry o f amour courtois (op. cit., 286ff), but the significance of the instance cited from the Irish song is that it occurs in an Otherworld setting.

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Proinsias M ac Cana

chansons d'amour and D r Ó Tuama would assign their beginnings to the period o f the Anglo-Norman conquest. On the other hand, as he emphasizes, the temper and style of the French genres have been wholly transmuted in the Irish setting, and, as we have already observed, at least some o f their thematic elements existed in Irish literature long before the Anglo-Norman period. This applies particularly to those songs featuring an invitation to the land o f the living and in the case o f these the question is: do they stand in lineal descent from the early monastic treatments o f the Otherworld theme represented by Immram Brain, Echtra Chonla and similar texts, or is the relationship a collateral one with the two groups deriving their image of the Otherworld separately from the same continuum of oral tradition? Two points argue for the former alternative. First, the conscious dissociation o f sexuality and sin appears to be a monastic gloss on native traditions about the Otherworld, and the fact that it occurs once or twice in the later songs may therefore imply a lineal connection with the early texts. Secondly, as D r O Tuama has pointed out, the Modern Irish love songs are not folksongs in the normal sense of the term. Their style marks them out as the work o f poets with some training in native art forms and this makes it all the more plausible that their authors were conversant with the early monastic lyric literature. But one must exercise some caution here. We have little direct and unbiased information on pagan religion in Ireland before Christianity, but, as I have argued elsewhere, there are grounds for believing that modern authors have underestimated the degree of organization and sophistication which existed in Irish pre-Christian religion. There has been a tendency to think o f it as a morass o f magic and superstition and consequently to assume that those elements in secular monastic literature which smack of theology must be wholly Christian innovations. We know, however, that the Irish druids had an organization encompassing the whole country and it would therefore be strange if their doctrines and ritual were as rudimentary and amorphous as is sometimes supposed; in fact there is some evidence, mainly terminological, that they were not.17 What has happened, if my argument be correct, is that part of druidic teaching was deliberately erased through the influence of the Christian Church but that another, and perhaps even greater, part was similar enough to Christian teaching to be overlaid by it or absorbed within it. For this reason it might be wise not to assume too readily that the idea o f sin as we find it in Immram Brain and the other monastic texts on the Otherworld is simply a Christian innovation. In comparable societies sin, by whatever term it was denoted, was defined in relation to and as a violation o f the moral order, in other words of the order established by usage and social prescription. Sexual relations form part of that order and are governed by rules and restrictions 17

I discuss this whole question in greater detail in a forthcoming article.

The Sinless Otherworld o f Im m ram B rain

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which may vary from one society to another but are nonetheless present and more or less binding. Like other social restraints these are temporarily discarded at certain festive and ceremonial times of transition and renewal while their total and permanent absence is the mark o f that inverted image o f this mortal world which is the Otherworld. There is no reason to suppose that such a reversal o f normal social prescription on sexual relations did not characterize the Irish concept o f the Otherworld, in which case the seventh-century (?) poet o f Immram Brain (or a predecessor) may have done little more than adapt to the Christian ethic and terminology one o f the motifs o f the traditional contrast between the two worlds. For the temporary discarding o f the normal restraints on sexual behaviour within certain defined periods and precincts there is at least some evidence for the post-Norman era. In her comprehensive study o f Lughnasa, the festival o f the Celtic god Lugh, Máire MacNeill has surveyed a remarkable range o f local or regional assemblies, whether religious or purely festive or both, which con­ tinued the ancient celebration virtually to our own day. Tim e after time, in her accounts of the individual assemblies, she notes that they were much frequented by courting couples and that they were commonly regarded as appropriate occasion for matchmaking and, in Ulster at least, for contracting runaway matches. As she herself remarks, it is hardly surprising that such open-air gatherings in late Summer should encourage dalliance and courtship, but, even when due allowance is made for this, there remains some evidence for what she calls ‘a special marriage tradition’ : Certainly some o f the customs already touched on reflect a concern with mating, as do the ‘Teltown marriages’ o f recent tradition,18 the Tulach na Coibche o f the ninth-century Cormac’s Glossary, and the memory o f pagan marriages at Slieve Croob in County Down. There is also the reference in one early source to the wedding-feast o f Lugh at Tailtiu, and the bridal on the first day o f the harvest moon at Morvah in Cornwall. And yet, in Irish rural tradition Lughnasa is not a marrying time: in fact it is not lucky to marry in harvest... For these reasons there must be some doubt in suggesting that the legends o f abduction and contest for a girl have to do with a myth or rite o f divine marriage at Lughnasa. Lughnasa, I would suggest, was one episode in the cycle o f a divine marriage story but not necessarily the bridal time.19

18

19

Cf. M acNeill, The Festival, 3 16 . Th is refers to the tradition reported by O ’Donovan that temporary marriages used to be contracted at the Fair o f Teltown which, if the contracting parties so desired, could be free dissolved after a year and a day. Ibid., 424.

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One must agree that the cited evidence is insufficient to identify the Lughnasa festival as a homely reflex o f a divine marriage ritual. On the other hand, one may fairly question Máire MacNeilPs main reason for doubting such a connexion, namely that Lughnasa is not fact a marrying time. This is perhaps to compare things that are not truly comparable: the behaviour that was permitted and indeed expected within the precinct o f a sacred festival was in many respects the reverse o f conventional everyday behaviour and one cannot therefore, strictly speaking, equate the mating customs o f the Lughnasa festival with the normal patterns o f marriage within the community. Indeed, in many societies Spring, and especially the month of May, was the season o f love and spontaneous unions, but was nonetheless regarded as an unfavourable time for conventional marriages. In any case, whether or not one accepts the connection between the Lughnasa festival and a divine marriage ritual, it is still tempting to see in the matchmaking and courting that attended these assemblies not merely the expression o f a casual and natural joie de vivre but rather the attenuated reflex of a regular and ritual relaxation o f normal social convention. We have one item o f testimony which is o f special interest in this regard. In an early nineteenth-century account o f Struel Wells near Downpatrick and o f the exercises which were performed there during the prescribed period o f visitation we are told that, once the ceremonies were concluded, the pilgrims resorted to the tents and adjoining fields to enjoy themselves, it being understood that as long as they remained on the sacred ground they could not contract new guilt.20 In this brief observation we have a useful testimony to one o f the essential features o f sacred festivals o f regeneration throughout history and throughout the world. Such festivals o f cosmic renewal are held periodically, most typically at the New Year but also at other crucial times within the yearly cycle, for example at the points o f the agricultural year when the seed germinates and the harvest stands ripe or on certain specialized occasions such as initiations or the consecrations of kings. A general and fundamental feature o f the feast is the deliberate return to Chaos, achieved through the subversion o f social order and status, as a preliminary to the re-creation o f the Cosmos, in other words the

20

Hardy, The Holy Wells, 70: Thus end the ceremonies of the day. Those o f the evening follow, and form a remarkable contrast. The employments o f the day seem to be considered as the labours o f virtue, those of the evening are her rewards, by which they are amply compensated. Their eyes, after having been bathed in the sacred stream, instantly discover the flowery path o f pleasure, which conducts them to the tents prepared for their reception, where they are supplied with copious draughts, o f which the water o f life was but a faint emblem. In these tents, and in the adjoining fields, under the canopy o f a pure sky, they spend the whole night quaffing the soul-inspiring beverage, and indulging in various gratifications to which the time and place are favourable; for it is understood that while the jubilee continues, and as long as the happy multitudes remain on the sacred ground, they cannot contract new guilt!

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renewal o f nature and society. Sometimes this renewal involves a ritual purification by which the sins and imperfections o f the individual and o f the community are cancelled out, sometimes it involves the re-enactment o f an exemplary hierogamy, but nearly always - and this holds a fortiori for agri­ cultural festivals21 - it involves the temporary casting off of social restraints and the inception o f a state o f more or less total anarchy and licence. Sexual and alimentary licence serves a double purpose: it contributes to the general over­ turning o f normality on the one hand and on the other it promotes the fertility o f nature by its sheer abundance and prodigality. One suspects that this is the essential and primary role o f the ‘concern with mating’ which characterizes the Lughnasa assemblies. Not only does the festival o f renewal form a break with the existing order, but it also effects an interruption o f profane, historical time and the restoration of primordial, mythic time: in Dumézil’s definition it constitutes a means o f access to the Great Tim e, ‘une ouverture sur le Grand Temps.’ And not merely does it take place within a defined interlude o f sacred time, it also takes place within a defined area o f sacred space, whether it be the precincts o f a church or o f a consecrated site. It is this which lends significance to the reference cited above to Struel Wells: as long as the pilgrims remained within the sacred precinct (and while the festival lasted) they could, without fear o f incurring fresh guilt, indulge freely in the uninhibited pleasures which characterized such assemblies and which eventually brought down upon them the wrath o f reforming clerics. For our immediate purpose the relevance is clear: within the compass o f sacred time and space constituted by the festival men and women could give themselves up to pleasures which were both unbridled and innocent, just as in the Golden Age at the beginning o f the world, or in the blissful Otherworld which mirrors in such constant terms the ideal existence of innumerable peoples and races and which received one o f its most sensitive literary interpretations in the lyrical compositions o f the early Irish monastic literati, among them Immram Brain.

THE L A N D OF WOMEN

In my representation o f the Otherworld concept used by the author of Immram Brain I differ from Professor Carney on two specific points, apart from a more general divergence on the character and extent of the traditional oral sources of written Irish literature.22 First I cannot accept his equation o f sinlessness and

21

22

Witness the frequent condemnations by medieval Church Councils and other interested authorities o f the licentious behaviour associated with harvest festivals; cf. M eyer, Trilogie altindischer, vol. II, 1 13. M y remarks in this regard were formulated very many years ago and refer to Professor Carney’s views as published in print. It is only fair to add that he has, by all indications,

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chastity in the Otherworld o f Immram Brain, for reasons which I hope to have made clear in the present essay. Secondly, I see no grounds for his assumption that T ir inna mBan ‘The Land o f Women’ is ‘obviously inspired by Greek material.’ All other considerations apart, I would suggest that the notion o f an Otherworld peopled by beautiful women is one which lends itself admirably to the theory o f polygenesis, and indeed the evidence would seem to indicate that in this respect at least the Irish, and the Celts in general, had no need to take lessons from the Greeks or from the many other peoples who thronged the Paradise of their imagination with houris and apsarases and suchlike heavenly creatures. To attempt an exhaustive documentation o f this aspect o f the Irish Otherworld is hardly necessary nor appropriate in the present context: I shall refer merely to a few salient points. To begin with, a vast area o f Irish mythology, and particularly that part o f it most intimately concerned with the land o f Ireland, its physical features, and its fertility, is dominated by the great figure o f the goddess in whose dispensation lay such basic issues as peace and war, prosperity and sovereignty. It is hardly surprising then that she should sometimes be thought o f as dominating the Otherworld realm to the virtual exclusion o f the gods.23 It is an enduring aspect of the Irish notion of the supernatural: the woman who invited Bran and Conlae to the Land of Women can hardly be dissociated from those goddesses, such as Aine and Aoibheall and Cliodna, whose fairy dwellings constituted familiar landmarks in the Irish countryside and whose traditions flourished until recently among the local populations. Nor can they be dissociated from the corresponding goddesses of British tradition, Rhiannon, for example, in medieval Welsh literature and Morgain la Fée in Arthurian romance. It would seem indeed that the documentation o f the Land o f Women extends much further back than the earliest vernacular records in Irish or Welsh. In the first century AD. Pomponius M ela wrote o f the island o f Sena off the coast o f Aremorica in which dwelt nine priestesses who had the power o f healing and prophecy and could stir up the winds and the seas and transform themselves into the shapes o f animals.24 These formidable ladies have close analogues in the recently modified his earlier views on the sources o f Immram Brain and it seems likely therefore that the discrepancy between our interpretations o f the evidence is less serious than formerly. 23 A word o f qualification may not be out o f place here. Professor Carney observes that the Island of Women ‘is not identical with Manannán’s kingdom which is populated by men and women’ (Studies, 28 7 n .i), which seems plausible enough at first glance and may even be true. Nonetheless, one may perhaps allow for the possibility o f artistic hyperbole - or mere simplification: it is noteworthy that the Otherworld o f Echtrae Chonlai where there is no kind ‘save only women and girls’ is said elsewhere in the same text to be ruled by an immortal king named Boadach. M ore important is the fact that - and this may explain the apparent inconsistency in Echtrae Chonlai - the several variant images o f the Celtic Otherworld are extremely fluid and prone to merge and overlap continually. 24 De Chorographia 111:6 (ed. Frick).

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M iddle Welsh tale o f Peredur as well as in Geoffrey o f Monmouth’s Vita Merlini and I see no reason to reject the suggestion that they are an early literary reflex o f the inhabitants o f the otherworld Land o f Women, and in particular of the thrice nine women who welcomed the voyagers in Immram Brain,25 It is true that the Irish goddess is not always as seductive as in Immram Brain or Echtrae Chonlai - as goddess o f war and destruction she can be as ugly and malevolent as she is otherwise benign and beautiful, and indeed one aspect is but the obverse of the other - but naturally where the narrative has to do with the Happy Otherworld it is the bounteous and sensual element that prevails. In this role one might equally well refer to her the remarks o f Henry Zimmer on the Apsarases o f Indra’s heavenly paradise:

25

Cf. Paton, Studies, 43fr; Loomis, Wales and the Arthurian Legend, 7 5 , 1 2 9 , 154fr. For Irish cf. Acallam na Senórach (ed. Stokes, 164), lines 5953ff: ‘M aith, m ’anam, a ingen, ca tir assa tangais,’ ar Find, ‘7 cuich tú fein?’ ‘A T ir na ningen aniar mara fuinend grian ticim, 7 ingen rig in tire sin mé féin.’ ‘ C a h’ainm thusa, a ingen?’ ar Find. ‘Bébind ingen Treoin, ingen rig Thire na n-ingen missi,’ ar si. ‘Cret ima tucad T ir na n-ingen ar in tir sin?’ ar Find. ‘N i fuil d’fheraib inti,’ ar inn ingen, ‘acht m’athair sea cona tri macaib 7 .ix. n-ingena 7 sccht fichit ingen ro geined uada, conid airi sin adearar T ir na n-ingen rissin tir sin.’ ‘ Greetings, lady, what land have you come from and who are you?’ ‘ I come from the Land o f Maidens in the west where the sun sets, and I am the daughter o f the king o f that land.’ ‘ What is your name, lady?’ said Find. ‘ Behind daughter o f Trén, king o f the Land o f Maidens,’ she said. ‘ Why was that land called the Land o f Maidens?’ said Find. ‘ There are no men in it,’ said the girl, ‘save my father and his three sons, and to him have been born nine daughters and seven score. T h at is why it is called the Land o f Maidens.’ Cf. also in the same text, 2 0 5 -6 , lines 7 3 5 4 fr Ocus tangadur reompu co L is na mban í Cúil radhairc, risi raiter Cúil ó Find isin tanso, 7 tangadur issin ndúnad anúnn, 7 ro frithailed co maith ind áidchi sin i a t ... ‘M ás ed,’ ar in t-ócla[chj, ‘atá ni aile dob áil lium d’ fhiarfaigi dit .i. crét fa tucad L is na mban ar in lis-sa?’ Adubnirt Cailte: ‘ Nonbur deirbshethnar ro boi annso do Thuaith dé Danann. 7 tangadur i coinde nonbair ôclach d’ Fhiannaib Eireann, 7 ar tiacht dôib ro urmaisedur clanna Morna orro ann, 7 ro marbudar iat ar tiacht a coinde in nonbair sin don Fheind. Condad uatha sin atà L is na mban ar in inad so.’ T h ey came then to L is na mBan ‘the court o f the women’ , ... and they were well attended to that night ... ‘ N ow there is another thing that I should like to ask you,1 said the man: ‘ why was this mound called the court o f the women?’ and Cailte said: ‘There were nine sisters o f the Tùatha Dé Danann living here and they came to meet nine o f the warriors o f the Fian. But when they had come, the family o f M orna discovered them and slew them. It is from them this place is called L is na mBan.’ In the passage cited above from Pomponius M ela we are told that the nine priestesses devoted themselves only to the service o f those voyagers who had set out for the sole purpose o f consulting them. Would it be too fanciful to see in this a distorted reminiscence o f voyage legends akin to Immram Brain}

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Apsarases are the perfect dispensers o f sensual delight and amorous bliss on a divine scale, and in sheer celestial harmony. They are the embodiments o f a strictly supra-earthly quality o f sensual love, Divine Love as distinct from, and opposed to Earthly Love, which latter is intrinsically fraught with drama and tensions, the misunderstandings, quarrels, and recon­ ciliations o f lovers, and a hardly avoidable intimate flavour o f dignified, dutiful resignation, such as is intrinsic even to perfect matrimonial adjustment. Apsarases represent the ‘Innocence o f Nature’ , ‘Delight Without Tears’, ‘Sensual Consummation Without Remorse, Without Doubts or Subsequent M isgivings’ .26 This is essentially the same distinction as separates ordinary human love from the ideal love o f the Otherworld people pictured in Immram Brain. In some respects the distinction may seem tenuous enough: the pre-eminent marks o f Otherworld love are above all its innocence and its freedom from guilt and remorse - in other words from sin - and where these are not stressed or explicitly stated the distinction may be mainly a matter o f context. This may have some relevance for a question which has been raised by Professor Seán O Tuama in regard to the Modern Irish love songs referred to above. He notes that the illicit love which is the whole burden o f these songs runs directly counter to the religious morality to which the Irish people as a whole subscribed. But, though in terms o f their conventional morality this love was always sinful, or at least amoral, it was almost never regarded as such by the poets who composed these songs or by the people who sang them. Professor O Tuama would explain this apparent contradiction in two ways: the notion o f love extolled in the love song was o f its essence romantic and unrealistic and had therefore little direct reference to or influence upon the everyday life and behaviour of the people who maintained them in their popularity, and secondly, the official morality which governed their life and behaviour was more lax and less demanding in earlier centuries than it became later. As these two arguments are presented it might seem that there is a certain inconsistency between them - in the one case it is suggested that the love songs had little relevance to ordinary life, on the other that they reflect it with some degree of historical accuracy - but there may be nonetheless an element o f truth in both, just as there is no doubt some truth in Professor O Tuama’s contention that the amoral attitudes expressed in the love songs derive from the heretical influence o f the continental amour courtois. M y own feeling, however, is that his appeal to historical authenticity here is less relevant and less convincing than his appeal to the artistic imagination. Certain it is that many of the motifs and much o f the mentality that went to the making o f the Modern Irish love songs were already

26

Zimmer, Myths and Symbols, 163.

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part o f Irish literary tradition before the coming o f the Normans and in this particular instance it seems reasonable to suppose that the characteristic amoral love of the later love songs is, in some measure at least, a continuation o f the unre­ stricted but innocent love that figured so largely in the traditional concept o f the Otherworld. The invitation motif which occurs frequently in the songs matches the corresponding motif in the Otherworld tales and clearly, as Professor O Tuama appears to suggest, there must be some lineal connection between the two.

‘ th ere

is n eit h e r mine nor t h i n e ’

The burden o f my argument so far is that, notwithstanding the palpable Christian motivation of the authors of Immram Brain and Echtrae Chonlai, their image of the Otherworld is essentially a traditional one in which the Christian notion o f heavenly chastity has as yet no function. I see no grounds for the assumption that this image is dependent on Classical sources - with one possible exception. In the well known poem in Tochmarc Etaine in which M idir invites Étain to share with him the pleasures o f M ag M ár ‘the Great Plain’ he refers to it as a land in which there is ‘neither mine nor thine’ (‘Is ann nád bi mui na tui’).27 The particular locution he uses has its counterparts in many medieval (and later) commentaries touching upon the concept o f a Golden Age. Peter Martyr, the Italian chronicler of the Columbian expeditions, writes o f the natives o f Hispaniola: ‘These natives enjoy a golden age, for they know neither meum nor tuum.’ 28 M arc Lescarbot in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France praises a community o f savages because, among other things, ‘they possess that mutual charity o f which Europe has been deprived since the pronouns mien and tien came into existence.’29 Ronsard questions the wisdom o f civilizing the natives of the American continent who as yet do not recognize the names o f virtue and vice and who share in common the bounty o f nature: Et comme l’eau d’un fleuve, est commun tout leur bien, Sans procez engendré de ce mot Tien et M ien.30 Others who use the pronominal formula are Francis Bacon and Cervantes and it seems in fact to have been a commonplace in the Renaissance period and after wherever men spoke of a utopian society or of the ideal state o f nature.31

27 28 29 30 31

Bergin and Best, eds, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’ , 180. Quoted by Levin, The M yth, 60. See ibid., 65. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 6 3 , 7 1 , 8 2 ,10 9 , 1 4 2 , 1 6 1; Cohn, The Pursuit, 2 14 , 2 17 .

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For us the problem concerns not the idea but its formulation. T h e notion o f a primitive and unconscious communism seems to be virtually inseparable from that o f an ideal existence whether in the past or in the future or in a praeternatural domain. It turns up frequently in the writings o f Classical antiquity and o f the Christian era (for a comprehensive documentation one may refer to Cohn’s The Pursuit o f the Millennium, chapters 10 - 12 on ‘The Egalitarian State o f Nature’ and ‘T h e Egalitarian M illennium ’), but o f course it is older than both and much more extensive in its range o f occurrence. Writing o f the concept o f Nirvana Kosambi observes that ‘When first propounded, it was a negation, a return of the individual to the sinless, undifferentiated state ... The memory o f a classless, undifferentiated society remained as the legend o f a golden age when the good earth spontaneously produced ample food without labour because men had neither property nor greed.’32 In the Puranas it is remarked that the cultivation of the soil and the development o f private property brought strife and contention and vice into the world as men sought to possess for themselves more and more o f its goods. The evidence is almost inexhaustible. One point, however, is especially relevant to our consideration of the early Irish literary view of the Otherworld: almost everywhere, it would seem, where belief has existed in a golden age or in a millennium, the idea o f material or economic com­ munism has been closely coupled with that of sexual communism. The probability is, therefore, that they were also associated in the traditional Irish concept of the Otherworld, whether or not this association received explicit literary expression in written texts. The question remains however whether the precise mine/thine formula in Tochmarc Etaine is borrowed from a Classical or late medieval Latin source or whether it is merely a coincidental use o f the same graphic terminology to express an identical concept. Before attempting to answer this question it would be necessary to check closely the incidence o f the meum/tuum formula in Classical and early medieval Latin literature, and this I have not been able to do as yet.33 Whichever answer we finally decide on will be o f considerable interest for the history o f written Irish literature, but it will nevertheless remain peripheral to the argument sustained in the present essay: that the Otherworld o f Immram Brain, when due allowance is made for the literary and ideological pull o f its textual setting, reflects fairly a traditional concept and is not dependent on Christian or Classical analogues.

32 33

Kosambi, An Introduction, 162. It would seem from Norman Cohn’s paraphrase of the views o f Clement of Alexandria (c. 1 5 0 - i . 2 15 ) that the latter used the pronominal dictum (‘ It was these human laws which created the distinction between Mine and Thine, so that things which by right belong to all can now no longer be enjoyed in common.’ Op. cit., 190).

The Earliest Bran Material* Jam es Carney

D

iscussion o f the nature o f the late seventh or early eighth century Immram Brain mate Febuil ‘The Voyage o f Bran, son o f FebuP began with the great work o f Kuno Meyer and Alfred N utt.1 Being the earliest o f the Irish Voyage tales a study of Immram Brain had relevance to the other examples of the genre, including ‘The Voyage of Mael Dúin’ and the Navigatio Sancti Brendani. Van Hamel produced a new edition in his Immrama.2 Many other scholars have commented on the problem including Myles Dillon,3 Gerard Murphy,4 Proinsias Mac Cana,5 Hans Oskamp6 and the present writer.7 I had laid considerable stress on the Christian elements in the tale; objections were made to these being dismissed as ‘interpolations’, and it was held that the tale as a whole had a Christian allegorical intent, showing Man struggling in the world on his voyage towards Paradise; the possibility of the existence o f a version o f Immram Brain on an oral level before the composition of the text that has come down to us was dismissed. Here it is proposed to deal with some early material which has not hitherto, it would appear, been given consideration, and which may throw considerable light on an earlier stage in the Bran tradition. There are in all three items. The most important is a Dialogue (Imbaccaldam) consisting of eight stanzas, four uttered by Bran’s druid, and four by Febul’s ‘prophetess’ as they contemplated Loch Febuil (Lough Foyle). The Dialogue is found in two sources: T C D M S. H.4.22, p. 48 cols, a and b (from which it was printed by Kuno M eyer but without comment or translation),8 and in Nat. Lib. o f Ireland Gaelic M S. 7 (N), cols. 9

*

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

First published in J.J. O ’ M eara and B. Naumann (eds), Latin Script and Letters ad 400-goo, Festschrift presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion o f his joth Birthday (Leiden, 1976), 174- 93M eyer and Nutt, eds, The Voyage o f Bran. Immrama, 1 - 1 9 . Early Irish Literature, 10 4 -7 . Saga and M yth, 25; ‘Review o f Carney’ , 162. ‘Mongán mac Fiachna’ . The Voyage o f M ael Dúin, 4 0 -2 , etc. Studies, 28 0 -9 5. ‘Immaccallam in Druad Brain’ .

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and io. The first source is sixteenth century; the second is usually described as belonging to the same century. I would suggest here, however, that we should for the moment keep an open mind on the date o f the latter, and that an early 17th century date might be possible; in this regard one should note the bookish use o f the double hyphen in word-division at the line endings. Th e two versions, despite the pseudo-archaic orthography o f N, are so close that derivation from a common original is to be regarded as probable. H took the verses from a manuscript containing old material, including texts deriving from the lost eighth-century manuscript, the Cm Dromma Snechta. This is indicated by the words asin l. c. nice, ‘ from the same book’ (the significance o f nice is obscure to me) preceding the druid’s utterance and asin /. ‘from the book’ preceding that o f the prophetess; similarly the words asan ./. c. na precede the title o f the whole piece, which title is curiously given between the two items that constitute the text. The Dialogue follows Forfess Fer Falgae and precedes Immram Brain; in other words it is sandwiched between two texts which are known to have existed in the Gin Dromma Snechta. In N the Dialogue immediately follows Compert Con Culainny a text which also existed in the Ctn Dromma Snechta; it is to be noted that, as in H, the title is found between the two pieces that constitute the text. The text o f both M S S. is printed below. A text normalized somewhat in the manner o f the present writer’s edition o f The Poems o f Blathmafi follows, together with translation and notes, and a brief discussion o f the evidence o f the Dialogue with regard to the evolution o f the Bran tradition. The remaining two o f the three items referred to are found only in N where they follow immediately after the Dialogue. The first o f these is headed ‘Hosini mac Fin i àixit contra filium side for Sruib Brain’, ‘Oséne, son o f Find, said to the Otherworld youth upon Srúb Brain’ . This is followed by four quatrains with the opening line ‘Tarnac imbith coult co cnaip’, ‘I found many hazeltrees with nuts’ . Oséne goes on to tell the fairy boy o f all the hidden treasures he had found in Ireland, amongst them ‘natural’ treasures which makes the piece in some degree a nature poem. The references to Srúb Brain (Stroove, on the western side o f Lough Foyle) begin in the second couplet o f the second stanza, and continue into the third. Pending an edition o f the poem (which has a number o f difficulties), the relevant lines may be quoted in normalized orthography: Tarnac-se féin hi Srúib Brain coicait primdaire each saim. Tarnac-se huaim ina toib hi fil arcat - dus-ceil fruich 9

9

The Poems o f Blathmac.

The Earliest B ran M ateria l

75

‘I myself found in Snib Brain fifty main oak-groves every summer. I myself found a cave in its side in which there is silver - heather hides it’ (i.e. the cave). This poem has no direct relevance to the Bran problem; it is mentioned here because o f the possible relevance of a hidden treasure in the neighbourhood of Srúb Brain, and because a scribe or a collector considered it worthy o f inclusion in a collection o f Bran material. This poem is followed by the third item, a dindshenchus or io re o f places’ text. A transcript is given here, line for line as in the manuscript; there follows a translation in which placenames have been translated where this seemed possible or useful: Anmand tire locha no maigi febnil inso Echdruiw .i. cemndaa Liatdrui/w .i. rind arda siar 7 na hiubracha Roifeth ota firmlracht co haigthi Finwmagna orintt arda co carric A e n ^ h fliuchr= aiss isanw ascorat orb mzcfcbuil fora gai issanw a2aqorte mbruigi aignicha .i. aignica Tulach ingabae is de ata gaba mac feb nil ata ercho/wair maie duilén Loch les ar comair ua mac cairthinw Crocdruim ar comair arda .ii. sairdes Druim dos ar comair arda siar do rait febuil ‘Placenames o f Loch Febuil (Lake o f Febul) or M ag Febuil (Plain o f Febue) this. Echdruim (Horse-ridge), that is, Cenindaa. Liathdruim (Grey Ridge) that is, Rind Ardae (Point o f the Height) westwards and Na hiubracha (The Yews). Roifeth (Great sea-calm?) from Findtrácht (Fair Strand) to Aigthe (Faces). Findmagna (Fair places) from Rind Ardae to Carraig (Rock). Oinach Fliuchroiss (Assembly o f Wet Promontary), it is there that Orb, son o f Febul, was thrown down upon his spear; there is his commemorative stone(P). M ruigi Aignecha (Flat(?) Grasslands), that is, Aignecha. Tulach in Gabai (The Hill of Gabae); hence the gabae of the son (sons?) o f Febul facing Mac Duilén (Son of Duilén). Loch Les (Lake o f Forts?) facing U i M aic Cairthinn (Descendants o f Mac Cairthinn). Cróchdruim (Yellow Ridge?) facing Ardae (Height) to the south east. Druim Dos (Ridge o f Bushes) facing Ardae, westwards o f Ráith Febuil (Fort o f Febul)’ . The above text apparently came into being by the excerpting o f a number o f

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placenames from an older text concerning mainly the mythical kingdom o f M ag Febuil before it was inundated and became Loch Febuil. The first stage in the process was probably one o f glossing, and the present text may thus be regarded as consisting of glossed extracts. T he glossator, as we may call him, sought to locate the mythical placenames in relation to known places on or near the borders o f Lough Foyle. The text commented upon was from the Old Irish period as shown by the form mbruigi (= mruigi) while Na hlubracha (= O.I. hid Iubair) suggests that the glossator belonged to the Middle Irish period. O f the placenames Rind Ardae, the main geographical point o f reference, would seem to be Magilligan Point or Ard M agilligan, in the barony o f Keenaght, Co. Derry; Ui Mac Cairthinn is in the same area (Cf. ‘tar Ciandachta ocus tar h. mac Carthainn ocus tar L . Febuil’).10 T h e genuine placenames which, however, cannot at the moment be located precisely, would be Cenindaa, Na hlubracha, Findtrácht, Aigthe, Carraig, Aignecha, M ac Duilén (an abbreviation of Cell Maie Duilén, or some such). The mythical placenames, all from the older text, would ihen be Eehdruim, Liathdruim, Roiféth, Findmagna, Fliuchross (Cf. M ag Fliuchroiss),1112Mruigi Aignecha, Tulach in Gabai, Loch Less, Cróchdruim, Druim Doss, Ráith Febuil. There are some doubts and ambiguities. The form o f the name Cenindaa is strange; the doubling of the a is merely to fill the line, a common practice o f the scribe. It may be tentatively suggested that we have to do with a false expansion o f an archaic abbreviated form o f Cianachta (Cénachta). As to the verbal form ascorat (= as-corath) the meaning is hardly in doubt but the form calls for comment. It may perhaps be taken as pass. prêt. sg. of as-scara (ess-sear-, v.n. escor), the vocalism of the root syllable being influenced by the v.n. and by cor ‘a cast’ , v.n. o f fo-ceird (-cuirethar). The form azaqorte is more difficult. The abbreviation 2 is based on the common abbreviation for est, for which it is used in the present manuscript in a Latin context; in other sources it can be used for east, eist, last, ist, st.'2 Here, in Irish contexts, it is usually used for da on account of its resemblance to the Arabic numeral 2; such a practice could hardly be earlier than the fourteenth century when Arabic numerals came into common use. In our manuscript q is used for cu or for c. It is suggested here that in a2aqorte 2 is for Lat. est = Ir. attd (of which I have no other example to offer) and that q stands for c, hence the phrase may be transliterated attd a c[h\ort\h\e which makes excellent sense. It may be noted that, on the basis o f the assumptions made above with regard to an old text and a glossator, this matter referring to Orb son of Febul (as well as the reference to Gaba, son of Febul) would derive from the glossator and not from the old text. In Crocdruim (l.io) Croc has been taken for Crock ‘saffron’, ‘ yellow’ ; it might as easily represent 10 11 12

Hogan, Onomasticon, s.v. Cianachta. G wynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, T L S vol. 1 1 , 268. O Ceithearnaigh, Regimen na Slâinte, vol. I, xlvii.

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Cruach ‘peak’, in which case the placename should be translated ‘Peak-ridge’ . In the same line in Arda M. the ii has been left untranslated; it could be for aile, eile ‘other’ a usage found in M S S . o f the fifteenth century and later;13 in this case we should translate ‘another place called Ardae\

THE ‘ D I A L O G U E ’

The following is the text o f the Dialogue, line for line, as in the two M S S . H and N. The words iarndedadail at the beginning o f the piece in H are the last words o f the preceding text. H (p. 48, col. a) iarndedadail.f.i.n.i.t. asin .l.c. nice IM bumese imbumé.nadfessed auiredine. nibasi fer fesso bic comaidm form and/mbir ic.Anubiwmis idún brain icol isin nuargaim fiaduw ne naisc triunu dialuig mo*fius coard niul-. Rosaig mofius tiprait glan hfil sais curi cét mban se uít inbanoAuir- conbitA do fiur fudgebad bidmar fritÄ / / ain nusóir fed tuaid no aladí fod sloig A rit amri intséuit glain file htóib sruibe br oldom anmc rigi Finit amen finit asan ,l.c. na I Macaldaim an druag brain 7 inn ani banfáitho febuil hoasloch febuil (col.b) aswi.l. Febul fortemen graigech hicoimnu conint gairet ni basidichóim inbi larig maigi fuinnside Aildéi maigi noreithmis ail di tire noteig mis alai nd atir adscuirmis alaind aceol nocluin mis / / e ara M ad frignathu na choin teistis arndoine inid gl ass force clochach mag febuil afindscothach. 13

Ibid., lvii.

respoinndit inbanfáith

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Bâtir aildi buidne ban oenaig himbimis labr an ba bind as mberedh inri citeit tait frithisi. Aedh indu N (Col. 9)

A R

A

F

cucul- 7 ctera / / a aircdine. nipasi fer mpamissi14 impa me. nat fessiuth fessa bic. comaidm form ind im = airic //argaim fiadunib nenaisscc nusbimaiss indun broin icóol issindu triuna dialluith mufiss cohairdniula asaig mu fiss tipprait glan hifil sáss ch'e cet mpan .seuit inpanch'i conbith. da fiur fot ngebat patt már frith / / srúmhe prain nosro= rit amrae intseuit glain fili hi toibh irfed tuaid no aldi foth sloig old# whan nTcrig15 Rispondit inpanfaith / / / / l6 eb - forthemen graidech . hi coimna conit (End o f Col. 9)

In lower margin: I Macall- indruad brain 7 na banfatha feb- 0s17 loch feb- ind sin tuas (Col 10) ngair - nipa si di cÀoiminbi.la rich mui= chi fuinsidiu / / n o tegmiss. aulint hi A ildiu inuchiu norethmiss. alte tiriu tir atscurmiss aulint inceul neo cl= uinmiss / / isstis ar ndane init glass M auth frie gnautha na choine arate= farciu clochuch mag feb- anfinnscothP ater aldi pugne pan. aenaich hi mbi= miss lia praun pa bint issmperiutt indri. cia teit taet hifrithisi Hosini m The following edited text relies mainly on H, but occasional better readings are

14 15 16 17

= Impamissi; room left for an ornate initial. m-crig: an effort has been made to erase g but it is still legible. T h e pair o f oblique parallel lines are line-fillers. os: an effort has been made to erase the s but it is still legible.

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based on N. The title, against both manuscripts, is given at the head o f the text. Imbaccaldam in druad Brain ocus inna banfátho Febuil hóas Loch Febuil 1. Imbu messe, imbu mé nad fessed a aircdine?18 N i ba-se19 fer fesso bic co maidm form ind imbairic. 2. A nu-mbimmis i ndun Brain oc ool isind úargaim, fiad doinib nenaisc triunu dia lluid mo fius co ardniulu. 3. Ro-saig mo fius tiprait nglan hi fil sáss cuiri cét mban; séuit in banchuiri con-bith20 do fiur fod-ngébad bid máfríth. 4. A r it amri int séuit glain file hi toíb Srúbe Brain; no soirfed tuaith no al a-di, foth slóig olldomuin macc rigi.

18

aircdine is taken as a compound o f argg ‘chieftain’ and the acc. pi. o f the neut. io-stem dine y ‘ generation’ ; for -rc~ = rgg note force N yfairciu H = fairrge, etc. IQ N i b a se here and in 5c (-si M S S ). T h is is a very archaic form where the copula is indistinguishable from the substantive verb; the regular O. Ir. form would be nipsa. This suggests that the poem should be dated at latest to the early seventh century. A number o f comparable forms are found in the early text published by Grosjean under the title‘S. Columbae Hiensis cum M ongano heroe colloquium’ . Another feature pointing in the same direction is tiprait nglan 3 a showing tiprae as a masculine noun. T h e D I L has no such example; one is found, however, in the archaic poem Ba mol Midend midlaige attributed to Lucreth [moccu Chiara], c. 600: ‘ maidm tiprait (leg. tiprat) mair’ (Meyer, ed., ‘T h e Laud Genealogies’, 308). In a more general way we may count as archaic in the present poem the use o f the preposition al, 4c, foth, d. There is another highly archaic feature: in 4d olldomuin (oil + domuin, gs. o f domun) counts as two syllables. A rule may be stated thus: in the earliest stratum o f Old Irish verse words o f a certain structure which have come to be written as disyllables may be treated as monosyllabic. These are words where the first syllable ends in a spirant consonant followed by an apparent syllable ending in /, ny or r. Examples: re ndoman dainibh (v.l. re ndomuin dóinib), ‘before the people o f the world’ where four syllables are required (Meyer, ed., ‘Tiughraind Bhécáin meic Luigdech’, i q 8). Similarly note that in the poem entitled Verba Scdthaige fr i Coin Culaind, deriving from the Ctn Drotnma Snechta, othar and foibur must count as monosyllables in otharligi and faeburamnuiss (Anecdota, ed. Bergin, Best, M eyer, O ’Keeffe, vol. V, 29-30 .). In the poem A maccucáin srmth in tiag the word credal (sic leg., credail M S S ., from Lat. credulus) must count as a monosyllable, rhyming with derb and consonating with psalmb, mart (G w ynn, ed., ‘T h e Reliquary o f Adamnan’ , 206). Such words might be expected to be monosyllabic in Welsh (e.g. dofn). T h ey are recognisable in Irish by sometimes showing vowel infection in the first syllable, e.g. othar, nom. pi. uithify lebor, nom. pi. libuir (Wl. llyfr); bodar nom. pi. buidir (but note W l. byddar).

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Respondit in banfáith 5. Febul fortemen graigech oc coimnu con-indgaireth; ni ba-se dichoim in bi la rig Maige Fuindsidi. 6. Aildi maige no-réidmis, áildi tire no-téigmis, álaind a tir ad-scuirmis,20 21 àlaind a céol no-cluinmis 7. M ad fri gnâthu na-choini ara tésstis ar ndoini indid glassfairrce chlochach M ag Febuil, a findscothach. 8. Bâtir àildi buidne ban oénaig hi mbimmis la Bran; ba bind as-mbered in ri ‘cia téit22 tait a-frithissi’ .

T R A N S L A T IO N

The Dialogue of Bran’s Druid and Febul’s prophetess above Loch Febuil 1 . Was it I, was it myself that did not know its kingly generations? I was not a man of little knowledge until I was defeated in the contest.23 2. When we were in Dún mBrain drinking in the cold winter, my fiss (knowledge), when it went to the high clouds, bound strong men in the presence o f people. 3. M y fiss reaches a pure well in which there is the equipment o f a band o f hundreds o f (Otherworld) women. T h e jewels o f the shapely com­ pany o f women would be a great find for the man who would get it. 4. For famous are the pure jewels that are beside Srúb Brain: it would ransom a tuath, or more than two (tuatha), the equivalent o f the scions

20

21

Con-bith: sg. prêt. pass, o f con-ben, lit. ‘ that was shaped’ . Formally con-ben could also be 3 sg. imperf. indie, o f a compound o f com with the substantive verb; this compound, however, has only been found in the verbal noun combuith, commaid. Ad-scuirmis. T h is verb does not seem to be instanced, and the suggested meaning "thronged’ is based on tascor; see Pedersen’s comments, Vergleichende Grammatik, vol. Il,

615. 22 23

Téit: 2 pl. absolute o f téit ‘ goes’; hitherto only the conjunct -téit has been noted. T h e ‘contest’ was probably a learned one, perhaps with the prophetess, concerning genealogical lore: ‘its kingly generations’ would refer to the traditions o f the lost

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o f kingship o f the host o f the great world. The Prophetess answers 5. Febul, dark and abounding in studs o f horses, herded guardingly - the king o f M ag Fuindsidi did not think that I was the ugly one o f the stock. 6. Beautiful the plains we rode over, beautiful the lands we came to; beautiful the land we thronged (?), beautiful the music we heard. 7. Well do you bewail to companions that our people should flee seeing that M ag Febuil, the fair flowering place, is a grey stony sea. 8. Beautiful were the bands o f women of the assembly in which we were with Bran; sweetly would the king say: ‘Though you go, come back again’ .

CONCLU SIO NS

The combination in the Dialogue of a number of elements enables us to attempt a reconstruction of some o f the main parts o f the structure o f Echtrae Brain:2* These elements are: (1) Bran; (2) Bran’s druid; (3) the well; (4) the bejewelled Otherworld women; (5) the prophetess; (6) the inundation o f the kingdom and the flight o f the inhabitants. I f these elements were presented to a medieval Irish storyteller with instruc­ tions to make them into a tale there would be a certain inevitability in the resulting product. The story-teller would immediately and without difficulty relate the elements to well-known story-patterns and to the common concepts underlying Irish saga. Our problem, when faced with the elements of the Dialogue, would be similar to the story-teller’s but with certain differences. Our knowledge of story-patterns and the general underlying concepts is necessarily narrow, having been acquired laboriously by scholarly processes, and not assimilated, as it were, with mothers’ milk. There is also a difference in that our object is simply to recreate strictly in accordance with the evidence. The medieval story-teller would not feel any such restriction and would allow his imagination free play where evidence as to detail was meagre or completely lacking. We may now consider the elements individually. (1) Bran Bran was king of M ag Febuil and presided at assemblies (§8). He was the hero

24

kingdom. T h e eight stanzas that survive may be a fragment o f a much longer com­ position. T h e term Echtrae Brain, ‘T h e Expedition o f Bran’ , is used here to denote the tale to which allusions are made in the Dialogue and which preceded the creation of the literary Immram Brain.

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of the tale and we are naturally to assume that he was present in Dún mBrain (Bran’s Fort) at the winter night’s drinking where the events were set in motion (§2). Immram Brain also opens at Dun Brain, the placename, according to a common early Irish practice, being implicit in the phrase a d m y ‘his (= Bran’s) fort’ {Immram Brain, §1). Dún mBrain, as we can deduce from the Dialogue, in common with the rest of the kingdom, was to be covered with water (§7). From this we gather that Immram Brain is to be conceived of as taking place before the inundation of the kingdom, granted, o f course, that the inundation was an old and constant tradition, an assumption for which there is ample evidence. The general nostalgic mood o f the Dialogue implies that Bran is now dead or at least departed and that his last act was his Echtrae. But the Immram was also Bran’s last act. In other words Echtrae Brain and Immram Brain are variants o f a single important incident in Bran’s life, his adventurous and perilous visit to Tir inna mBan, the Land of Women. One of these tales, it would seem, must have been developed from the other. It will seem from a number o f considerations, including the probable respective dates of the Dialogue and Immram Brainy the lack of Christian elements in the former, and their predominance in the latter, that Immram Brain has been based upon Echtrae Brain and not the reverse. This conclusion throws light on the difficulty with regard to the title referred to above. It also means that although the Dialogue must be regarded as the primary source for the recreation o f the incidents o f the Echtrae, some parts o f the Immram may have a certain relevance. (2) Bran's druid The druid’s function is to produce the information that will give the impetus to Bran’s echtrae. His fissy ‘ knowledge’, which might here be better translated ‘ faculty o f cognition’, flies to the high clouds from where it perceives richly bejewelled women at the bottom of a well (§2-4). I know o f no parallel to this curious shamanistic visionary procedure in Irish literature. T h e druid corresponds in function to the Otherworld woman in Immram Brain. Each gives the impetus to the action; each points out the existence o f a ‘Land o f Women’ and it is the hero’s duty, implicit in the Dialogue, explicit in the Immram, to seek it out. (3) The well A well in Irish tradition is a natural entrance to the Otherworld, as indeed is a cave or the side o f a mountain. All stretches o f water were worshipped, but the well was particularly holy. In bishop Tírechán’s memoir o f St Patrick (end o f the seventh century) the saint is shown as taking action against the well o f 25

25

Stokes, ed., The Tripartite Life, vol. II, 323.

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Findmag which from its curative properties bore the name Sian ‘Health’. The druids, we are told, honoured it and sacrificed gifts to it as to a god: ‘honarabant magi fontem et immolauerent dona ad ilium in modum dei’ .25 This well was the Rex Aquarum, T h e Lord o f the Waters, who, I suggest, is possibly to be identified with Manannán mac Lir, the Irish god o f the sea. The mixture o f adoration and propitiation of wells evidenced here and elsewhere has continued, despite Patrick’s efforts, in a modified and disguised form up to the present day. A well was naturally a great source of danger and in the cases o f Loch Rib (Lough Ree on the Shannon),2627Loch Riach (Loughrea, Co. Galway) and Loch nEchach (Lough Neagh) was the instrument by which Otherworld forces destroyed kingdoms turning them into lakes. The story of Loch nEchach is particularly relevant to the material under discussion and should be the subject o f a special study. Th is story is known in two forms which may be referred to as Loch nEchach (A) and Loch nEchach (B). Loch nEchach (A) is found in the poem Ba mol Midend midlaige.21 This version (a mere summary o f a current story which incorporated genealogical theories) may be taken as fundamentally pre-Christian. Loch nEchach (B) is, by contrast, a highly Christianized version o f the story upon which Loch nEchach (A) was based.2829The association o f a spring well (tipra) with the flooding o f an area or a kingdom in the cases of Loch Rib, Loch Riach and Loch nEchach suggests a similar relationship between the well and the inundation o f the kingdom in Echtrae Brain. Furthermore, the well in Echtrae Brain would correspond with the sea in Immram Brain: it is the hazardous water through which the hero must pass before reaching the land where the women dwell. With regard to this comparison it should be noted that it will be held below on general grounds that the ‘Otherworld beyond the sea’ is a development and rationalisation o f the ‘Otherworld beneath the water’ . (4) The bejewelled women To reach a company o f Otherworld women is Bran’s object in the Immram and in the Echtrae. But there are differences in motivation. In the Immram, as in Echtrae Conli,2^ reaching the Land o f Women is the equivalent o f the attainment o f immortality. In Echtrae Brain, insofar as we can make deductions from the Dialogue, the hero seeks out the women for the sake of adventure and

26

For the story o f Loch Rib see G wynn, ed., The Metrical Dindshenchas, T L S vol. 10, 450; for that o f Loch Riach ibid., 324. 27 See above, footnote 19. 28 ‘Aided Echach maic Maireda in so’ , ed. O ’ Grady, Silva Gadelica, vol. I, 2 3 3 - 7 . ‘T h is is the death o f Eochaid son o f M airid’ , vol. II, 2 6 5 -9 . See also G w ynn, ed., The Metrical Dindshenchas, T L S vol. 1 1 , 6 2 -8 . 29 Echtrae Conli has some points o f contact with Immram Brain. For the most recent comments on this tale see my discussion in ‘T h e deeper level o f Irish literature’ , 1 6 2 -5 and that o f Oskamp, ed., ‘ Echtra Condla’ , 2 0 7 -2 8 . See further below.

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enrichment; there is no evidence o f sexual motivation. Consideration o f the varying sexual attitudes of Otherworld women is necessary in seeking to understand this type of literature. The matter could be treated at some length but, for the moment, a summary of the statements and implications o f the principal sources must suffice. Otherworld women are fully sexual beings and often fall deeply in love with human men; indeed, the attraction is mutual. But Christianized literature, by associating the Irish Otherworld with the Christian heaven, has altered the character o f Otherworld women: they either ignore sex, being superior to it, or they express themselves as rigidly opposed to it on principle. It is implied or stated that sex is evil, being the result of the transgression (immormus) o f Adam. Were it not for Adam’s sin the human species would propagate itself by a lustless and presumably unexciting device. In Immram Brain, Manannán, the Irish god o f the sea, recognises that all sin in the world comes from Adam’s transgression. But he and his people have not been touched by this (‘nin táraill int immormus’ ‘the transgression has not touched us’). Consequently there is great purity: fir is mná mini fo doss cen peccad, cen immarmos, ‘men and gentle women beneath a bush, without sin, without transgression’ . When Manannán assumes human form and lies lustfullly (lúthlige) with Caintigern, wife of Fiachna, in order to beget his human and historical son Mongán ( f c. 629) the author juxtaposes to this incident a ‘prophecy’ o f the Incarnation. In Immram Maele Dúin, a tale o f very marked ecclesiastical content, and closely related to the Navigatio Brendani, Mael Dúin and his companions come to an island where they meet a woman who treats them with wonderful - one might say Otherworld - hospitality. On the third day they make a presump­ tuous error that leads to a sudden termination o f the visit. There are some textual difficul ties but the best translation o f the verse passage in question is M urphy’s, quoted here with some slight changes making no difference to the general sense:30 ‘When she had been besought to satisfy the leader’s wanton desire, she said that she was wholly unacquainted with wicked sin. “ What you contemplate, lacking as it does any trace of piety, is not the best o f faith’” . In Tochmarc Etaine a poem is put into the mouth of Midir, giving an account o f the beauty and happiness of the Otherworld. He says: ‘fine and flawless are

30

Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics, 10 4 -5 .

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the inhabitants o f that land; conception there is without sin or guilt. We see everyone on every side, and no one sees us; it is the darkness caused by Adam’s sin which hides us from those who would count us’.31 The statement in this early source that in the Otherworld there is ‘conception without sin or guilt’, coupled with the sexlessness shown in Immram Brain raises the question as to what means (in ecclesiastical thinking) the Otherworld folk used to propagate their species. Another way o f putting this question would be: By what means would the human race propagate itself if the sin of Adam and Eve had not inflicted upon the human race the evil and degrading act of sex? An answer o f a kind to this question is given only in sources that need not be earlier than the fifteenth century. In Echtra Thaidg mheic Céin ‘The Expedition of Tadhg mac Céin’32 the hero Tadhg in his wanderings comes to Adam’s Paradise. There he meets Ueniusa, daughter o f Adam, one of four immortal sisters. She tells him that it is she who lured Conle from Ireland, and she points out the beautiful and now immortal youth. ‘I loved him with a great love’ , said the maiden, ‘and I brought him to me into this land. And it is our delight, the two o f us, to be gazing and constantly looking at each other, and we have no other sexual act or corruption except that’ . ‘That is beautiful.and strange’, said Tadhg (‘Is aebda ocus is ait sin’), a phrase paraphrased by O’Grady as ‘c’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre’ . This idea, that mutual gazing might have been the ultimate in sexual contact, is implied in a poem o f perhaps fourteenth or fifteenth century date; but of this poem only a single quatrain survives in the Irish Grammatical Tracts, a kind of textbook o f sound poetic and grammatical usage. The dove has always been, as it still is, a symbol o f purity. T h e unknown poet writes: Adhaltrus fhear na cruinne ni hi dann na colaime dann do dhénuimh fa dheógh dhi le féghuin an éoin eile.33 ‘The intercourse o f the people o f the world is not (like) the family o f the dove; she finally makes her family by looking at the other bird’ . In Loch nEchach (A) there is no trace o f Otherworld women dwelling beneath the lake. But the element is found in Loch nEchach (B), if in an attenuated form: L i Ban, ‘Beauty o f Women’ , a daughter o f the king, Eochu, from whom the lake was named, survived beneath the lake as a kind of 31 32 33

Bergin and Best, eds, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 18 1. O ’Grady, ed., Silva Gadelica, vol. I, 3 4 2 -5 9 , vol. II, 3 8 5 -4 0 1. Bergin, ‘ Irish Grammatical Tracts’, 62.

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mermaid, half woman, half-fish. In this form she lived for hundreds o f years until Christianity was firmly established. In the sixth century she was caught in a net by a monk o f Bangor, and accepted the Christian faith. She could have lived on, but she chose death in order to attain heaven. B y this choice she became a Christian saint. She is doubtless a Christianized form o f the Otherworld L i Ban, wife o f Labraid Luathlám ar Claideb in Serglige Con Culainn. We may assume that L i Ban was made into a Christian saint because o f being an important cultic figure associated with the lake, and dwelling in it, in pre-Christian times. The Otherworld women mentioned above live beneath water or in islands across the sea. All have been given explicit Christian or biblical associations, fitting them, if not very comfortably, into Christian patterns o f thought. Where there are no explicit Christian associations the sexual behaviour o f the Otherworld women is less inhibited: we are, it would appear, in touch with the older tradition. In both instances given below it may be noted that the dwelling place o f the Otherworld women is beneath water and not in islands across the sea. I would venture the opinion, already alluded to above, that ‘dwelling in islands’ is a rationalisation o f the more primitive ‘dwelling under water’, an idea found also in other cultures. Th is rationalisation, i f it did not come with Christianity, would have been strongly reinforced by it. In ‘The Adventure (Echtra) o f Laegaire son o f Crimthann to M ag M ell’34 the hero came to the Otherworld by invitation, accompanied by fifty warriors; they reached M ag M ell ‘The Plain o f Delights’ by diving into a lake. After some martial adventures Laegaire took to wife Dér Gréine, daughter o f Fiachna, and wives were also found for the warriors who had accompanied him. Life in the Otherworld was a superlative version o f life in Ireland. There was little that was ethereal or Utopian about it; it was a satisfactory mixture o f love, war, and dynastic struggle; and when Laegaire was appealed to by his father to return to Connacht, and to kingship, he refused. In Tochmarc Emire ‘The Wooing o f Em er’ a Munster king Ruad, son o f Rigdond, while voyaging on the sea was made by a stratagem on the part o f nine Otherworld women to come to their land under the sea. He slept with each o f them on successive nights, and was rewarded by a gift o f nine golden boats. On one o f the women he begot a son.35 Unfortunately the Dialogue is neutral on the question o f whether or not Bran had any sexual adventures in the Otherworld. On one point there is a feature in common with the incident in Tochmarc Emire: the Otherworld women are in possession o f great treasures which the hero may obtain by fair

34 Jackson, ed., ‘T h e Adventure o f Laeghaire’, 3 7 7 -8 9 . 35 Van Hamel, ed., Compert Con Culainn, 3 9 -4 1; translation by Jackson, Celtic Miscellany, 163.

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means or foul. (5) The prophetess The prophetess, who like the druid is left unnamed, was probably conceived of as an elderly woman: she had been a lover of Bran’s father, Febul (§5). She had outlived him and her best memories were o f the period o f his rule (§6); in the latter days o f the kingdom she had been present at assemblies where Bran presided as king (§8). It is clear that in the reign o f Febul the plain which constituted the kingdom would not have been called M ag Febuil; hence another name had to be used, and she refers to it as M ag Fuinnsidi (§5). Just as the druid was a participant in the action o f the tale it would seem probable that the prophetess also had a part to play. Prophets or prophetesses are never introduced into the dramatis personae of an Irish tale in a casual manner, background figures used as decorative details in an exotic scene. The prophetess’s function, similar to that of Fedelm, the prophetess, in Táin Bó Cuailnge would have been to warn that the intended action (that is, seeking out the bejewelled women in the well) would result in disaster. There is a close parallel to this hypothetical situation in the traditions o f the bursting forth of Lough Neagh,, with some difference in the social position o f the prophet. A prophetess (banfáith) is a high-class professional woman with specific training. She could also be called bandrui, a female druid, or banfili, a female seer or poetess; she would have been more or less a priestess, and part of her function would have been to deliver oracles. In the traditions o f Lough Neagh the part is played by a man resembling somewhat the Shakespearean fool, a type well known in early Irish material. In Loch nEchach (A) he is Midend Midlach or Midend, the witless: he prophesies that the well will burst forth and drown the kingdom. In (B) the part is given to one Curnán Oinmit, Curnán, the witless, who prophesies the same disaster, encouraging the people to hew wood and build boats. It is a characteristic o f the prophet, in Irish, as well as other tales, that he knows the terrible truth, cries it abroad, but nobody heeds him. I f the hero took the prophet’s advice there would be no story. The prophet’s function then is to create tension, and to prepare the audience for tragedy. Inasmuch as the role of the prophet is to discourage action there is a certain parallel between the part that we assume to have been played by the prophetess in Echtrae Brain and that o f Corann, the druid, in Echtrae Condli. The latter tale I regard, not as a traditional story, but as a new creation from a con­ glomeration of Echtrae elements. It is a Christianized type o f creation similar to Immram Brain and possibly originating in the monastery of Bangor. To discuss this matter closely would widen too greatly the scope o f the present article. But the general framework has resemblances both to the hypothetical Echtrae Brain and to the existing Immram Brain, and like the latter it was one o f the texts contained in the Cm Drommna Snechta. An Otherworld woman appears to Condle and invites him to a world o f peace, happiness and immortality. He

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wishes to go but his leaving is opposed by the druid Corann. The Otherworld woman, after some lapse o f time, presses her case strongly and Condle sets out with her in a crystal boat for Tir inna mBan, ‘The land o f Women’ . There can be no prophecy o f disaster since in the view of the composer there is no tragedy in gaining eternal life. The druid’s role cannot therefore be that o f prophecy, but merely that o f an opponent o f the influences that draw Condle to eternal life. (6) Inundation and flight When the kingdom o f M ag Febuil was destroyed it is clear that some people escaped (§7), amongst them Bran’s druid and the prophetess; indeed, the latter, knowing the danger in advance would have taken the obvious precautions. That a great kingdom should be destroyed as a mark o f supernatural dis­ pleasure is a commonplace, and the obvious biblical parallels come immediately to mind, the Deluge and the destruction o f Sodom and Gomorrah. In these too certain people escaped. In the case of Noah the escape is of particular importance, since the calamity makes him a second Adam, an ancestor o f the whole human race. A comparison with Loch nEchach (A) and (B) would suggest that Echtrae Brain too may have been used as an origin legend for peoples in Ulster, or, indeed, other parts of Ireland. There is not, however, to my knowledge, any substantiation o f this. Echtrae Brain has not survived as a story. One reason for this would be that it has been displaced by Immram Brain. There remain, however, a number o f allusions to the inundation, all implying the existence o f some account o f the event. In the Annals o f the Four Masters the tomaidm (‘bursting forth’) o f Loch Febuil is assigned, along with that o f nine other lakes, to the reign o f Tigernmas and is given as occurring in A.M . 3581. The event is also noted in the Annals of Inisfallen. Tomadmann (‘burstings forth’ ) formed a special category of early Irish narrative and three are mentioned in the lists o f sagas, amongst them Tomaidm Locha hEchach, ‘The Bursting forth o f Loch Neagh’ ; in Lehor na hUidre this tale is called Aided Echach meic Maireda, ‘T h e Death o f Eochu, son of M airid’ . It is possible that the tale which we have called Echtrae Brain here had also a double title: Echtrae Brain ocus Tomaidm Locha Febuil. In the sixteenth century Nat. Lib. of Ireland M S. G 1, fol. 66 recto, there is a brief topographical tract dealing, amongst other matters, with plains that have become lakes. Amongst these is Magh Fuinnsend forsadá Loch Feabhuil ‘Magh Fuinnsenn upon which is Lough Foyle’; this is, o f course, the tradition alluded to in the Dialogue where the name o f the plain is M ag Fuinnsidi (§5). The glossed extracts edited above (i8off) are apparently from a tale dealing with the transition o f Lough Foyle from plain to lake; it is possible that in the lemmata we have a few remnants o f Echtrae Brain. In this connection it is important to note the anecdote o f Columb Cille o f

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which the latest edition is by Grosjean under the tide Sancti Columbae Hiensis cum Mongano Heroe Colloquium.36 Th is deals with a mysterious youth who was interrogated by Columb Cille at Carraic Eolairc on the shores of Loch Foyle. It has much in common with the Dialogue: the geographical location, the use o f a dialogue form, o f Latin phrases such as Respondit iuuenis, and o f forms o f the ist person sg. preterite o f the copula which are comparable with those found in the Dialogue. The mysterious youth came to be identified with Mongán mac Fiachna, but I would suggest tentatively that in the original composer’s mind, although preserved without identification, he probably came out o f the water and may have been a manifestation o f Manannán mac Lir. When asked by Columb Cille about the original form o f the lake the youth gave a description o f it from his own experience. The date of this piece is probably very close to that o f the Dialogue, and on the basis of certain forms in the latter which have been mentioned in the textual notes I would suggest a date in the early part of the seventh century. In my Studies in Irish Literature and History37 (as already mentioned above) I have held that Immram Brain is a thoroughly Christian composition, that it is allegorical from beginning to end, and that we cannot expect to find there any clear idea as to what conception o f Bran mac Febuil existed in pre-Christian Ireland; furthermore, that before its composition as a literary text Immram Brain had no existence on an oral level. I regard the new evidence presented here as by and large corroborative of this view. Echtrae Brain supplied some background material and certain hints that were capable o f a Christian application and development. But the two compositions were separated by the cultural chasm that divided pagan and monastic Ireland; the qualities o f thought, imagination and poetry found in Immram Brain may be regarded as the exclusive contribution of the seventh-century author. Similarly I would regard Echtrae Conli as a tale composed with the primary object o f inculcating a Christian message; it is in some way closely related to Immram Brainy and could, indeed, have been created by the same author.36 3738 The strangest feature of Immram Brain is the presence there of Mongán son o f Fiachna who died in or about 629: he is presented as a ‘son’ of Manannán mac Lir, the Irish sea-god. Manannán, himself, foresees his begetting in future ages. What to us might seem a blasphemous comparison is made when the con­ ception o f Mongán is deliberately juxtaposed with the Incarnation. Manannán also foresees that Mongán’s life on this earth will be short. But the drong fin d , the fair host (of angels), will take him away and he will be ‘through eternities of

36 37 38

See above, footnote 19. 2 8 0 -9 5. See above, footnote 29.

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centuries’ in a fair kingdom. Here we must face a difficult question. In recounting the adventure o f the ancient pagan Bran who set o ff in a coracle to find the Otherworld why did the author (who was a gifted and subtle individual) burden his tale with the cumbersome insertion o f matter concerning Mongán? There is, it seems to me, an explanation to hand that is as obvious as it is daring. Bran is used as a general symbol of the seeker after paradise; Mongán is the particular seeker whom the poet has in mind. This would mean, o f course, that Immram Brain was com­ posed as a commemoration o f Mongán in 629 or shortly afterwards. Making Mongán a son o f Manannán need be nothing more than a poetic conceit: Mongán, we may take it, was a sailor, plying on military expeditions between Ireland and northern Britain: the sea was his natural element, and he could poetically be regarded even in his lifetime as a veritable re-birth o f the sea-god. Regarding Mongán as central rather than as a peripheral incongruity makes the whole tale comprehensible as a piece o f literature. I would hazard the view that the author was an Irish fili with a good knowledge o f monastic teaching: he is personally involved in the problem of being a Christian, while at the same time retaining as much as possible of his traditional heritage.

Two Observations Concerning the Navigatio Brendani* Ludw ig Bieter

S

ince the days o f Heinrich Zim m er1 most scholars were agreed that the celebrated Navigatio Brendani is a Christian transformation of the voyage tales (echtrae, immrama) o f Irish tradition, and that it has its roots in Celtic beliefs in an ‘otherworld’ on some island in the west. However, one o f the bestknown o f these immrama, the Voyage o f M ael Dúin, was considered already by its first editor, Whitley Stokes,2 to be dependent on, and not a source of, the Navigatio Brendani. Apart from the assent o f Mario Esposito,3 his view was either rejected or ignored, until recently James Carney, in a review o f the edition o f the Navigatio by Carl Selmer,4 proved, conclusively to my mind, the Voyage o f M ael Dtiin to be a secular adaptation of the Navigatio Brendani, which it follows ‘incident after incident’ .5 Carney goes further than that: he claims that the Irish voyage stories no less than the Navigatio Brendani are products of a monastic milieu,6 that such an expression as Tir Tairngire is nothing but a translation o f the biblical (Heb. 11:9 ) terra repromissionis, and that there is no evidence at all of a pre-Christian Celtic belief in an ‘otherworld’ across the sea. I feel that Carney’s challenging re-interpretation is basically sound, but that it leaves one consideration out o f account. The ‘happy otherworld’ at the end of the earth is a Menschheitsgedanke. We know it, inter alia, from Ancient Rome: Sertorius wished to retreat to the insulae fortunatae in the west,7 and the same

* 1 2 3

4 5 6

First published in Celtica 9 (1976), 1 5 - 1 7 . Zimmer, ‘Keltische Beiträge il’, 12 9 -2 2 0 , 2 5 7 -3 3 8 . Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Voyage o f Mael D uin’ , 450. Esposito, ‘Sur la Navigatio’ , 3 2 8 -4 6 ; cf. also Esposito, ‘An Apocryphal*, 19 2 -2 0 6 , [q.v.]. According Kenney, The Sources, 4 1 1 n. 144, in the text o f the Voyage o f M ael Dúin as we have it (!) there probably has been re-borrowing from the Navigatio Brendani. Selmer, ed., Navigatio, and Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio’ , [q.v.]. Carney, ‘ Review o f Selmer, Navigatio*, 4 0 -4 , [q.v. 4 7 -5 1 ] . I f the Voyage o f M ael Duin presupposes the Navigatio Brendani, the latter cannot be later than the early ninth century. Carney, ‘ Review o f Selmer, Navigatio*, 44, [q.v. 5 1 ], also thinks that there must have been an earlier, more primitive Navigatio Brendani, which would have stood in a similar relation to the Voyage o f Bran as our Navigatio Brendani stands to the Voyage o f M ael Duin; see also Carney, Studies, 28off.

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desire is voiced by Horace in Epode 16. It is the visionary concept o f a land o f timeless bliss, prevalent also in much of Christian apocryphal literature, and endorsed by the Church as the ‘New Jerusalem’ o f the Apocalypse. I do not see why the idea should have been absent from Celtic beliefs even if there is little positive evidence. Only, and here I side with Carney, we should not postulate a pre-Christian ‘native’ type of ‘traditional’ tales in which it played a rôle and on which the monastic compositions, whether Irish or Latin, were modelled.

II

M y second remark is concerned with a detail. Carney78 points out that the retreat of Mernóc and his monks, which Barrindus9 in his account specifies (§i, 4, i8ff, Selmer) as ‘insula iuxta Montem Lapidis, nomine Insula Deliciosa’, is Ernan’s Inis Cain (‘Fair Island’) near Sliab Liacc (Slieve League in co. Donegal).10 He maintains, however, that the ‘Insula que uocatur Deliciarum ’ (§28, 81, 38ff), on which Brendan sojourns for three days on his return from the terra repromissionis, has nothing to do with the former island, but is entirely mythical, to be identified with the Inis Subai, the ‘Island o f Jo y ’, in the Voyage o f Bran. To me, a different interpretation is suggested by the contexts in which the two islands are mentioned. After Barrindus has spent a night on the Insula Deliciosa, Mernóc takes his former master to the western shore o f his island, where a boat is waiting for them to bring them to the terra repromissionis sanctorum. Then (§1, 35ff) the story goes on as follows: ‘Ascendentibusque nobis et nauigantibus nebule cooperuerunt nos undique in tantum ut uix potuissemus puppim aut proram nauicule aspicere. Transacto uero spacio quasi unius hore circumfulsit nos lux ingens et apparuit terra spaciosa et herbosa pomiferosaque ualde’ . They land on the island, which, as we learn later, has often been visited by Mernóc for longer or shorter periods. They explore the island until they come to a river, where they are met by a ‘uir cum magno splendore’ , who bids them return. He tells them that they have been on the island for a whole year without any need o f food or sleep. Then he accompanies them to the shore, where they find their boat; (§1, 7, 62-5) ‘ascendentibus autem in nauim raptus est idem uir ab oculis nostris et uenimus per predictam caliginem ad Insulam Deliciosam’ . Towards the end

7 Sallust, Hist. I. 6 1, 62 (ed. Reynolds, C. Sallusti Crispi, 170 , § 10 1; trans. M cG u shin, Sallust, 40, §90); as regards Immram Brain, see M ac Cana, ‘M ongán’ , 1 1 7 - 2 5 . 8 ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio\ 38fr, [q.v. 44ff]. 9 Here and in the following, I accept some of the manuscript readings preferred by Carney against Selmer. 10

Cf. Book o f Lecan fol. i63r. Mernóc is understood by Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio\ 39, [q.v. 4 5 -6 ], as a hypocoristic form o f Ernan.

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o f his voyage, Brendan reaches the insula repromissionis by a different route, guided by the procurator who has been his mentor from time to time. (§28, 78, 5ff) ‘Transactis uero diebus quadraginta uespere imminente cooperuit eos caligo grandis, ita ut uix alter alterum potuisset uidere’ . The procurator telis Brendan that this caligo surrounds the island which they have been seeking for the last seven years. With almost the same words as in §1, 38ff, we are then told: ‘Post spacium uero unius höre iterum circumfulsit eos lux ingens et nauis stetit ad litus’ . They land on a ‘ terra spaciosa ac plena arboribus pomiferis’ (§1, 39) and stay there for forty days. Finally they arrive at the dividing river, where a iuuenis greets then, tells them that they have reached their goal, but that they must return to their own country. Brendan, obediently, (§28, 37ff) ‘cum suis fratribus ascendit nauiculam et cepit nauigare per medium caliginis. Cum autem per transissent, uenerunt ad Insulam que uocatur Deliciarum’ . It seems obvious that the author, deliberately no doubt, has equated Ernan’s Inis Cain with the mythical Inis Subaiy ‘Fair Island’ with ‘Jo y ’s Island’ .

The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio* Thomas Charles-Edwards

he Irish peregrini o f the early Middle Ages have mainly been studied for their impact upon Anglo-Saxon England and Frankish Gaul. M y primary purpose is not to discuss the relationship between Irish peregrini and the societies to which they came in their exile, but rather the relationship between the peregrini and their society o f origin, early Christian Ireland. Though peregrinatio was not a peculiarly Irish custom, it was taken up with enthusiasm in Ireland. One possible approach to an explanation of this fact is to examine the connections between peregrinatio and Irish social organisation. It is this approach which I shall follow.1 In Jonas’s Vita Columbani there is a distinction between two grades o f peregrinatio. As a young man, still living in his native Leinster, he was much troubled by the threats to his chastity posed by the lascivae puellae o f the district. He sought advice from a nun. She told Columbanus that it was then fifteen years since she had left home and settled in her peregrinationis locus, but that if she had not been a woman she would have crossed the sea and would have sought out potioris peregrinationis locus.2 The nun’s distinction between the two grades o f peregrinatio was to dictate the course of Columbanus’s life. For many years he was content with the lesser peregrinatio: he left Leinster and went first to study under a biblical scholar called Sinilis and subsequently to the monastery o f Bangor, then still ruled by its founder Comgall. Many years later he began to desire a new peregrinatio. In spite of hesitations Comgall gave his permission and Columbanus left with twelve companions for Brittany and then Gaul. In Annegray and Luxeuil Columbanus found the potioris peregrinationis locus o f which the nun had spoken many years before.3

T

* i

2 3

First Published in Celtica i i (1976), 4 3 -5 9 . There is a good discussion o f peregrinatio in Angenendt, Monachi Peregrini, 1 2 5 - 7 5 . There are also some points o f interest in Leclercq, Au x Sources, 3 5 -6 4 . On the Irish side see Hughes, T h e Changing T h eo ry’ , 1 4 3 - 5 1 . For helpful discussion I am indebted to Professor D .A. Binchy and to M r C.P. Wormald. Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1:3 (ed. Krusch, 156). Vita Columbani, 1:3 and 4 (ed. Krusch, 152-6 0 ). With the phrase ‘ potioris peregrinationis

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The superior type o f peregrinatio is well-known. Indeed it is often supposed that it was the only type recognised by insular writers, that peregrinatio for the Irish and the English necessarily implied a journey overseas.4 This appears to be true for the English, but it is not true for the Irish. Columba is a good example o f a monk who sought a potior peregrinatio: Adomnán tells us that ‘he sailed from Ireland to Britain wishing to be a peregrinus for Christ’s sake’ .5 Naturally the superior peregrinatio is prominent in the Vita Columbae, but there is one good example o f the lesser peregrinatio. The first o f Columba’s monks to die in Iona was a Briton. He is described as a peregrinus.6 The evidence is not confined to early or to Latin sources. A standard Irish equivalent for peregrinus was ailithir, for peregrinatio, ailithre. In the ninth-century story Liadain and Cuirithir, Cuirithir, a Connacht man, is said to go in ailithre to the land of the Déssi. Later he leaves the land of the Déssi and goes overseas, again in ailithre.1 An Irishman might be an ailithir within Ireland as well as overseas. The English, however, do seem to have denied anyone the title o f peregrinus unless he had gone overseas. This is surprising since the vernacular equivalent, elpeodig, could be used for a man from another kingdom as well as a man from abroad. Among the seventh-century laws Ine c. 23 is particularly instructive:8 the elpeodig may be a man with readily available son or kinsmen, and so prob­ ably from a neighbouring kingdom; he may also be a man under the protection

4

5 6 7 8

locus’ cf. 1:6, ‘ potioris heremi sectare quietem’ (ed. Krusch, 16 3) and a similar phrase in 1:10 (ed. Krusch, 169). Sinilis may well be identical with Sillán (< Sinlán, dimin. to Sinell, hypocoristic M o Sinu) for whom see Kenney, Sources, 2 18 ; Grosjean, ‘ Recherches’, 20 0-44. Sillán became abbot o f Bangor third in succession to Comgall, Columbanus’s abbot. Jonas’s account, taken literally, suggests only that Sinilis was the head o f a school o f biblical learning, a sui litre, and that Columbanus left him in order to go to Bangor. Even if Jonas was well informed on such details his account does not exclude the identification since, at the time in question, Sinilis may not yet have become a monk at Bangor, or, alternatively, have been the head o f a school in a monastery subject to Bangor. T h is is explicitly stated by Angenendt, Monachi Peregrini, 15 2 : ‘Das Kriterium ist einfach: D er Exulant muß - aus der Insellage Englands und Irlands leicht verständlich übers M eer gefahren sein: Wer die patria verlassen will, muß die heimatliche Insel verlassen’ . T h is leads him ( 15 3 ) to an over-simplified contrast between the concepts o f peregrinatio current in insular and in continental ascetic circles. Continental ideas were not so different from Irish as they were from English ideas. To take an early example, the use o f peregrinus and peregrinor made by Sidonius Apollinaris in one o f his letters to the British bishop and monk Faustus o f Riez for (a) renunciation o f the world and sin (b) exile from the Auvergne would have been readily intelligible to one reared in the British or Irish traditions (Epistolae ix :3,3 and 4, ed. Loyen, vol. ill, 1 3 5 ,1 3 6 ) . Adomnán, Vita Columbae, I, 2nd preface (ed. Reeves, 9, ed. Andersons, 186). Vita Columbae, lli:6 (ed. Reeves, 2 0 2 -3 , ed- Andersons, 476 -8 ). Liadain and Curithir (ed. M eyer, 22, 26). T h e text is dated to the late ninth century by Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics, 209. Ed . Lieberm ann, Die Gesetze, vol. I, 98, 99. For the legal status o f the elpeodig from another kingdom, cf. Hlothhere and Eadric, §15 (ed. Liebermann, vol. I, 11).

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of an abbot or abbess, often, no doubt, a peregrinus in the full sense like Maeldub, Aldhelm’s master. An important point in Ine § 23 is that the king receives a half or two-thirds of an elpeodig’s wergeld. The association between king and monastery was generally close in seventh-century England; the association between king and peregrinus was even closer. The peregrinus left his homeland to serve a heavenly lord; he enjoyed also the protection o f royal lordship. Yet it is clear that for Bede a man was not a peregrinus until he had left Britain for Ireland or the continent. Th is is not merely shown by negative evidence, though in Bede’s case since he frequently mentions peregrini and peregrinatio the argument e silentio is a strong one. In Bede’s Historia Abbatum he relates how the pope commanded Benedict Biscop to accompany Theodore back to England. He was not commanding Benedict Biscop to return to his native Northumbria, and indeed at first he became abbot of St Peter’s Canterbury.9 He remained, therefore, from the legal point o f view an elpeodig; but for Bede he had given up his peregrinatio and returned to his patria. T h e patria which is here contrasted with peregrinatio is not the native kingdom but Britain. T h is is shown by what Bede says o f Ecgberct, one o f his leading peregrini: ‘Uouit enim uotum, quia adhuc peregrinus uiuere uellet, ut numquam in insulam, in qua natus erat, id est Britanniam, rediret’ .10 The implications o f this vow are shown by what Bede says o f Englishmen in Ireland in 664: they were there, relicta insula patria, to study the Scriptures or to practise the monastic life.11 Bede does not seem to have been untypical in his usage. Felix can say o f Guthlac ‘et parentes et patriam comitesque adolescentiae suae contempsit’ , using patria, here for the native kingdom, but he never describes him as a peregrinus.12134The only distinct use of the peregrinatio terminology to appear in English sources o f the seventh or eighth centuries is the common metaphor by which life on earth is regarded as a peregrinatio.1* A further distinction between the Irish and English concepts o f peregrinatio is that, for the Irish, peregrinus may be used for an exile or alien even though the exile is not a fulfilment o f an ascetic ideal. In Adomnán’s Vita Columbae there is a story o f how Columba secured the release o f an Irish slave-girl in the possession o f the Pictish magus Broichan. Columba is there made to call her a peregrina captiva.1* There is no such usage in Bede. Here again the Irish usage remains attached to the vernacular terminology for exile, whereas the English

9 10 11 12 13 14

Bede, Historia Abbatum, §3 (ed. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera, vol. I, 366, 367). Bede, H E 111:27 (ed. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera, vol. 1 , 193). Ibid. (ed. Plummer, vol. 1 , 192). Felix, Vita Guthlaci, §19 (ed. Colgrave, 82). E.g. in Ceolfrid's letter to the king o f the Piets, Bede, H E V:2i (ed. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera, vol. I, 333). Vita Columbae 11:33 (ed. Reeves, 14 6 -8 , ed. Andersons, 39 8 -40 4 ). T h e Andersons suggest (588) that the description o f the slave-girl as a peregrina ‘may imply that she had

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does not. OIr. ailithir and OE. elpeodig may refer to a foreigner or alien who has not become an exile for religious or ascetic reasons;15 so may peregrinus when used by an Irishman, but not when used by an Englishman. If, then, the Irish usage o f peregrinus is still firmly attached to corresponding vernacular ideas, it is necessary to scrutinize more closely the OIr. vocabulary for exile and the alien. Ailithir is a general term, used predominantly in a religious context. More specific terms are ambue ‘non-native’ , and cù glas ‘grey dog’, i.e. ‘w olf’ .16 Other terms are deorad and muirchuirthe (murchuirthe, murchorthae). Ambue and cù glas are used together and may, therefore, be considered as a pair. T h e distinction between the cù glas and the ambue is that the cù glas is the exile from overseas while the ambue is the exile from another kingdom within Ireland. The distinction can be established not only from the often unreliable legal glosses but also from the law tracts themselves. Both types o f exile might marry a native woman. I f they did so then their status would depend upon that of their wives, whereas the normal rule was for a wife to have an honour-price half that o f her husband. Similarly their children would, in the absence o f normal agnatic kin within their kingdom of residence, turn to their mother’s kindred for support. Hence one tract gives the rule that the mother’s kindred has only a very limited interest in her children except when they are the children of a cü glas or an ambue.11 Another tract says there are three categories o f men whose honour-prices are fixed according to the honour-prices o f their wives: a man without land who has married an heiress, ‘a man who follows his wife’s buttocks across a boundary’ (of a kingdom), namely an ambue, and finally a eu glas.1* Yet another tract describes the position o f the glasfine ‘grey kinsman’ : ‘T h e grey kinsman is a son of a woman o f thy kindred whom she bears to a Briton: he gets only the inheritance o f a sister’s son or free gifts for one separated from a

been living as a nun in Britain’ . T h e suggestion should be rejected. There is no evidence in the text, apart from the interpretation o f peregrina, that she was ever a nun in Ireland or in Britain. Columba requests her release not on grounds o f respect for religion or for monasticism but humanitatis miseratione. Freeing slaves, irrespective o f their previous profession, was part o f the tradition in Iona (cf. Aidan’s behaviour recorded by Bede, H E 111:5, ed. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera, vol. I, 136), and required careful management in the sixth-century Irish church, First Synod o f S t Patrick, §1 and 3 2 (ed. Bieler, The Irish Penitentialsy 54, 58). 1 5 For ailithir see e.g. Wb. 7cl 2, ed. Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicius, vol. 1, 542. T h is marginal gloss clearly refers to the end o f Romans 16 :26 , ‘ad oboeditionem (obæditionem, Wb.) fidei in cunctis gentibus’ , not to v. 25 ‘ secundum reuelationem misterii’ , as indicated by Stokes and Strachan. 16 For cú glas ‘ w o lf’ as a kenning for the stranger see Thurneysen, ‘Nachträge’ , 348. T h e similar Germ anic usage is attested as early as the fifth century in Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistolae vi:4,i (ed. Loyen, vol. ill, 15), and cf. Lex Salica, 55, §4 (ed. Eckhardt, 206-07). 17 Tract on Dtrey §33 (ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 31). 18 Tract on the fuidir, § 4 (ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 64).

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kindred’ .19 The ‘ grey kinsman’ , is the son o f a ‘ grey dog’ , a ‘w o lf’ . In the typical case the wolf is an Albanach, a Briton. From this situation in which the Briton is the typical alien from overseas living in Ireland derive the medieval Latin terms alhanus and albanicus for an alien, an advena. These terms must have their roots in Hiberno-Latin.20 To the position of the cü glas corresponds the potior peregrinatio o f Jonas, to the position o f the ambue the lesser peregrinatio within Ireland. In the case o f the cú glas the parallel can be followed even in detail. One way in which a man might become a cú glas was to have been a muirchuirthe, a man stranded from the sea. Muirchuirthe is used as a gloss on cti glas.21 In one tract deorad and muirchuirthe appear to be used as if they corresponded respectively to ambue and cú glas.22 I f the exile might be linked to his new society through marriage, he might also be linked through submission to a lord. An old rule quoted by a commentator states that muirchuirthe has a third o f the honour-price o f his lord unless the latter be a king or someone equal in rank to a king (a chief poet or bishop), in which case his honour-price is one seventh.23 This makes the muirchuirthe a particular sub-class of the fuidir, the man who cannot rely upon his kindred for status and support but instead must rely upon his lord.24 He is little better off than the dóerfuidir, ‘inferior fuidir\ whose honour-price is one quarter of his lord’s.25 In the tract on the fuidir we find, apart from the ambue and the cú glas (the latter mentioned by name), a particular type o f muirchuirthe, the fuidir cinad 0 muir, the fuidir cast up by the sea who has committed an offence.26 This is the man who for his offence - a glossator mentions kin-slaying - has been put in a boat, pushed out to sea and left to the mercy o f wind and wave. It was, in

19 A L I vol. 4, 284. For the phrase dedlaidfrifine, see Thurneysen, ed., Irisches Recht, 74. 20 I here adopt an explanation close to that given by D u Cange, s.v. (except that Albanach has its earlier meaning ‘Briton’ , not its later one ‘ Scotsman’ ), in preference to the derivation from Germ anic *aliban given in Niermeyer Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon, vol. I, 32. T h e Germanic form is purely conjectural whereas the Irish form is not. 2 1 E.g. tract on Dire, §33 (ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 31). 22 Berrad Airechta, § 22 (ed. Meyer, 2 1, tr. and emend. Thurneysen, Die Bürgschaft, 9). But even this case is not clear. In the heptads there is an example o f muirchuirthe being used alongside ambue, A L I , vol. 5, 182. Th is does not, however, exclude the possibility, which in my opinion is a strong one, that deorad could be used for the exile in general, whether from Ireland or overseas. It is the glosses which make deorad and muirchuirthe into straight equivalents o f ambue and cú glas. 2 3 Thurneysen, ed., Irisches Recht, 7, and, less completely, 39. 24 This is denied by Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 72, on the grounds that §7 o f the fuidir tract mentions only a specific type of muirchuirthe and that the honour-price o f a muirchuirthe is higher than that o f a dóerfuidir. T h e second of these arguments is a clear non sequitur, the first depends on the assumption that the list in §7 is exhaustive, which he does not support. T h e list appears too heterogeneous to support any such assumption. 25 Tract on the fuidir, §3 (ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 64). 26 Ibid. § 7 (ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 65).

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the Christian period, a type o f judgment o f God related to other forms o f the ordeal found in other countries at the same period.27 This procedure is echoed by one form o f the potior peregrinatio. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 891 there is the following entry: And three Irishmen came to king Alfred in a boat without any oars from Ireland which they had left secretly because they wished for love of God to be in exile (elpeodignes), they cared not where. The boat in which they travelled was made o f two and a half hides and they took with them sufficient food for seven days. And after seven days they came to land among the Cornishmen and they went immediately to king Alfred.28 The entry has great value as contemporary evidence for this form o f peregrinatio: the annal for 891 is the last written by the first hand o f the Parker M S. Two centuries earlier, in a very different type o f document, the same form of peregrinatio appears, only this time its function is explicitly that o f a judgment o f God. The seventh-century notes on the life o f St Patrick by Muirchú tell the story o f St Patrick’s triumph oyer a bandit called M accuil.29 Maccuil was planning to kill Patrick, but instead one o f his own followers met his death. The astounded bandit professed faith in God and repentance for his sins. Patrick replied, ‘I cannot judge but God will judge’, and commanded him to go unarmed to the sea, bind his feet together with an iron fetter, throw the key into the sea, and put himself into a boat made of one hide, without rudder or oar and go wherever the wind might take him. Maccuil did as he was commanded, and was blown to the Isle of Man where he was rescued by two missionary bishops whom he eventually succeeded. The natural assumption is that the cú glas had a lower status than the ambue, the muirchuirthe than the deorad from within Ireland. This is taken for granted by the commentators, and though their evidence is in general highly unreliable I think that they may be correct in this instance. The fu id ir cinad 0 muir, the fu id ir cast up by the sea after he has been put to sea for an offence, is a sub-class o f muirchuirthe. Evidence for the type o f offence for which he is exiled may reveal something o f the attitude to this form o f exile. In one M S. o f the tract 27

Cf. Thurneysen’s commentary, Irisches Recht, 74 and Byrne, ‘On the punishment’, 9 7 -10 2 [q.v.|. An important example is Cáin Adomnáin, §45 (ed. Meyer, 30). There it is explicitly described as a Iudicium Dei. On this cf. Ryan, ‘T h e Cáin Adom m in\ 2 7 0 -1 . 28 Two o f the Saxon Chronicles, (ed. Plummer and Earle, vol. 1, 82; The Parker Chronicle, ed. Smith, 40. M y translation is based upon that o f Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 184. It should be noted that in going immediately to the king, the peregrini are behaving as one would expect from Ine §23. Ine’s laws survive because Alfred appended them, or a selection o f them, to his own lawbook, and they were thus current law in A lfred’s Wessex. 29 The Tripartite Life, ed. Stokes, vol. II, 28 6 -9 .

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which contains the expression fu id ir cinad o muir there is a gloss which gives an offence for which such a procedure would be appropriate: fingal ‘kin-slaying’ .30 A law tract on theft begins: ‘there are three sins which God punishes most severely: betrayal and theft and slaying o f kin’ .31 T h e compiler was no doubt exaggerating by putting the subject o f his tract in such company, but for the other two, betrayal and kin-slaying, he reflected normal opinion. Kin-slaying, in particular, was an offence for which a society which relied upon the solidarity o f the kindred might have difficulty in finding an appropriate penalty. In part, then, the adoption of this procedure for those who have slain a kinsman might be a consequence o f a lack o f effective institutions by which laws could be enforced and offences punished, other than kinship (repudiated by kin-slaying) and lordship (repudiated by betrayal). I f the bases of society were repudiated, recourse was had to a judgment o f God. There are good reasons for this view but I think that it is only part o f the story. The procedure does not only abandon the offender to the will o f God. It expels him from Ireland. There is no suggestion that, if he is blown back to Ireland, he will be held to have been vindicated by the judgment o f God. Quite the contrary: he is classified as a fu id ir, one without effective ties o f kin. In effect, he is treated as a cú glas, a wolf, a complete outsider. Analysed in this way, the procedure has clear analogues elsewhere, in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae and in the penitential literature. Adomnán tells the story of an encounter between Columba and a man who had committed incest with his mother and had slain a kinsman (the fin gal o f the legal glossator).32 The story begins with Columba ordering his monks one night to pray to God because that very hour the incest had been committed. The next day he prophesied that the infelix homuncio would arrive after a few months. The story, then, is one more illustration of Columba’s visionary and prophetic powers, but it has a number of interesting twists. The wicked man duly arrived in the company of one of Columba’s monks Lugaid, who was ignorant o f what had happened. Columba tried to have him put out at M ull to prevent him landing upon Iona. Such sins had made the man an outcast, a man who should not only be expelled but even kept from landing. The infelix homuncio, however, outmanoeuvred Columba. He declared that he would not eat until he had seen and talked with the holy man. He was proceeding exactly according to the rules o f Irish law. Columba was guilty o f esáin, literally ‘driving-away’, that is, refusal of hospitality. Columba was also a nemed, a sacred or privileged person. To secure one’s right from a nemed the

30 31 32

Ed. Thurneysen, Irisches Recht, 65. Senchas M ä r : Facsimile, (ed. Best and Thurneysen, 28: Bretha im Gatta), printed by Smith, Bretha im Gatta, 18 -2 0 . Vita Columbae, 1:22 (ed. Reeves, 5 1 - 2 , ed. Andersons, 2 5 2 -6 ).

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appropriate procedure was to fast against him (troscad). The consequence o f such a fast was to place the nemed in a quandary: he could give way, or, at least, give a pledge that he would satisfy the just claims o f the faster; but until he did this he was not allowed to eat himself. I f he ate without giving a pledge he was liable to pay twice the value o f whatever was claimed by means o f the fast.33 Columba gave in, very unwillingly. He went down to the shore with his principal coun­ cillor and eventual successor, Baithéne. Baithéne argued from Scripture that the man’s penitence should be accepted. Columba replied, ‘Baithéne, this man has perpetrated fratricide in the manner of Cain, and has slept with his mother’. The infelix homuncio then knelt in the sand (he must by this time have been allowed ashore) and promised to fulfil the legespenetentiae according to the judgment o f the holy man. The judgment was then given: ‘si XII. annis inter Brittones cum fletu et lacrimis penetentiam egeris, nec ad Scotiam usque ad mortem reversus fueris, forsan deus peccato ignoscat tuo’ . T h e verdict was a lifelong potior peregrinatio. In Irish terms he was to be a wolf, an outsider, for life. Adomnán, in telling this story, refers to the ‘laws of penance’ . The penitentials suggest that Columba’s judgment was on the normal lines. The Penitential o f Cummean prescribes three years.of penance and peregrinatio perennis for a man who has committed incest with his mother.34 Columba increased the period of penance because o f the man’s fratricide. Peregrinatio is found in the penitentials prescribed for other sins though it is not usually a lifelong sentence. Adomnán’s story, apart from its general interest as an illustration o f Irish legal procedure, displays two features of importance in understanding the Irish background to peregrinatio: it shows the insistence on making a man who has committed certain very grave offences into a complete outsider, and it shows the holy man delivering a judgment prescribing lifelong peregrinatio so that, perhaps, the penitent will escape condemnation at the judgment seat o f God. T h e offender must not even be allowed to pollute the soil o f the island by landing. This desire to prevent pollution may help to explain the rationale behind the use of expulsion from Ireland as a punishment o f the very gravest offences: it is not merely an expulsion from a society, it is an expulsion from a land. Columba’s initial reaction, then, may perhaps reveal the attitude given legal effect first in the native laws and then in ecclesiastical legislation. There is evidence, therefore, to show the reality o f the attitudes implicit in the term cú glasy ‘grey dog’, ‘w olf’ . There is also good evidence to show that the ambue, the exile from another kingdom within Ireland, was regarded with some contempt. I have already quoted the expression used in one law tract for an ambue who marries a native woman: ‘a man who follows the buttocks of his wife across

33 34

Thurneysen, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht II’ , 2 6 0 -75 . The Irish Penitentials, ed. Bicler, 1 1 4 (§9), cf. 68 (§6).

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the boundary’ .3536That this is a deliberately harsh reference to his desire for sexual intercourse is shown by a passage in the Táin Bó C úailnge^ Cu Chulainn has secured an agreement with Ailill and Medb by which he fights their warriors one by one and their army cannot move while he remains victorious. He is in the middle o f a series o f such single combats when he is approached by a lovely girl who declares that she has fallen in love with him and has brought treasure and cattle (as her contribution to the marriage settlement). They then have the following conversation (Cú Chulainn speaking first): ‘You have come at a bad time. We are in bad shape; we are famished. I cannot lie with a woman while I am in this struggle. I should be a help to you in your struggle.’ ‘It is not in exchange for a woman’s buttocks that I have undertaken it.’ The girl turns out to be the war-goddess and promises to attack Cu Chulainn in revenge for his repudiation o f her. The same expression is used on another occasion later in a contemptuous reference to the adultery o f Fergus (an Ulster exile in Connacht) with Medb.3738 Situation and phraseology in saga and law tract correspond exactly. T h e expression is used as a reproach, not because the union was adulterous, but because lust has led to misfortune, just as the law tract uses the expression because the ambue is held to have lost status through an exile dictated by lust. Although non-legal sources confirm the legal evidence for the low status o f cú glas and ambue there is a distinct difference in the attitudes they display to the two categories of exile. The cú glas is the complete outsider, the class to which one assigns the man whose very presence is a pollution on the land, who has committed offences which place him outside society. The ambue may be a despised class of low status, but that is as far as it goes. The ambue is only a relative outsider. This, then, is the explanation o f the two grades o f peregrinatio in Jonas’s Vita Columbani: any ascetic peregrinatio is a renunciation of kindred and wealth, but in the world into which Columbanus was born potior peregrinatio was the natural path to complete renunciation. For the cú glas> the ‘w olf’, the world was indeed an alienus mundus &

35 36 37

38

Thurneysen, ed., Irisches Rechty 64. Tain Bó Cúailnge, 11. 16 0 9 -2 9 (ed. Strachan and O ’ Keefe, 59 -6 0 ). Lebor na Huidre, 11. 6 0 8 1-10 0 , ed. Best and Bergin, 18 8 -9 . Táin Bó Cúailnge, 11. 359 9 -6 0 0 (ed. Strachan and O ’ Keeffe, 120 ); cf. Fergus’s own verdict, 11. 36 4 6 -8 , 1 2 1 - 2 , where the reference is to M edb’s leading the Connacht army into foreign lands. Cf. the well-known sentence in Columbanus, Instructio IV: ‘alienus tibi totus mundus est, qui nudus natus nudus sepeliris’ (ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 78), where as in most of Columbanus’ sermons the argument is that human life as such is a peregrinatio. In

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Yet though renunciation of the world was the central aim o f any ascetic peregrinatio, it is nevertheless true that by the mid-seventh century the peregrinus held a position of considerable prestige and power in Irish society. The Irish law tracts have a special term for him: he is the deorad Dé, ‘exile o f G od’ . Like the bishop or the chief poet, the deorad Dé has a legal status equal to that o f the normal Irish king.39 Any ordinary contract requires a surety before it is valid; but among the privileged contracts valid without a surety is ‘a thing for which the men o f heaven and the gospel o f Christ are invoked [as sureties], for every exile o f God is obliged to enforce their suretyship as though he himself had been invoked for it or as though his celebration [of religious rites] had guaranteed it’ .40 In other words, the exile of God is the representative on earth o f God and the saints. T h z peregrinus might have renounced the world, but the power which he held prevented the world from renouncing him. Though the glossators tend to equate the deorad with the antbue it is highly unlikely that the term deorad Dé was only applied to a peregrinus from another kingdom within Ireland. We know from Bede that English peregrini were wel­ comed in Ireland, and Ecgberct, at least, was a man o f considerable influence.41 Given the value placed upon the potior peregrinatio it is probable that a man like Ecgberct held the position o f power which the laws assign to the deorad Dé.

39

40 41

effect, Columbanus combines this notion o f peregrinatio with the one which sees it as an ascetic exile. On the one hand ‘ibi enim patria ubi Pater noster est. Patriam ergo non habemus in terra, quia Pater noster in caelis est’ (Instructio vili, ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 94), and, ‘Occupemus itaque nos divinis, ne forte humanis, et quasi peregrini semper patriam suspiremus, semper patriam desideremus’ (ibid., 96). On the other hand, peregrinatio as exile is found in the letters: ‘in has terras peregrinus processerim’ (Epistolae II:6, ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 16); and also in the sermons (Instructio l\ :2, ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 8 0 , 1. 29). There may be a play on both notions in Epistolae III :2, where Columbanus and his fellow peregrini are at once in peregrinatione and in patria for they observe the nostrorum regulae seniorum not the regulae Gallorum. By the former are probably meant not just the Irish rules o f Easter observance etc., but also the evangelical canones described in Epistolae 11:5 (ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 14), the rules o f Christ and, therefore, o f the heavenly patria. T h e two notions may also be combined in Instructio X.3 (ed. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 1 0 2 , 11. 33) where in alienis habitamus certainly refers to the earthly peregrinatio as opposed to the heavenly patria, but probably also to the foreign lands in which Columbanus and his fellow peregrini are living. For Columbanus the physical peregrinatio renders obvious and tangible the transient and alien nature of human life on earth. In this way he had no difficulty in adapting the insular notion o f ascetic exile to continental conditions where a Burgundian, a Frank or a Roman took his law and legal standing with him wherever he went (the Personalitätsprinzip). Bretha Crolige, §4 (ed. Binchy, 6); A L I , vol. 1, 78. Cf. Bretha Crólige, §12 (ed. Binchy, 1 1 - 1 2 , the note on 5 8 -8 ); the deorad creitme (-deorad Dé) in Binchy, ed., ‘ S ick Maintenance’ , §6, 8 7 -8 and the discussion on 1 2 1 - 6 . Coibnes Uisci Thairidne, §7 (ed. Binchy, 67 and note, 8 0 -1). Bede, H E 111:27 (ed. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera, vol. I, 192). Schieffer’s verdict on Ecgberct is accurate: ‘ E r wurde der große Vermittler und Initiator’ (Schieffer, Winfrid-Bonifatius, 97).

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Deorad, then, may be translated ‘exile’; and the more restricted meaning given to the term by the glossators may be rejected. The lawyers had not always given high status to the peregrinus. Indeed, it is probable that it was only in the second half o f the sixth century that the church acquired the extensive privileges which appear in the seventh-century law tracts. It is possible to trace in outline the path by which the peregrinus rose to the position o f privilege which he held in the seventh century. T h e history o f this rise helps to explain the attractions o f peregrinatio for the Irish. The first evidence for peregrinatio in Ireland is provided by the writings of St Patrick. His peregrinatio among the Irish is one o f the principal themes o f the Confessio and the Epistola. One passage from each will show what exile entailed. In chapter 37 o f the Confessio he explains how God triumphed in him against the arguments o f his seniores with the following consequence: ut ego ueneram ad Hibernas gentes euangelium praedicare et ab incredulis contumelias perferre, ut audirem obprobium peregrinationis meae, et per­ secutiones multas usque ad uincula et ut darem ingenuitatem pro utilitate aliorum.*2 And in the Epistola he says: Ingenuus fui secundum carnem; decorione patre nascor. Vendidi enim nobilitatem meam - non erubesco neque me paenitet - pro utilitate aliorum; denique seruus sum in Christo genti exterae.4 243 The phrases are often biblical, but the loss o f status to which he refers is not mere metaphor. On his hereditary status he is precise: his father was a decurio, and by birth, therefore, Patrick had nobilitas, ingenuitas. He was a member o f the curiales. All this he lost through returning to Ireland as a missionary. Though a bishop, he did not have the status o f a freeman. T h e difference between this situation and that o f the church in the seventh century is complete: in the seventh century a bishop, by virtue o f his office, has the status o f a king; in the fifth century a missionary bishop, by virtue o f his exile, does not even have the status o f a freeman. Patrick was a Briton, an Albanach, and therefore cù glas, a complete outsider. The links between the fifth-century situation and that in the seventh century can, to a limited extent, be reconstructed. First, there is a link between Patrick’s writings and Adomnán’s Vita Columbae in a point o f vocabulary. It has been shown that Patrick’s use o f proselitus as an equivalent to peregrinus derives from

42 43

Confessio xxxvii (ed. Bieler, Libri Epistolarum, 77). Epistola (ed. Bieler, Libri Epistolarum, 96).

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the Vetus Latina bible.44 B y the standards o f normal Christian usage on the continent it was, by the fifth century, archaic. But proselytus is used by Adomnán in exactly the same sense. In two out of five examples it is used for someone also termed a peregrinus. In one case it is used for a British disciple o f St Patrick.454 6 For the sixth-century church before the definitive conversion of Ireland there is the evidence of the so-called First Synod o f St Patrick 46 The principal aims o f the canons in this document are to strengthen the cohesion o f the Christian community within a pagan kingdom, and, in part as a means to this end, to strengthen the authority o f the bishop over the church. The terminology used by the text is revealing. The bishop enjoys principatus over a plebs, 2iparruchia. Plebs, however, is the Latin equivalent of OIr. túath which, in the seventh century, was the population of a kingdom and, therefore, of a bishopric since the latter coincided with the kingdom. In ecclesiastical contexts, túath was used for the lay population o f a kingdom or diocese as opposed to the clergy, hence Adomnán’s plebeus homo for OIr. fe r túaithe, iaym an’ .47 It is probable that already by the time o f this text one bishop to each túath was the norm. Yet, if this is the case, there is no doubt that some o f these canons imply a policy which would have produced, in effect, a tuath within a tiiath, a Christian plebs within a pagan kingdom. Recourse to a judge is prohibited: the Christian must take his case to the Church.48 Gifts from pagan kindreds are not to be received into the Christian community.49 Since the exchange o f gifts was an essential social bond in early Irish society, this canon implies a separation o f each túath into two societies, one Christian, the other pagan. The principal sanction mentioned in these canons is excommunication, namely, expulsion from ecclesia, plebs or parruchia. It is used not only for such

44 Mohrmann, The Latin, 39 -4 0 . 45 Vita Columbae, 2nd preface (ed. Reeves, 6; ed. Andersons, 182) for the British disciple o f S t Patrick; I , 3 2 , 4 4 (ed. Reeves, 6 1, 85, 86; ed. Andersons, 2 7 0 -2 , 304) for the proselyti/peregrini\ 1, 26, 30 (ed. Reeves, 55, 59; ed. Andersons, 260, 265, mistranslated ‘new-comers’ 266) for proselyti. 46 On the date and character o f this document see the discussion between Binchy, ‘Patrick and his biographers’, 4 5 -9 , Bieler, ‘Patrick’s Synod’, 9 6 -10 2 , Hughes, The Church, 4 4 -5 3 , Binchy, ‘S t Patrick’s “ First Synod’” , 4 9 -59 , and Hughes, Early Christian Ireland, 6 7 - 7 1 . I share the view o f D r Hughes that the canons probably belong to the mid-sixth century. 47 See the references in the index to the Andersons’ ed. 48 The Irish Penitentials, §20 (ed. Bieler, 56). 49 The Irish Penitentials, loc. cit., §13. I prefer to translate ‘Elemosinam a gentibus offerendam in ecclesiam recipi non licet’ by ‘Alms offered by pagan kindreds (‘ pagans’ Bieler) are not to be received into (‘accepted for’ Bieler) the church’ . Pagans are gentiles, not gentes, in this text, §8, 14, 20. Bieler translates ‘a gentibus sperat permissionem’ in §24 by ‘looks to laymen for permission’ . Though in S t Patrick’s genuine writings gens appears to be the equivalent o f OIr. tuath, there is good evidence in such later texts as Adomnán’s Vita Columbae for the meaning ‘kindred’ ; and this transi, fits the context in the Synod well. I should, therefore, transi, gentes in both §13 and 2 4 by ‘(pagan) kindreds’ .

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serious offences as following Irish custom in the matter o f divorce and second marriages,50 but also for apparently less weighty offences: a cleric, for example, who takes his cut from gifts intended for the bishop is excommunicated.51 Excommunication is a serious matter: just as gifts are not to be accepted from pagan kindreds they are not to be accepted from an excommunicate.52 I f the Christian plebs is a conscious counterpart to the still pagan túath, then excommunication is the counterpart o f punishment through exile in the secular law. Furthermore, once the final conversion has come about (probably in the second half o f the sixth century), and Christian plebs and secular túath are to all intents and purposes identical, then excommunication will naturally imply exile from the túath. Final conversion, then, stimulated the growth o f the system of penitential exile which is found in the seventh century. Once the secular legal background is recognised it is possible to understand how the considerable British missionary effort in Ireland during the fifth and early sixth centuries and the fierce discipline exerted by the bishops o f the sixth-century Irish church contributed to the growth o f the Irish tradition o f peregrinatio. Th is tradition was always explicitly founded on certain key scriptural passages, but derived much o f its power from the organization o f Irish society. Because of the ideas which expressed that organization, peregrinatio was the most intelligible form of ascetic renunciation available to Irishmen. The ascetic ideal cohered with the society. An important implication of this argument is that missionary work was an inherited element in the Irish tradition o f peregrinatio. There has been considerable confusion on this question because of an excessive reaction against earlier panegyrics o f the missionary achievements o f Irish peregrini,53 It has 50 51 52 53

The Irish Penitentials, §19 (ed. Bieler, 56). Ibid., §26, (ed. Bieler, 58). Ibid., §12 (ed. Bieler, 56). Scholars now generally deny or minimize the connections between peregrinatio and missionary work. For example, Schieffer, Winfrid-Bonijatius, 86, writes o f Columbanus, ‘ Wir wissen zwar, daß Columban und seine Jünger nicht zum Zwecke der Heiden­ mission ins Frankreich kamen’ ; and yet Columbanus himself thought otherwise, ‘M ei voti fuit gentes visitare, et evangelium eis a nobis praedicari’ {Epistolae IV:5, ed. Walker, Sancti Colutnbani Opera, 30, and cf. Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1:4, ed. K rusch, 160). T h e clarity of the debate suffers from a too rigid dichotomy between preaching to the wholly pagan and preaching to the half-Christian. Th e two were plainly closely connected in the minds of Columbanus and Jonas. Similarly Schieffer writes (97) o f Ecgberct: ‘Auch ihn ergriffen die Ideale des irischen Mönchtums, aber es blieb nicht bei einer Fortsetzung der traditionellen peregrinatio. Nicht ohne einen deutlichen römischen Einschlag rationaler Planmäßigkeit stellte der Angelsachse die askcetische Heimatlosigkeit bewußt in den Dienst eines weitschauenden Missionswerkes’ . Apart from the missions of Palladius and Augustine of Canterbury ‘römische Planmäßigkeit’ had been conspicuous by its absence: Thompson, ‘ Christianity and the Northern Barbarians’, 5 6 -7 8 , who neglects, however, on 63 the evidence o f Prosper, Contra Collatorem which is effectively used by O ’Rahilly, The Two Patricks, 2 0 -1.

The S o cia l Background to Irish Peregrinatio

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been rightly pointed out that a man may be a peregrinus without having any intention o f being a missionary. This point is confirmed by the conclusion that an Irishman might be a peregrinus (of the lesser grade) even if he never left Ireland. What is now at issue is not, however, whether peregrinatio necessarily implied missionary intentions, but rather whether the way in which the Irish tradition of peregrinatio developed led to some peregrini becoming missionaries. The answer to this second question is clear: the part played by Patrick and other missionaries in the early growth of the tradition inevitably linked together the potior peregrinatio and missionary work. For men reared in that tradition it was natural, but not necessary, to be a missionary if one became a peregrinus o f the higher grade. The privileges accorded to the deorad Dé demonstrate the change which final conversion brought about in the position of the peregrinus within Ireland. To some extent the lesser peregrinatio was emptied o f significance. T h e peregrinus might leave his native kingdom and his kinsmen, but his status was enhanced rather than diminished by his calling. The ascetic, then, was likely to turn to the superior grade o f peregrinatio, or, if he did not wish to leave Ireland for Britain or the continent, he could retire to an island o ff the Irish coast. Both o f these possibilities can be illustrated from the seventh-century Vita Fursei. The young Fursa’s religious vocation leads naturally to peregrinatio, at first of the lesser grade. He is described, at this stage, as patriam parentesque relinquens, but not explicitly as a peregrinus.S4 After his monastic training and biblical education he builds a monastery from which he can visit his patria, and preach to his parentes. It appears that he was a deorad Dé, but retained close links with his native kingdom. It was at this point that he experienced his visions. Subsequently there is a change o f direction: he preaches now per universam Hyberniam, proclaiming that he has learnt through his visions omnibus populis Scottorum .5S5 6But the position o f a deorad Dé becomes insupportable: he cannot endure the irruentium populorum multitudines, and some are moved by envy to oppose him. First he retires ‘ad insulam quandam parvulam in mari’ , and not long after he retires de Hybernia insula, peregrina litora petens. The offshore island is still conceived of as part of Hibernia. Only when he travels further, ‘per Britanniam in Saxoniam’, does the biographer speak o f peregrina lit o r a l In the Vita Fursei, then, the distinction between the two types of peregrinatio is no longer so clear. True, the distinction undoubtedly survived as is shown by the ninth-century story Liadain and Cuirithir, but the position o f power and status accorded to the deorad D é has undermined the lesser peregrinatio: the irruentium populorum multitudines are too much. The emphasis is now on the

54 55 56

Vita Fursei §2 (ed. Krusch, 4 35 ; ed. Heist, Vita Sanctorum Hiberniae, 38). Ed. Krusch, §4, 436; ed. Heist, §24, 48 (Krusch omits the visions, hence the difference between his chap. nos. and those o f Heist). Ed. Krusch, § 6 ,4 3 7 ; ed. Heist, § 26 ,48-9.

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Thomas Charles-Edw ards

superior peregrinatio, exile outside Ireland. Since at least Patrick’s day the potior peregrinatio had often been associated with missionary work. In East Anglia Fursa is received hospitably by the king and the first activity which the biographer mentions is that o f a missionary: ‘a Sigeberto rege honorifice susceptus, verbo Domini barbororum mitigabat corda’ . The sequence is the same for Columbanus: he proposed to remain in Gaul if his mission was welcomed, but if not, to travel further to neighbouring peoples.57 Welcome implied, first o f all, the hospitality of the king. As with Fursa, the mission was not that of the preacher in the market­ place. The peregrinus used the same weapon which had led to the acquisition of power by the deorad Dé at home: the ascetic routine in the wilderness. The separation of the holy man from society was the fragile basis of his power as the bearer of divine authority.58 To the final conversion o f the Irish in the second half o f the sixth century may be attributed the legal establishment o f the church hierarchy, and with it the deorad Dé, as a privileged profession parallel to that o f the filid , the seers. This establishment turned the faces o f Irish ascetics outwards, not only to islands in the sea but also to missionary fields in Britain and in eastern Gaul. Power at home led to peregrinatio abroad.

57 Jonas, Vita Columbani, §4 (ed. Krusch, 160). 58 On most points the analysis o f Brown, ‘T h e Rise and Function’ , 8 0 - 1 0 1 , is true o f the Irish peregrini.

In the Wake of the Saint: The Brendan Voyage, an Epic Crossing of the Atlantic by Leather Boat* J . J . O 'M eara

‘Perhaps it’s time someone tried to find out whether Saint Brendan’s voyage was feasible or not. But it would mean using the boats and materials o f the time to make it a fair test’ . So the idea o f the Brendan Voyage was born.

T

he speaker is Tim Severin. T h e voyage referred to in the first instance is that described in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (for text, see that of Carl Selmer; for translation, see my The Voyage o f Saint Brendan). Whereas the Navigatio says nothing of America, Severin is going on the assumption that the voyage in question was to America - necessarily towards the end o f the sixth century, and so long before Columbus. Severin found that the voyage which he undertook was feasible in that with four or five others he did sail in a boat, built to the specifications (so to speak) o f the Navigatio, from County Kerry via the Hebrides and Faroes to Iceland between M ay and July 1976; and between Iceland and Newfoundland in M ay and June 1977. This exercise provided Severin with a thrilling story o f adventure and suspense; it also demonstrated the sea-worthiness o f a ‘medieval’ sailing boat and that ‘medieval’ materials (such as wood, ox-hide, wool and wool grease) were more dependable than modern material such as plastic and (which was vital) could be repaired during the voyage. Severin suggests in addition that items relating to his voyage seem to support claims made for the historicity of corresponding items in the Navigatio. Finally, while he takes the precaution of stating that the only conclusive proof that Irish monks had sailed to America before the Norsemen would be the discovery on North American soil o f an authentic relic from an early Irish visit, he claims that his exploit had demon­ strated that they could have.

*

Review o f T. Severin, The Brendan Voyage (Hutchinson, London, 1978). First published in Times Literary Supplement, 14 Ju ly 1978.

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jf.jf. O 'M eara

The technical account (with diagram and tables) of the boat and its materials is given in an Appendix. Briefly, the Brendan was thirty-six feet overall with a beam of eight feet. She was made of a wooden frame covered with forty-nine ox hides stitched together. Her sails were o f flax and were in area 140 square feet on the mainsail and sixty square feet on a foresail. Her oars were twelve feet long. There was no engine o f any kind. There were two tent-like shelters and a paraffin cooker box. But the boat had safety and otherwise useful equipment that the Irish monks did not have. It had a crystal-controlled transceiver, the power of which was supplied from two Lucas solar panels, and which had a range o f 150 to 250 miles. A Seavoice portable transceiver sometimes allowed ship-to-ship V H F links and a third transceiver gave ship-to-air communication. With this gear contact was maintained almost daily with Valentia, Malin Head, Stornoway, Torshaven, Vestmanna, Reykjavik, Prins Christianssund, Cartwright, St Anthony, St John’s (Newfoundland) in succession, the Icelandic Fishery Research Vessel, A m i Fridriksson and the air crews o f many airlines. Safety on the boat itself was provided for by lifelines attached to Helly Hansen sailing suits, flares, a flotation beacon and an eight-man life raft. Food was (apart from the occasional glass o f sustaining Irish whiskey) no more than adequate and was replenished at ports of call and at least once at sea. The crew however, caught and consumed sea birds and fish and observed that it was possible to collect rainwater much o f the time. Communication and safety precautions aside, life on board the Brendan must have been quite like that lived by Brendan and his monks. The Brendan was extraordinarily difficult to control and the crew had the sensation o f riding a balloon. She was in imminent danger of capsizing in the frequent raging storms and mountainous seas and the sailors were constantly drenched, even in their sleeping bags. To fall overboard at certain sectors of the passage was - according to Royal Navy survival experts - to be dead in five minutes. The Brendan came near being sliced by a factory-ship which seemed unconscious o f its existence; it was sniffed at both dangerously and less dangerously by various species o f whales; it was holed and repaired in ice-floes, out o f which it was towed for three hours by a Faeroese fishing-boat but finally the Brendan looking ‘like a floating bird’s nest ... an untidy muddle o f ropes and flax, leather and wood’ brought Severin and his crew safely to America. The author’s conclusion: ‘there was no longer any practical objection to the idea that Irish monks might have sailed their leather boats to North America’ . O f course not! Once a boat sailed, and her materials could stand up to a long voyage, and the weather conditions were favourable, a boat such as the Brendan could have sailed from Ireland as far as Newfoundland long before Saint Brendan was born. Even the rather sceptical J.O. Thomson {History o f Ancient Geography) regards it as plausible that Pytheas of Marseilles reached Iceland by 320 BC, and does not dismiss the evidence that the Phoenicians reached as far

In the Wake o f the S a in t: T h e Bren dan V o yage

hi

west on the southern reach as the Sargasso Sea in ancient times. But the N avigatio, pace T im Severin, contains no shred o f dependable evidence that such a boat did sail from Ireland to America. Severin took great pains in preparing and carrying out his courageous exploit. He has recorded it in splendid prose, fine photographs, interesting drawings by the crew member Trondur Patursson, and in film; but he is strangely coy on literary documentation. He makes no reference to any secondary literature, such as Geoffrey Ashe’s Land to the West, or S.E. Morison’s The European Discovery o f America. He does mention Carl Selmer’s edition o f the N avigatio and the translations found in the Penguin Lives o f the Saints and that done by me which he uses freely (without acknowledgment). This literature - and much more that is available - anticipates every worthwhile argument that Severin advances to support the claim that the Navigatio implies a voyage to America and makes a serious effort to weigh it. One is led to wonder if Severin had depended on inferior documentation until he was committed quite far. This does not seem to have deterred our author. Thus although Selmer’s text and the two translations above specifically state that there was only one sail to Brendan’s boat, Severin ignores this. He reports that he had never seen a picture o f an early medieval boat equipped with more than one sail. But wait! In the cellar stacks of a London library he casually took out a book that was misshelved. His eye caught the title which ‘roughly translated’ was: ‘Record o f Ship Illustrations from the Earliest Tim es to the Middle Ages’ . He opened the book on a page which contained an illustration o f ‘Saint Brendan’s ship stranded on the whale’s back!’ There were some 5,000 illustrations o f ships in the book and all had only mast only. Brendan’s alone had two! Well, how can normal evidence stand up to such a marvellous instance o f what Severin calls ‘Brendan’s Luck’ ? A more serious matter is the author’s cavalier treatment o f the reading o f the text on the question o f the direction o f Saint Brendan’s sailing as he finally approached the Promised Land. The reading is unambiguous: he sailed east. But Severin deliberately refuses to accept this. A view based on this reading, he says, is ‘misplaced. The whole notion o f the Promised Land throughout the text is that it lay far away in the west across the Ocean. This is where it is stated to be in Chapter 1 o f the Navigatio ... When [Brendan]... comes home ... he lands on Ireland’s west coast, presumably having come from the west’ . Notions are, of course, notional. Although one must treat details given in such a literary narrative as the Navigatio with extreme caution, Chapter 1 of the Navigatio does not state that the Promised Land lay fa r away in the west’ but rather that Mernoc and Barrind sailed ‘west-wards’ from the island where Mernoc lived, which in its turn was near Slieve League in Co. Donegal. Again all other directions in the N avigatio, for what they are worth, indicate that the Promised Land is near M ernoc’s island. Barrind, for example, tells M ernoc’s monks that they were

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jf.jf. O 'M eara

‘living at the gate o f Paradise. Near here (Mernoc’s island) is an island which is called the Promised Land of the Saints where night does not fall nor day end’ . Naturally if one sailed to Ireland from such a land, one would be coming from the west. One must recall that Brendan set out for the Promised Land because he heard o f it from Barrind, and Barrind was brought there by M ernoc, a frequent visitor. The island was in the ordinary way impossible to find, surrounded by fog, and unaffected by time. It is possible indeed, as I have said, that Saint Brendan arrived in America - but the existence of the North American continent (so far as we can judge) was not even known to him, and in any case it is not, and was not, the Promised Land o f the Saints that he was seeking. He was searching for the earthly Paradise where, according to Origen for instance, holy men went to receive preparation for the immortality of the heavenly paradise. This land was rather similar, for example, to the pagan Isles o f the Blessed. The description o f the Promised Land given by Brendan in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Navigatio is a doublet, somewhat abbreviated, o f that given by Barrind in the first: the land is wide; it is divided in two by a river; its trees bear fruit perennially; it contains precious stones. A man on the island knew their names and directed their return. Severin remarks that these ‘are all general features which could apply to many places on the North American coast’ - or, making allowance for the wonder element in the description, many another coast. Severin is nearer the truth when he speaks of the Navigatio as a surviving record of a Christian seagoing culture which sent boat after boat into the North Atlantic on regular voyages o f communication and exploration. Brendan was a historic figure who died around 570, and he did voyage to Atlantic islands and coasts. The very earliest (oral?) version o f the N avigatio may have been ‘composed’ around 670: it cannot but reflect some history - as do, for example, the Iliad and the Aeneid to which it is related. But like them and the Irish Immrama, it is mainly an integrated literary tale which bears a strong impress o f the naive world at once o f the New Testament’s Sea o f Galilee and Irish monastic institutions. Later much embellished renderings o f the tale - and especially the Norman French version o f the twelfth century - gave rise to the ‘location’ o f many Brendanican islands all over the Atlantic, from that by the world map (1275?) on a wall o f Hereford Cathedral, down to the last ‘sighting’ o f such an island by the people o f the Canaries in 1750. Needless to say the presence o f Brendanican islands close to America suggested that Brendan must have got to America too. The N avigatio, however, does not justify us in saying that he did.

The Location of the Otherworld in Irish Tradition* Jo h n Carey

P

rofessor James Carney remarks in a footnote to his review o f Carl Selmer’s edition o f Navigatio Sancti Brendani that he has ‘no confidence in any view which supposes that the primitive Irish believed in an Otherworld beyond the seas. It can be maintained, however, that there were primitive Irish tales which showed the hero visiting an Otherworld located under lakes or in mountains’ .1 In the present essay I shall pursue this question, and try to determine whether there is in fact any evidence that an overseas Otherworld formed a part o f the indigenous tradition. In a careful study o f the genres echtrae (a tale o f a hero’s journey to the Otherworld) and immram (a more loosely structured voyage-tale in which the protagonists visit a series o f Otherworld islands), D.N. Dumville has upheld the native provenance o f the former while demonstrating that immrama ‘can be seen and traced in a state o f development in the Old Irish period from causes and sources which can be deduced from a knowledge of both the ecclesiastical history o f the time and the literature available in this milieu’ .2 1 shall therefore not consider any immrama apart from Immram Brain, essentially an echtrae despite the title generally given to it and the interpolation of an immram episode.3 Nor, obviously, would there be any point in examining tales written after the immram became an influential genre; we must accordingly confine our attention to the material surviving in Old Irish. Immram Brain is one o f the texts which formed part o f the lost eighthcentury manuscript Cin Dromma Snechta. T h e tale is structured around two long poems. In the first a mysterious woman ‘from strange lands’ (a tirib ingnath) invites Bran mac Febail to join her in an Otherworld paradise ‘ in the ocean to the west o f us’ (‘isind oceon frinn aníar’); in the second Bran and his fellow voyagers are addressed by Manannán, whom they meet driving his

* 1 2 3

First published in Éigse 19 (19 8 2 -3 ), 3 6 -4 3 . Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer’ , 40 n. 9. [q.v. 46]. Dumville, ‘ Echtrae and Immrama\ 94; cf. M ac Cana, The Learned Tales, 7 6 -7 . Dumville, ‘Echtrae and Immrama\ 94, 8 3-6 .

"3

1 14

Jo h n Carey

chariot across the sea. He tells them that what appears to them to be sea is to him the flowering plain o f M ag M ell, speaks o f the birth o f Christ, and explains that he is on his way to Ireland to beget the wizard-king Mongán, who will assume the shapes o f all animals (‘biaid i fethol cech mil’).4 In his article ‘The Earliest Bran Material’ Carney has edited and translated a poem - also apparently from Cm Dromma Snechta - in the form o f a colloquy between Bran’s druid and the prophetess (banfdith) o f Bran’s father Febal. Although it is allusive and often difficult, there can be no doubt that their dialogue deals with the bursting forth o f Loch Febail and the consequent inundation of Bran’s kingdom. It is this disaster, alluded to in other sources, which the prophetess describes; her speech is preceded by the druid’s description o f an Otherworld treasure: M y fiss (knowledge) reaches a pure well in which is the equipment o f a band of hundreds o f (Otherworld) women. The jewels o f the shapely company of women would be a great find for the man who would get it. For famous are the pure jewels that are beside Srúb Brain: it would ransom a tuath, or more than two (tuatha), the equivalent o f the scions o f kingship o f the host o f the great world.5 The immediate juxtaposition of a pre-eminently desirable Otherworld treasure (in a well in a king’s territory) with the calamitous inundation o f that territory by water (presumably bursting from a well) must almost certainly allude to a tale of how the king undertook to steal the treasure, and of the retribution which ensued. Carney has shown on the basis of this poem and various corroborative sources that an early flood-legend was modified under foreign influence to form the Immram account of Bran’s voyage to an Otherworld populated by immortal women.6 The other major episode in Immram Brain, the encounter with Manannán, can also be associated with the early traditions o f Loch Febail. A brief tale assigned by Meyer to the eighth or ninth century7 and by Carney to the early seventh8 describes a meeting on the shores of Loch Febail between Colum Cille and a youth who is perhaps Mongán (‘asberat alailiu bod e Moggan mac Fiachnaoi’). The youth describes the prosperous country which the lake has covered, and says that he has at various times been a deer, a salmon, a seal, a wolf and a man.9 Here the paradoxical contrast o f land and water in the same

4

Text ed. M eyer in M eyer and N utt, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. 1, 2 - 3 4 ; and Van Hamel, ed., Immrama, 9—19. 5 Carney’s translation, in ‘T h e Earliest’ , 1 8 2 - 3 [qv. 80]. 6 Carney, T h e Earliest’ , 1 8 3fr [q.v. 8 1 ff]. T h e question o f foreign source material is discussed in the same author’s Studies, 28 0 -9 5. 7 Meyer, ed., ‘T h e Colloquy o f Colum Cille’ . 8 Carney, ‘T h e Earliest’, 19 2 [q.v. 89ff]. 9 T h e story has been edited and translated by M eyer (‘T h e Colloquy o f Colum Cille’) and

The Location o f the Otherworld in Irish Tradition

US

place, and the series of metamorphoses, strikingly recall the main elements in the poem recited by Manannán in the Immram\ it seems at the least very possible that this text stands in the same relation to Manannán’s poem as does the colloquy o f the druid and prophetess to Immram Brain as a whole. T h e similarity would be still closer if the submerged kingdom were believed to be an Otherworld region like Manannán’s M ag Mell. This may have been the case: the Otherworld kingdom o f M ag Da Chéo, reached by plunging into the waters o f Loch na nEn in the story o f Láegaire mac Crimthainn, is identified with the lake itself in Togail Bruidne Da Choca.10 Echtrae Conlae was another o f the stories in Cin Dromma Snechta. In both echtrae - and in them alone11 - a fairy woman summons the hero to a life o f peaceful bliss in an Otherworld beyond the sea. In the former the woman tells Bran that a silver branch which he has found comes from her country, and bears it away with her when she departs; in the latter she tosses Conlae a magical apple at the conclusion o f her first visit. In each case the hero is told that he will reach his destination before sunset.12 Explicit Christian references are found in both stories.13 In the light o f so much evidence for a close connection between the tales, it would be rash to take Echtrae Conlae as an independent source.14 Even apart from these considerations, it is noteworthy that the overseas loca­ tion o f the Otherworld to which Conlae is invited appears almost as an after­ thought. There is no trace of the idea when the woman first visits him at Uisnech: I have come from the lands o f the living, where there is no death nor sin nor transgression. We eat everlasting feasts without toil, and have peace without strife. We are in a great stdy and are therefore called ‘people o f the sid* (oeis side) ... I love Conlae Rúad, and summon him to M ag M ell,

10

11 12

13

edited by Grosjean (‘ S. Columbae Hiensis cum M ongano’ ). M ac Cana has translated portions o f the text, ‘On the ‘ Prehistory” , 3 6 -7 . He suggests (ibid., 3 7 -8 ) that it too formed part o f Cin Dromma Snechta; this would make the case for its having influenced Immram Brain yet clearer (cf. Carney, ‘T h e Earliest’ , 17 5 [q.v. 74]). Stokes, ed., ‘Da Choca’s Hostel’ , 15 4 ; cf. note 18 below. In contemporary folklore towns submerged by lakes or the sea are often thought to possess Otherworld characteristics; see for instance O Súilleabháin, A Handbook, 506. T h is point perhaps deserves to be emphasized, as it does not seem hitherto to have received adequate attention; see now, Carey, ‘On the Interrelationships’ , 85 n.69. ‘Emne co n-ildath fêle | riefe re fuiniud gréne’ (Meyer and Nutt, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. I, 29); ‘adchiu tairinde in ngrein | cidh cein riefem ria n-aighid’ (Oskamp, ed., ‘Echtra Condla’, 225). T h e context of the phrase from Immram Brain should be taken into account in assessing Oskamp’s analysis o f the Echtrae Conlae passage (ibid., 2 17 -8 ). For a brief discussion o f this aspect o f Echtrae Conlae see Carney, ‘T h e Deeper Level’ ,

164-5. 14

T h is was already recognized by N utt (M yer and N utt, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. I, 148); cf. Carney, Studies, 292.

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whose king is Bóadach the eternal, a king without lament or sorrow in his land since he took up sovereignty.15 At the second encounter there is no indication that M ag M ell lies across the sea until the woman’s last speech: she refers to her glass boat (long glano), Conlae leaps into it, and the pair row out o f sight. There has been no preparation for such a conclusion: at the beginning o f the episode we are told only that Conlae ‘saw the same woman coming towards him’ (‘co n-accai chuicci in mnai chetnai’).16 Even insofar as some o f the tale’s elements may be traditional, therefore, the theme o f an Otherworld voyage appears to be secondary and extraneous. These two problematical texts are so far as I know the only Old Irish sources in which the overseas Otherworld appears. Early accounts o f mortal visits to Otherworld places are fairly plentiful, however. Otherworld beings are depicted as living within hills,17 beneath lakes18 or the sea,19 or on islands in lakes20 or off the

15 16

17

18

19

20

Oskamp, ed., ‘Echtra Condla’ , 2 2 1 - 2 . Text ed. Oskamp, ‘Echtra Condla’ , 2 2 0 -5 . T h e phrase ‘to the people o f Tethra’ (do daoinib Tethrach), also in the final episode, may be a further reference to the sea: vide the examples in the R IA ’s D I L s.v. 3 tethra, in particular ‘teathra .i. muir’ , O ’C l, ‘as i an moir M ag Tetrai’ , Meyer, ed., ‘ Tochm arc Em ire’ , 240.3 (cf. ibid. 233z). But all o f these references suggest an underwater rather an overseas Otherworld. E.g. De Gabáil in tSide, (ed. Hull); Tucait Faghbala in Fesa do Finn, ed. Hull, ‘Tw o Tales about Fin d’, 3 2 9 -3 0 ; Scél Mongáin, ed. M eyer in M eyer and Nutt, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. I, 5 2 - 4 ; Tain Bó Fraich, (ed. M eid, 10). T h e Fomóire, represented in the later literature as coming from overseas, are said in an archaic poem to inhabit ‘ meadows beneath the worlds of men’ (‘ srathu ... fo (for, v.l.) daoine domnaib’, O ’Brien, ed, Corpus Genealogiarum, 20). ‘T h e Adventure o f Laeghaire’ , ed. Jackson, 38 0 -6 . Cf. the magical birds which escape from Cú Chulainn by going beneath a lake (foa lind) in Serglige Con Culainn (S C C ), ed. M yles Dillon, line 70. Th e lost echtrae o f Bresal Brecc, alluded to in the dindshenchas o f Ráith M ór Maige Line (Gwynn, ed., The Metrical Dindshenchas, T L S vol. 11,14 4 ; Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Prose Tales’ R C 16, 4 8 -9 ), the genealogies o f the Dál nAraide (M eyer, ed., ‘T h e Laud Genealogies’ , 3 3 5 .19 , O ’Brien, ed., Corpus Genealogiarum, 324), and the ‘Tigernach’ annals (Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Annals o f Tigernach, T h e Second Fragment’ , 7), appears to have dealt with his disappearance into Loch Laig. Echtra Fergusa maie Léti (ed. Binchy, ‘Th e Saga of Fergus M ac Léti’, 3 6 -8 ), describes an attempt made by the luchorpáin to carry Fergus into the sea. One o f them is called an abac; on the aquatic associations o f this word see Vendryes, Lexique, s.v., and the verse cited by O ’Mulconry, ‘Tuatha abacc usee uair | gluair conanat in gach dail’ (Stokes, ed., ‘O ’M ulconry’s Glossary’ , 235). Note that in the late version o f this tale in Eg. 178 2 the tuatha luchra live in a land overseas, north o f Ireland (‘san talmain atua’ ): text ed. O ’Grady, Silva Gadelica, vol. I, 244. An instance o f transition between the conceptions o f underwater and overseas luchorpáin may be furnished by Acallam na Senórach, where Loch Luchra is a place in T ir Tairngire (ibid., vol. 1 , 177). Tochmarc Becfola, (ed. O ’Grady, Silva Gaedehca, vol. I, 8 5 -7 ); the island is in this case Devenish, and belongs both to a monastic community and to a band o f supernatural warriors residing in an Otherworldly hall. Cf. S C C , where Labraid’s house is situated on

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coast;21 there are also tales o f halls chanced upon in the night, which vanish with the coming o f day.22 Although in many o f these stories the hero only visits the abode o f one o f the des side, there are also cases in which passage underground or underwater grants access to a supernatural land o f abundance.23

21

22

23

an island in a lake (lines 14 4 ^ but in lines 5 7 7 - 8 Cú Chulainn’s entry ‘into the land’ [is tir; presumably the Otherworld] precedes his arrival at the island). Th e view o f Alfred Nutt (M eyer and Nutt, eds, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. 1, 184) and O Cathasaigh (‘T h e Semantics’ , 149 n. 44) that S C C describes an overseas Otherworld has so far as I can tell no basis beyond two lines o f verse in the Middle Irish A-version o f the tale: Labraid is said to dwell dar 1er (line 445), while Fand comes ‘do thonnaib dar leraib lánmóraib’ (line 714). Giraldus Cambrensis describes an island in a lake in north Munster where no one ever dies o f old age, Topographica Hibernica, ed. Dimock, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera. 5, 80. These are, however, actual islands; e.g. Tech Duinn as discussed by M eyer (‘D er irische Totengott’ ); and Cú Chulainn’s expedition against the Fomóire living on the Isle o f Man in Forfess Fer Falgae (ed. Thurneysen, Zu irischen Handschriften, 5 6 -7 ). T h e allusion to Crimthann N ía N áir’s having brought treasures dar 1er in Reicne Fothaid Canainn may refer to a similar foray (Meyer, ed., ‘Reicne’ , 14); but Edward G w ynn has convincingly argued that the lost echtrae o f Crimthann in the tale-lists was the relatively late result o f a series o f attempts to account for his epithet (G w ynn, ed., The Metrical Dindshenchas, T L S vol. 10, 500). Manannán, although by the time o f such M iddle Irish works as Echtrae Cormaic and Acallam na Senórach he is ruler o f T ir Tairngire (Stokes, ed., ‘T h e Irish Ordeals’, 198, O ’Grady, ed., Silva Gaedelica, vol. 1 ,1 7 7 -8 ) , is obviously linked with the Isle o f M an, and when in S C C Fand sees him approaching over the sea he is coming from the east (anair, line 762). We may compare one o f the questions asked o f the mysterious youth by Colum Cille: ‘ ... islands to the east o f us, what is under them?’ (‘ innsi friun anair cid fotha ní’ ); the youth replies with a description o f companies o f men, herds o f cattle, deer and horses, and ‘two-headed and three-headed ones’ , ‘ in unknown regions, in a green land’ (‘ i tirib ingnath hferund glaiss’ , M eyer, ed., ‘T h e Colloquy o f Colum Cille’ , 3 15 ) . Tw o points should be noted here: the islands are situated in the east (indeed the youth says that they are ‘i nd[E]oruip i nAisia’), and the Otherworld beings there live underground. E.g. the two versions o f Compert Con Culainn, (ed. Windisch, ‘ D ie G eburt’ ); Baile Mongdin (M eyer and N utt, eds, The Voyage o f Bran, vol. I, 5 6 -7 ); ‘ Finn and the Phantoms’, (ed. Stern, ‘L e manuscrit irlandais’, 7). An Otherworld hall reached through a ‘ great mist’ appears only in the two closely related Middle Irish tales Echtrae Cormaic, (ed. Stokes, ‘T h e Irish Ordeals’ , 19 5) and Baile in Scdil, (ed. Meyer, 459 line 29). T h u s when Nera returns from a sojourn within Sid Crúachan he says that he has been ‘ in fair regions’ (a tirib cainib, M eyer, ed., ‘T h e Adventures o f N era’ , 224); and o f the D agda’s domain within B ru g na Bóinne it is said ‘that is a wondrous country’ (‘amra dano a tir hi-sin’ , Hull, ed., ‘ De Gabáil in tShída’ , 56). When Láegaire mac Crimthainn plunges into Lo ch na nEn he finds himself in the kingdom o f M ag Da Chéo, itself adjacent to M ag Mell; when he returns to the Otherworld at the end o f the story he goes ‘ into th esid* (isa sid) and lives thereafter ‘in joint-kingship o f th esid ... that is, in the fort o f M a g M ell’ (Jackson, ed., ‘T h e Adventure o f Laeghaire’, 386). In Tochmarc Étaíne M idir is lord o f the sid o f Brí Léith, but when he asks Étain to join him he describes ‘a marvellous country’ (tir r-ingnadh, Bergin and Best, eds, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’ , 180).

ii8

Jo h n Carey

Similar conceptions are reflected in contemporary folklore. Ó Súilleabháin lists the dwellings of the fairies as ‘lakes or rivers, stones or rocks, woods or trees, caves, underground places, bridges, hills or mountains’,24 as well as ancient earthworks and ruins;25 there are also tales o f peoples and countries beneath the sea.26 The latter can in some cases be reached by mortals at particular times,27 and in this resemble the phantom islands attested since the time of Giraldus Cambrensis;28 but such islands are almost invariably said to be uninhabited, and have no intrinsic connection with the fairies.29 Phantom islands just off the coast are a feature o f Welsh folklore also. They are connected in some stories with a magical race called Plant Rhys Ddwfn, but this association is not invariable30 and in any case the islands are essentially a feature of local geography despite their insubstantial character.3* Throughout the M iddle Welsh period the Otherworld region o f Annwfn is, when its location is specified at all,32 said to lie beneath the earth; the Book o f Taliesin speaks of ‘Annwfn below the world’ (Annwfyn is eluyd);33 the twelfth-century poet Cynddelw uses Annwfyn in apposition with dwfyn and dyfynder, both meaning ‘depth, abyss’;34 and in the fourteenth century Dafydd ap Gwilym describes a fox’s den as lying ‘towards Annwfn’ .35 T h e evidence adduced in support o f the view36 that Annwfn was also imagined to be beyond the sea is

24 Handbook, 454; cf. Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Folk Custom, 82, 8 6 -7 . 25 Handbook, 46 5-70 . 26 Ibid., 50 0 -3 ; Irish Folk Custom, 89. 27 E.g. Handbook, 5 0 5 -7 ; Irish Folk Custom, 89; Westropp, ‘ Brasil’, 2 5 1 - 3 . 28 Refs, in note 27, also Ray and Haddon, ‘A Study o f the Language’ , 2 4 9 -5 7 ; Dimock, ed., Giraldi Cambrensis Opera. 5 ,9 4 - 5 . 29 I know o f only one exception, a story from Donegal in which a woman knitting on such an island throws a ball o f yarn which sticks to a fishing-boat and, when the yarn is finally cut, sticks to the hand o f one o f the fishermen, O hEochaidh, ed., ‘ Sídhe-Scéalta’ , 2 2 1 - 2 , reprinted O hEochaidh, ed., ‘Seanchas Iascaireachta agus Farraige’ , 2 1 - 3 ; Siscéalta ó Thir Chonaill, ed. O hEochaidh, N i Néill and O Catháin, 2 14 -8 . T h e isolation o f this example, and its close resemblance to an episode in Immram Curaig Máele Dúiti (ed. Van Hamel, 45), make it likely that the story is ultimately o f literary origin; the possibility was suggested by Murphy, ‘Review o f Béaloideas 2 3 ’ , 276. M y search has not been exhaustive, and in a field with the range and scope o f folklore I do not doubt that further examples can be found; but the general character o f the tradition is clear. 30 Rhys, Celtic Folklore, vol. 1 , 16 0 -7 3. 3 1 T h is is also true o f the phantom islands o f Ireland; Westropp notes that ‘ so unhesi­ tatingly did the Irish give them a local habitation that they can be placed on the maps as definitely as any real islands’, (Westropp, ‘Brasil’ , 249); cf. Plate XXII. Cf. Gwales, a real island with supernatural characteristics, Pedeir Keine, (ed. Williams, 4 6 -7 , 2 14 -5 ) . 32 Contrast Dafydd ap G w ilym ’s fanciful statement that summer goes to Annw fn in winter-time, Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym (ed. Parry) §27, line 40. 3 3 Facsimile and Text o f the Book o f Taliesin, ed. Evans, 2 0 .7-8 . 3 4 Llawysgrif Hendregadredd (ed. M orris-Jones and Parry-Williams, 115 ). 35 Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym, ed. Parry, §22, line 42. 36 E.g. Williams, ed., Pedeir Keine, 9 9 -10 1; Loomis, Wales and the Arthurian Legend, 13 8 -5 2 .

The Location o f the Otherworld in Irish Tradition

1 19

drawn from three poems in the Book o f Taliesin, none of which has yet been satisfactorily translated or explained: the phrase Annwfyn llifereint ‘Annwfn o f floods’;3738the account in the poem Preideu Annwn (‘Spoils of Annwfn’; title added secunda manu) o f an attack by three shiploads o f Arthur’s men on a supernatural fort K aer S idi;*s and the statement in a third poem that ‘the streams o f the sea’ (jfrydyeu gweilgi) are around K aer S id i's corners.39 Apart from the great ambiguity attaching to this material, it cannot be taken as representing an uncontaminated native tradition; as Rhys very plausibly suggested, the name S id i is probably a borrowing from Irish std4° Outside the immrama, then, and the two closely linked tales Immram Brain and Echtrae Conlae, the early sources give us no grounds for postulating belief in an overseas Otherworld; nor does there appear to be satisfactory evidence for such a belief in either contemporary Irish folklore or the traditions o f Wales. Such a vacuum is clearly significant, despite the view of Ludwig Bieler that ‘the “ happy otherworld” at the end of the earth is a Menschheitsgedanke ... I do not see why [it] should have been absent from Celtic belief even if there is little positive evidence’ ;41 or Oskamp’s assertion that the idea o f an overseas Otherworld ‘is inherent in the religious system o f an island society’ .42 It seems reasonable to suggest, in light o f the age and popularity of Immram Brain and Echtrae Conlae, that it is they and the Ulster literary movement which produced them which introduced this topos into Irish literature; that it was foreign to the native tradition at every stage appears evident.

37 38 39

40 41 42

Facsimile and Text o f the Book o f Taliesin, ed. Evans, 2 6 .12 . Ibid., 5 4 .16 -5 6 .13 . Ibid., 3 4 .8 - 13 . But the immediately following phrase A n d the fruitful fountain is above i f (‘ar ffynhawn ffrwythlawn yssyd oduchti’ ) would suggest that Kaer Sid i is at the bottom o f a spring. Taken as a whole the description is obviously enigmatic, perhaps allegorical; arbitrary concentration upon one or another o f its details disguises this. Celtic Folklore, vol. II, 678. He goes on to propose the identification o f Kaer Sidi with Lundy Island; cf. Bromwich, Trioedd, 14 1. ‘Two Observations’ , 1 5 - 6 [q.v. 9 1 -2 ] . The Voyage o f M ael Dúin, 85.

Two Approaches to the Dating of Nauigatio Sancti Brendani* F O R J A M E S C A R N E Y IN A D M IR A T IO N

D avid N . Dum ville

he dating of the Latin text Nauigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis has been very controversial, at least since the publication o f Carl Selmer’s edition in 1959.1 Selmer wished to attribute the work to an Irish author writing in Lotharingia in the first half of the tenth century.2 It is pointless to pursue his speculations as to the identity o f the author,3 which do not command con­ fidence even on their own terms. Until the question o f dating is resolved such attempts at identification will remain especially fruitless. Reviewing Selmer’s edition, James Carney4 urged acceptance o f a substan­ tially earlier date of composition, ‘about a d 800, possibly some decades later’ ,5 on the grounds o f its (equally disputed) relationships with works o f Irish vernacular literature. For Carney, the question turned on the mutual relation­ ship of the Nauigatio and the Irish Immram curaig M aele D ú in f however, since neither the nature of that relationship7 nor the date o f the Irish text8 is clearly

T

* i

2 3 4 5

6

7

First published in Studi Medievali 29 (1988), 8 7 - 1 02Í Selmer, ed., Navigatio. An earlier version o f my paper was contributed to a seminar, held in Cambridge in the Lent Term 19 8 1, conducted by Michael Lapidge, Giovanni Orlandi, Patrick Sims-Williams, and the writer; I am grateful to these colleagues and to the other members o f the seminar for the stimulus afforded by those proceedings. T h e seminar also had the advantage o f using a preliminary text o f Professor Orlandi’s edition o f the Nauigatio. Selmer, ed., Navigatio, xxvii—xxix. Selmer, ed., Navigatio, xxvii, n. 12. Cf. Selmer, ‘T h e Beginnings’ , 16 9 -7 6 ; ‘ Israel’ , 6 9-86; ‘Die Herkunft’ , 5 - 1 7 . Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio’ [q.v.]. Carney, ‘Review of Selmer, Navigatio\ 40 [q.v. 46]; cf. 43 [q.v. 49], ‘about the year AD 800 or, at most, about a half century later’ . Shortly before, another scholar had argued for a ninth-centurv date for the Nauigatio-. Esposito, ‘An Apocryphal’ [q.v.|; and ‘L ’édition’ . In spite of the existence of the edition by Oskamp, The Voyage o f M ael Duin, this text is still best consulted for most purposes in the bilingual edition o f Stokes, ‘T h e Voyage o f Mael Duin’ . For discussion, see Stokes, ed., T h e Voyage o f Mael Duin’; Zimmer, ‘ Keltische Beiträge, II’ ; Thurneysen, ‘Z u r irischen Gram m atik’ , 7 9 -8 0 , and ‘ Z u r keltischen Literatur’ ;

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I2I

established, there is plainly no reliable basis from which to mount an assault on Selmer’s dating. Equally, we are lacking evidence which would enable us to deny Selmer’s argument that the Nauigatio was written on the Continent; from the content o f the work there seems little doubt that the author was an Irishman, although supporting evidence from his latinity has not been noticeable by its abundance; nor does it seem possible to show that the Nauigatio was known in Ireland before it was imported thither in the late middle ages.9 The principal dispute with Selmer’s dating hypothesis must be that (as Carney pointed out)10 he failed to allow sufficient time for the considerable development of the textual tradition which had already taken place by the later tenth century. In 19 7 6 1 conjectured11 that a date in the second half o f the ninth century would meet the requirements o f the textual history; now, however, there seem to be grounds for extending considerably the time-span between the earliest extant manuscripts and the composition of the Nauigatio. A potentially fruitful approach to the text lies in the identification of references to externally datable circumstances. In his fundamentally important study o f the Nauigatio, Giovanni Orlandi has suggested that one such reference points to a date o f composition in the first half o f the ninth century. I devote

Esposito, loc. cit; Carney, loc. cit.; Orlandi, Navigatio, 7 5 -9 7 ; Oskamp, ed. cit.; Bieler, ‘ Tw o Observations’ [q.v.]. In a series o f letters (Septem ber/October 19 8 1) Professor Carney has put to me a detailed case both for the priority o f the Nauigatio and for the former existence o f an early version which made S t Brendan o f Birr the navigator: it is to be hoped that he will publish this important contribution. 8 Van Hamel, ed., Immrama, 24, assigned it to the years on either side o f 800; Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio\ 43 [q.v. 49J, preferred the ninth century, but in a private communication to me (22 September 19 8 1) he has argued for a date in the mid- or later eighth century. Cf. M ac Mathúna, Immram Brainy 276, n. 8 1. 9 I hope to return to this point in another paper. Professor Orlandi has generously informed me that the copies o f the Nauigatio in late mediaeval Irish manuscripts are descendants o f derivative Continental sub-groups o f the text-tradition; they are not evidence for continuous knowledge o f the Nauigatio in Ireland in the middle ages. 10 Carney, ‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio\ 40 [q.v. 46], commenting on Selmer, ed., Navigatio, xxviii, who wrote, ‘A look at the two oldest m anuscripts,... both o f the tenth century, shows that they belong to two distinct families and, in addition, have considerable deficiencies of their own which will no doubt allow for a tradition o f at least several decades’ . 1 1 ‘Echtrae and Immram’ , 89, n. 88. I am ashamed to say that when I wrote I was unfortunately ignorant o f Orlandi’s admirable book, my knowledge o f which I owe to the kindness o f Peter Dronke. I might add that I should now have written rather differently in loc. cit., 75, n. 18: there is no need, I think, to assume any relationship between the Nauigatio and the early mediaeval uita o f Brendan to which the later Lives catalogued by Kenney, The Sources, 4 1 2 - 4 , bear witness; on all these, see Orlandi, loc. cit., 9 - 4 1 . T h e date o f the Nauigatio is therefore not to be taken as direct evidence for the date o f the (reconstructed) uita (I therefore disagree with Orlandi, loc. cit., 4 3 - 7 3 ) and I accordingly withdraw my suggested date o f the first half o f the ninth century for the * Vita Prima.

12 2

D avid N D um ville

this paper first to a discussion and rejection o f his arguments and secondly to the consideration of another section of the text whose evidence suggests instead that the Nauigatio was written not later than the eighth century. i: Christianorum persecutio. - Professor Orlandi has urged the view12 that the Nauigatio may be dated by reference to a sentence in §28:13 Post multum uero curricula temporum declarabitur ista terra successoribus uestris, quando Christianorum superuenerit14 persecutio. Orlandi has argued that this must refer to the time o f viking-assaults on Ireland, and particularly on Irish ecclesiastical sites. I f this argument is correct, we must suppose that the author of the Nauigatio was writing after those attacks had begun (for it is far from clear that they could have been predicted); he cannot therefore be dated before c. 800. On this view, the author is making the prophecy apply to his own times. Accordingly, it is not (I take it) to be supposed that the author was writing very long after the Scandinavian attacks on ecclesiastical institutions had gathered force; otherwise the prophecy would seem to be unful­ filled and therefore to lack contemporary relevance. Presumably (to complete the circle of argument) the point of having such a prophecy in the text would be that it should enjoy a certain immediacy. Orlandi has consequently assigned the work to the decade 830-40.15 I think that there are grounds for rejecting this line of reasoning and offering an alternative explanation o f the sentence in question, an explanation which coheres well with the context and dispenses with the necessity o f arguing both from wholly external circumstances and for an immediately apocalyptic interpretation of the author’s motives. We may begin by considering what the author might have written, had he certainly intended Christianorum persecutio to be understood as viking-depredations. One line of approach is suggested by the text found in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, M S. lat. 3784,16 an eleventh-century book o f Lim oges provenance. This reads:17 12

13 14 15

16 17

Orlandi, Navigatio, 7 2 - 3 . A revised edition in English o f Orlandi’s book is being prepared, for the series ‘Studies in Celtic History’ , by Michael Lapidge with Orlandi’s collaboration. It is hoped that Orlandi’s edition of the Nauigatio will now appear in the Dublin series ‘ Scriptores Latini Hiberniae’ . Selmer, ed., Navigatio, 80, lines 3 0 -2 . Selm er’s reading, which I prefer here; Orlandi proposes to read subuenerit in his new edition. Orlandi thought that the viking-terror reached at that time a level such that it might be described as Christianorum persecutio; accordingly he wrote (loc. cit., 73) that the Nauigatio could not have been written earlier than the second quarter o f the ninth century. Selmer’s M S . F ; the oldest member o f Orlandi’s group c. Selmer, loc. cit., app. crit. Professor Orlandi has checked for me the reading o f this manuscript, correcting Selmer’s apparatus in the process.

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12 3

Post multorum uero curricula temporum declarabitur ista terra suc­ cessoribus uestris, quando Christianis adueniet persecutio paganorum.

In this case, a reviser of the text seems to have made just such a connexion; but the original words o f the author are not specific in this way. For another line o f reasoning, one may suggest reference to the account in the Annals o f SaintBertin {Annales Bertimani), under the year 839 (in the part written by Prudentius o f Troyes), o f a vision experienced by an English priest:18 he had been seized from his body for one night after Christmas and shown a vision o f judgment; he was warned that unless Christian men did penance and observed the Lord’s day better, there would come both three days and nights of intense darkness and heathen men - with an immense multitude of ships - who would devastate with fire and iron the greater part of the peoples and lands of the Christians. The general point, then, is simple, though obviously in no way conclusive. Had the author o f the Nauigatio wished to make it clear that his prophecy had contemporary relevance, he need have had no difficulty in so doing.19 It must be stressed, therefore, that we are faced with a problem of authorial intention. I f the author lived in the Viking-Age, and was referring to vikingactivities as Christianorum persecutio, he was telling his readers that the terra repromissionis sanctorum would be made known (to the successores o f Brendan and his companions)20 at any moment. Opinions will no doubt differ as to the meaning o f the Nauigatio as a whole, but (for my part) I fail to notice any sense o f urgency being conveyed by the work, which seems rather to be a celebration o f the monastic life. If, then, we allow the objection to the viking-hypothesis, where do we turn for an explanation o f the sentence? First, we must define the context provided by §28. St Brendan and his followers have reached the island-paradise, only to discover that (like Barind and Mernóc) they cannot enter half o f it. A youth appears to them, to tell Brendan that this is indeed the Promised Land o f the Saints and that they must now return home since Brendan’s dies peregrinationis is to hand. After multa curricula temporum, and during the persecutio,21 the travellers’ successores would also learn o f Paradise. The successores are, I take it, sancti, since they are presumably the natural inhabitants o f a terra repromissionis sanctorum. It is difficult, perhaps, to know how narrowly or broadly to understand successores - all o f them, or those who

18 Annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. G rat et aL, 2 8 -30 . 19 T h e word persecutio is found in a viking-context in Charles the Bald's Edict o f Pitres (Al) 862), §31 (see Wallace-Hadrill, Early Medieval History, 2 3 1), but I have been unable to parallel this usage by reference to H iberno-Latin texts. 20 However exactly we interpret that phrase. See below. 2 1 I should translate this with the definite article rather than the indefinite (la persecutio') for reasons which will appear below.

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live in the time of the Christianorum persecutio? The answer is to be discovered by asking the questions, ‘Who inhabits Paradise, and when?’ . It is most instructive, in view o f the form o f Nauigatio Sancti Brendani^ to approach a solution (or solutions) by way o f a detour through two other immrama.22 One, a story of Breton origin, is now reported to us principally in a German Latin work o f the late twelfth century. Godfrey o f Viterbo related, in his Pantheon, that (between 116 0 and 1180) he found at the monastery o f St Matthew at Pointe de Saint-Mathieu (Finistère, Brittany)23 an Historia de Enoch et E lia . The story told by that work was as follows: one hundred early Christians, disciples o f Christ and St Matthew, Galilean monks who converted Brittany and Spain to Christianity, set sail to discover an elysium in the western ocean. In that elysium they discovered Enoch and Elias; they enquired o f these saints about their foretold return to fight Antichrist; the monks then journeyed back to their own monastery; unfortunately their travels had in fact lasted three hundred years and they were therefore not recognised by their monastic successors.24 The other witness to be called is the tenth-century verse text, Immram Snédgusa ocus M aic Riagla,25 where our two heroes, clerical mariners, reach an island in the western ocean where they find the exiled F ir Rois (or M en o f Ross), with whose troubles the tale has begun, dwelling with Enoch and Elias until the Last Judgment; at that time the F ir Rois would go forth, with Enoch and Elias, to fight Antichrist.26 We now have in view some answers to our questions. T h e inhabitants o f Paradise now are Enoch and Elias alone. In at least that one Irish text some supernumerary ocean-voyagers (Irish, o f course - F ir Rois) have insinuated themselves into Paradise too. T h e presence there o f Enoch and Elias who (as common interpretation of, for example, IV Kings 2 : 1 1 and Heb. 1 1 :5 tells us) had never died - they had been translated into the presence o f God - was justified in the middle ages by reference to the Two Witnesses o f the Book o f Revelation ( 1 1 :3 - 1 2 ) . After the Last Judgment, on the other hand, as a vast array o f Christian texts can tell us, G od’s elect (his saints, we might say) will dwell in Paradise.27 The answer to our question is now fairly clear: all the successores o f St Brendan and his fellows will enter Paradise; the successores are not

22

23 24 25 26 27

On the Irish ecclesiastical voyage-tales called immrama, see Orlandi, loc. cit., 7 5 -9 7 ; Dumville, loc. cit.; M ac Cana, The Learned Tales, 7 6 - 7 et passim; M ac Mathúna, ed., immram Brain, cit. T h e extensive ramifications o f this legend are noted, with bibliography, by Fleuriot, Les origines, 2 6 0 -3 ; cf. Dumville, ‘Biblical Apocrypha’ , 3 1 0 - 1 1 , 337 . For this m otif compare the story o f the Seven Sleepers o f Ephesus or, in a Celtic context, that o f Bran mac Febuil. Edited by Van Hamel, ed. cit., 8 6 -92. Ibid., 91 (§66). There stands between us and a completely satisfactory definition o f the successores o f Brendan and his company the problem o f the place o f a terrestrial paradise in Christian

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necessarily, I suspect, the abbots and monks o f Clonfert alone, but rather the Christian sancti after Brendan’s time. The association o f Enoch and Elias with the island-paradise in the ocean gives the game away, I think. They are its proper inhabitants until Doom. Their ultimate role in Christian history explains the phrase Christianorum persecutio. For the middle ages Enoch and Elias were essential elements in the story o f the end of the world. The approaching end would be marked by the appearance of Antichrist; he would deceive many who would accept him as their true lord. He would enjoy a reign o f three and a half years during which the true Christians would endure terrible persecution; at the end o f this period he would slay Enoch and Elias who would have come from Paradise to fight him; these ultimate Christian martyrs, completing the tradition begun with Abel, would then be avenged by the Archangel M ichael’s destruction o f Antichrist.28 T h e final general resurrection and Last Judgment would follow. Antichrist’s reign is known as Antichristi persecutio. One early mediaeval text tells us: Hic itaque Antichristus, diaboli filius et totus malicie artifex pessimus, cum - per tres annos et dimidium, sicut predictum est - magna persecutione totum mundum uexabit et omnem populum Dei uariis poenis cruciabit. The same text says o f Antichrist, coming even closer to our required wording, Excitabit autem persecutionem sub omni celo supra christianos et omnes electos. The Christianorum persecutio is therefore, I suggest, a familiar mediaeval idea in a prophetic context. It refers naturally to the events of the last days. We meet it already in St Jerom e’s commentary, In Danielem, where we find reference to ‘Antichristum qui Christi populum persecuturus est’ .29 What Brendan is being told is that G od’s elect will have Paradise revealed to them at the end o f the world. He and his companions are the lucky few who have gained a partial view o f future bliss, a view which will not be available to others till Doomsday. It was in this spirit, I imagine, that the Nauigatio was accepted by its many mediaeval readers. Not merely was it a merry tale o f wonders but, like many a eschatology: but early examples of such a location for Enoch and Elias are not wanting - cf. D u m ville, loc. cit., 309 - and it is therefore not essential for us to pursue here the theological niceties involved. 28 There are miscellaneous variants o f this story. For further details, see Emmerson, Antichrist; for Ireland see Dum ville, loc. cit., 3 0 8 - 1 1 and the references given there. 29 Ed. Glorie, S. Hieronymi presbyteri, 920 (cf. 9 3 2 - 5 on Antichrist). In Ireland the ‘persecutio ... ultima squammae illius inuisae’ was known already (as Nicholas Webb and Neil Wright have pointed out to me) to S t Columbanus, these words being drawn from his Epistola V, §15: Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. Walker, 54, 55.

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vision, it gave a view o f the Other World, and it enjoyed the popularity accorded otherwise to a text such as Visio P a u li*0 Our one remaining problem has to do with the diffusion o f the legend o f Antichrist, for this might be held to have implications for the date or place o f composition o f Nauigatio Sancti Brendani. At once we run into trouble. The legend was known to Jerome and Gregory, and it was no doubt partly by the transmission o f Gregory’s M oralia in lob and Homiliae in Euangelia that it descended into the middle ages. But Gregory’s accounts are brief. Already in mid­ eighth-century Ireland we find a more extended version o f the story in the poems of Blathmac mac Con Brettan, after which a regular series of native witnesses can be offered.30 31 Outside Ireland, however, I know o f no comprehensive treatment although such must have existed, for a longer account is implied by the Fathers and demanded by the early Irish evidence - until we come to Liber de ortu et tempore Antichristi by Adso of Montier-en-Der, writing in the second half o f the tenth century: it was from his work that my two quotations above were drawn.32 The simplest assumption is that apocryphal works were the intermediaries.33 In short, I cannot demonstrate, until we have a fully documented history o f the Antichrist legend, from what specific source, if any, the author o f the Nauigatio may have borrowed this idea.34 But this does not seem to me to be a serious cause for worry. Adso, who gives us our earliest extended treatment in Latin, makes the connexion, and we know the full legend to have been in 30

31 32

33

34

Professor Orlandi has suggested to me that our interpretations are not necessarily as divergent as they may seem - millenarian ideas were ever present in early mediaeval Europe; Doomsday was always expected, and the vikings could indeed have been seen as one o f the portents o f Judgement. Th is may very well be so, but a search must be made for texts which view the vikings in this way; it is notable that an irruption o f that sort is not listed among the portents o f Doom in the widely diffused legend studied by Heist, The Fifteen Signs, for example. On the Apocalypse o f Paul see Silverstein, ed., Visio Sancti Pauli. For some Irish material see Dumville, ‘Towards an Interpretation’ . See also Stevenson, ‘Ascent through the Heavens’ . For a brief discussion o f all this, see Dumville, loc. cit., 3 0 8 - 1 1 . Edited by Verhelst, Adso Dervensis De Ortu. For an English translation see Wright, The Play o f Antichrist, 10 0 -10 . For the quotations see Verhelst, ed. cit., 28, lines 1 7 3 - 6 , and 25, line 78. Antichristi persecutio is used at 28, lines 1 6 3 -4 ; cf. also 20, line 28. Bede (for example, in De temporum ratione, §69: ed. Jones, 5 3 8 -9 ) and Alcuin both offer brief accounts o f the story o f Antichrist. Our knowledge o f the circulation o f Latin apocrypha in the early mediaeval West is still miserably restricted. For the legend o f Antichrist, some suggestive matter may be found in the work o f James, The Lost Apocrypha, 5 3 - 6 1 , 8 1 - 2 , 92; idem, Apocrypha Anecdota, 15 3 ; Hennecke, N ew Testament Apocrypha, vol. I, 4 75 (cf. 480), vol. II, 15 3 and 669. Unfortunately, two very valuable recent articles have failed to pursue the question o f A dso’s use o f uncanonical biblical literature: Verhelst, ‘ L a préhistoire’ ; Rangheri, KLa Epistola’ . See also Orlandi, loc. cit., 1 2 1 - 4 , for the problem as it affects interpretation o f the Nauigatio. T h e work o f Bousset, The Antichrist Legend, remains useful, as does M igne, ‘ Index de Antichristo’ . See also n. 28 above.

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existence in Irish circles in the eighth century. I assume that our author’s audience would have understood the phrase Christianorum persecutio in the sense which I have suggested. Certainly that explanation enables us to account for the passage in its own context; otherwise we should have to resort to a conjectural link with external forces, the vikings, which have no obvious connexion with the Nauigatio . I conclude therefore that the vikings have nothing to do with the dating o f our text. Ii: ‘Sanctus Brendanus filius Finlocha nepo(ti)s Alti de genere Eogeni(s) Stagni Len regione Mumenensium ortus fuit’ . - Professor Carney, in an extended discussion o f the first sentence o f the Nauigatio, has restored the text to the form given above.35 The author is here placing St Brendan racially, politically, and geographically in Irish society. This formulation is, I think, unique in our surviving notices o f St Brendan. That his father was Findlug and that he belonged to the m occuAlt(a)i or Alltr(a)ige o f Munster are familiar pieces o f information. However, the placing o f the Alltraige among Eoganacht Locha Léin (dégénéré Eogeni Stagni Len) is a very remarkable notice:36 to make full use of it we must review the history o f west Munster in the early middle ages. A branch o f the Eoganachjt dynasty which ruled the Irish province o f Munster (Mumu) until the tenth century, the Eoganacht o f Loch Léin were the overlords o f the western part of Munster (Iarmumu, or Iarluachair). Their powerbase lay at Killarney but the territory over which they held sway extended across a much greater part o f the province; one historian has, with some exaggeration, described Eoganacht Locha Léin as overlords o f Munster west of a line extending from the present Cork city to Lim erick.37 Their hegemony in west Munster may perhaps extend back into the fifth century, but we see it in historical sources only in the seventh and eighth centuries. 35

‘Review o f Selmer, Navigatio’ , 3 7 - 8 [q.v. 4 2 -3 J. None o f these readings is the result o f conjectural emendation. Where equally acceptable variants occur these have been noted with the aid o f round brackets: nepo(ti)s, Eogeni(s). Carney printed the sentence with nepotis and Eogeni. For all that, the usage nepos Alti for moccu Alti seems unusual. As we shall see, moccu was going out o f use in the eighth century and it is just possible that this latinisation is an indication o f a growing unfamiliarity with the word and uncertainty as to its precise connotation (cf. n. 58 below). 36 On the collective political suffixes -r(a)ige (neuter) and -acht (feminine) see Thurneysen, A Grammar, 16 7 -9 . Cf. M acNeill, ‘Early Irish Population-Groups’, especially 6 4-8 2. On the Alltraige see ibid., 7 2 ,7 4 - 5 . Thomas Charles-Edwards has suggested to me that our text’s two statements o f group-identification are not complementary but are instead mutually exclusive in their specificity: since Brendan’s association with Alltraige is clearly primary (eventually giving way to affiliation with the Ciarraige), that with Eoganacht Locha Léin must, on this reckoning, be accounted as a correcting gloss (but not later in date than the eighth century). I f this be so, it has evident implications for the dating o f the Nauigatio itself. 3 7 O Buachalla, ‘ Contributions’ , 68; for more measured statements see O Corráin, Ireland before the Normans, 1-9 , and Byrne, Irish Kings, 17 6 -9 (but cf. 218); none o f these writers documents the case for given boundaries o f the Eoganacht Locha Léin overlordship.

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In the north-west o f the territory dominated by Eoganacht Locha Léin lived two peoples who will concern us here, Ciarraige Luachra and Alltraige. T h e power and territory o f the former were expanding in the eighth century, just as the Alltraige were correspondingly declining;38 probably during the course o f that century, Alltraige had become a subkingdom o f Ciarraige Luachra. In the Nauigatio we find no mention o f Ciarraige Luachra, only o f Alltraige and Eoganacht Locha Léin. But in those Lives o f Brendan, Irish or Latin, which speak of the ancestry or tribal affiliation o f the saint, and in various saintly pedigrees, we find him assimilated to the Ciarraige:39 of the Lives the so-called Vita Insulensis goes furthest, ‘Hic de Kerraigensium genere ortum duxit’ .40 This was a natural consequence o f eighth-century political developments. First, the Alltraige were subordinated to Ciarraige Luachra, but the latter remained under the overlordship o f Eoganacht Locha Léin. The next stage is represented by the collapse of the overlordship of this branch of the Eoganachta. After the death o f the remarkably powerful east-Munster ruler Cathal mac Finguine (king o f Munster 721-4 2), for perhaps forty years Munster politics seem to have been dominated, unusually, by the ruler of Eoganacht Locha Léin, now Mael Dúin mac Aedo (ob. 786).41 Here we see the power o f the Loch Léin dynasty at its height. But it seems probable that this very rise to power provided a major cause of the dynasty’s downfall, whether because o f increased exactions o f taxes or demands for military service from the tributary subkingdoms or because necessarily greater concentration on east Munster affairs led to a fatal weakening of the dynasty’s grip in north-west Munster. At any rate, the rising power of Ciarraige Luachra in that area was not to be contained much longer. No king of Eoganacht Locha Léin can be shown to have been overlord o f Ciarraige Luachra after Mael Dúin’s death in 786.42 B y 803 when Aed Allán mac Coirpri o f Eoganacht Locha Léin was killed in battle with Ciarraige Luachra, whether in a revolt by the latter or (more probably) in a vain attempt to reassert authority over Ciarraige Luachra, the power o f the Loch Léin dynasty had been broken;43 it declined rapidly into relative insignificance (providing only one more king o f Munster, Olchobur mac Cinaeda, ob. 851, who achieved that status by virtue o f 38 39

T h is process is analysed best by Ó Corráin, ‘ Studies in West M unster History’ . For examples from the Lives, see Stokes, ed., Lives o f Saints, 98 (translation, 247), lines 3331-3 (see also 349 for a story, o f the birth o f Brendan, from the Book o f Leinster); Plummer, ed., Bethada} vol. I, 44 (translation, vol. 11,44), §3. For a genealogical example see Stokes, ed., Félire Oengusso, 1 3 2 ,1 3 3 ; a variety o f pedigree-sources for St Brendan is listed by Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I , xxxvi, n. 5. 40 Plummer, ed., Vitae Sanctorum, vol. I, 98 (§1). 41 For the succession o f Munster provincial kingship, see the convenient tables given by Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 7 7 -9 , 2 9 1 -7 . Mael D úin’s position was not universally recognised, however, as Byrne has noted, ibid., 220. 42 Cf. particularly the ‘West Munster Synod’ , discussed below. 43 The Annals o f Intsfalien, ed. M ac Airt, 120 , 12 1 (suh anno 803). A ed ’s affiliation to Eoganacht Locha Léin is not stated by the text, but is a deduction: see Grabowski &

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his position as abbot o f Em ly).44 The southern Annals o f Inisfallen call only Mael Dúin’s immediate successor, Cu Chongelt mac Coirpri (786-91), king of west Munster (ri Iarmuman);45 Cobthach mac Maele Dúin (ob. 833) we meet there merely as ‘king o f Loch Léin’ (rí Locha Léin).40 The Annals o f Inisfallen tell us no more o f Eoganacht Locha Léin until the eleventh century 47 On the theory that well worn annalistic formulae are somewhat slow to adapt to changing political realities - and the greater the geographical distance o f the annalist from the locality the slower the adaptation - we may wish to discount the title o f K in g Cobthach mac Maele Dúin, rex Iarmuman, in the Annals o f Ulster (833)48 and even, if perhaps less certainly, CÚ Chongelt’s ri Iarmuman in the Annals o f Inisfallen (791). Henceforth the annalists show us that the rulers o f Ciarraige Luachra were the important powers in the area.49 In 869, if we may believe Cocad Gaedel re G allaib,50 the kings o f Ciarraige Luachra, Eoganacht Locha Léin, and U i Chonaill Gabra were allied in a successful battle against the Scandinavians, probably in west K erry; we may be fairly confident that Congal mac M aic Lachtna, king o f Ciarraige Luachra (853-78), was the overlord,51 so different were circumstances from those o f a century before. Suspicions as to the rapid decline o f Eoganacht Locha Léin, after the death of Mael Dúin mac Aedo in 786, are particularly fuelled by a remarkable document known as the ‘West Munster Synod’ .52 This text is a bogus report o f a series o f

44 45 46

47 48

49 50

51

52

Dumville, Chronicles and Annals, 40. It is stated, however, in Betha Meic Creiche, §30: see O Coileáin, ‘T h e Saint and the K ing’ , 38 and 4 1. O Corráin, Ireland before the Normans, 2, and Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 19 , prefer the interpretation which makes the action o f 803 the culmination o f a revolt by the Ciarraige. Byrne, ibid., 2 14 , 2 19 ; O Corráin, Ireland before the Normans, 3. Cf. Grabowski and Dumville, Chronicles and Annals, 4 7 -8 . Ed. cit. 1 18 (sub anno 79 1). H e was killed (guin) in that year. Ed. cit. 126 (sub anno 833). For a possibly independent notice in the Annals o f Ulster, see below, n. 48. Grabowski [and Dumville], Chronicles and Annals, not including it in the lists on 9 4 -10 7 , evidently thought both notices to derive from the lost ‘Chronicle o f Ireland’ . Cf. ed. cit., 534. The Annals o f Ulster, ed. M ac A irt and M ac Niocaill, 290, 2 9 1 (833.9). On this annal entry see Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 18 ; cf. O Coileáin, ‘T h e Saint and the K in g’ , 44, for criticism o f Byrne. T h e evidence has been collected by O Corráin, ‘ Studies in West M unster History’ . Cogadh, ed. Todd, 3 2 and 3 3 (§29); cf. 2 4 and 25 (§ 24); for comment see lxxxvii (cf. lxxii-lxxiii). For the date o f this text, c. 110 0 or later, see Byrne, Irish Kings, 267, and O Corráin, Ireland before the Normans, 46, 78, 9 1 - 2 , 200. See also the eleventh-century Fragmentary Annals, ed. Radner, 12 4 and 12 5 (§341), apparently referring to ad 866, which give an account differing in details. O Corráin, ‘Studies in West Munster History’, 5 0 -1 ; there seems to be no certainty that Tomrar was involved in this battle; indeed the testimony o f the two texts makes it almost certain that he was not. I therefore disagree with O Corráin (loc. cit.), whose crossreference to the Annals o f Inisfallen, sub anno 869 (a brief notice o f Tom rar’s death), should accordingly be deleted and a reference to Cocad (ed. Todd), §29, added. Published by Meyer, ‘T h e Laud Genealogies’ , 3 1 5 - 7 . It is partly translated and partly summarised by Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 16 -8 . There are discussions by Ó Buachalla, loc. cit.,

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events leading to a synod o f west-Munster saints, allegedly held in the late sixth century. It projects back to that period the political circumstances o f the years after Mael D úin’s death. St Ciarán is reported as telling St Brendan and the king o f Ciarraige Luachra that they should form an alliance with the surround­ ing tribes (Múscraige and Corcu Ochae are especially named) in anticipation o f trouble with the overking o f Iarmumu. Brendan prophesies that ‘No king o f Iarmumu shall reign over the Ciarraige from the days o f the king whose name shall be Mael Dúin\ The assembled saints, including Brendan moccu A lti, finally sanction the dependence of Ciarraige Luachra on Eoganacht Chaisil rather than on Eoganacht Locha Léin. The king of Ciarraige Luachra may submit to the king o f Iarmumu only on terms which are so outrageous as obviously to be unacceptable to the latter.53 The text is a political manifesto setting out, and justifying pseudo-historically, the details o f a putsch against Eoganacht Locha Léin overlordship. The point o f transferring allegiance, under terms very generous to the Ciarraige, to the king of Cashel in east Munster may be gauged from two considerations. First, Cashel was a long way from Ciarraige Luachra; it was no doubt much more agreeable to have a distant overlord (and one, moreover, who would no doubt be grateful for this new accession o f support and the weakening o f an Eoganacht rival) rather than a potentially far stronger local one. Secondly, before the accession o f the remarkable Feidlimid mac Crimthainn (820-47), no king o f Eoganacht Chaisil had been king of Munster since the death o f Cormac mac Ailello in 713; other eastern branches o f the dynasty (and, perhaps from the 740s to 786, Mael Dúin o f Loch Léin and thence briefly Olchobur mac Flainn o f Ui Fhidgeinti) had monopolised the over kingship o f Munster during that century.54 I f we see Ciarraige Luachra recognising the overlordship of Eoganacht Chaisil, we may say that they were attaching themselves to what was, during 7 13-8 20 , the weakest branch o f the eastern Eoganachta. But even if we discount this last point, on the grounds that rt Caisil is to be taken as any descendant o f Nad Froich or (less generously) of Oengus mac Nad Froich,55 we must still recall that no easterner had been king o f Munster from the middle o f the eighth century until 793 when Artri mac Cathail o f Eoganacht Glendamnach was

53 54 55

7 8 - 8 1 ; Ó Corráin, ‘Studies In West Munster History’ , 48 and 3 1 - 2 ; idem, Ireland before the Normans, 2 - 3 , 1 1 5 ; Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 1 5 - 2 0 and 1 7 0 - 1 7 1 (for Byrne’s earlier and different view o f this text, see his ‘Tribes and Tribalism’, 13 4 -5 ); Ó Coleáin, ‘T h e Saint and the K ing’ 4 3 -4 . Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 1 7 - 8 , 2 19 -2 0 . T h is is most easily seen from the tables given by Byrne, ibid., 2 7 7 - 9 , 2 9 1 - 7 . On the doubtful identification o f Olchobur, abbot o f Inis Cathaig, see ibid., 178 , 2 1 3 - 4 . T his may be the implication o f the text: Meyer, ed., ‘T h e Laud Genealogies’, 3 1 5 , lines

27 - 3 2

-

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‘ordained’ king o f Munster, according to the northern Annals o f Ulster.56 Whenever Ciarraige Luachra and their allies staged their putsch, whether in 786 or later (and certainly no later than 803), the eastern Eoganachta were weak and probably very glad o f new western allies; it might even be said that all these groups shared the desire to be rid o f Eoganacht Locha Léin overlordship. Armed with all this information, we may return to the Nauigatio. The prophecy attributed to St Brendan in the ‘West Munster Synod’ sets a term to Eoganacht Locha Léin overlordship in 786. As the document is retrospective, there would be no point in naming Mael Dúin if Ciarraige Luachra had recognised his successor(s) as overlord(s). We may therefore be clear that, however events unfolded militarily (and here our only evidence is o f the Ciarraige success of 803), the latest possible dating for the political rejection o f Loch Léin overlordship is 786. Accordingly, we can hardly suppose that a later writer with local west-Munster interests would be likely to invest St Brendan with ultimate Eoganacht Locha Léin ancestry, as the Nauigatio does. To do so, he would have to be a propagandist for that dynasty, rather than a devotee o f the Alltraige saint; even so, after 803 such an ancestry would look distinctly threadbare, and very soon it would be wholly incredible. T he termini for the composition o f the ‘ West M unster Synod’ are therefore likely to be shortly before 786 and shortly after 803; V. 790’ would be my preference for an approximate date.57 Consequently, Nauigatio Sancti Brendani is most credibly dated before 786; how much earlier it could have been written seems at the moment matter for speculation.58 In round terms we may say that the Nauigatio

Ed. cit., vol. I, 248 (79 3.3): 4L e x Ailbhi for Mumain 7 ordinatio Artroigh m. Cathail in regnum M um en’ . 57 I see no necessity to argue (as did Byrne, Irish Kings, 2 1 5 - 2 0 ) for a date in the reign o f Feidlimid mac Crimthainn, Eoganacht Chaisil king o f Munster, 8 20 -4 7. In other words, I doubt that the arrangement with Cashel which the text details was the basis on which the power o f Eoganacht Chaisil was built up once again. That was surely an independent process, albeit one which benefited from the destruction o f Eoganacht Locha Léin as a major force in Munster politics. 58 I do not know how I would counter an argument that the Nauigatio was written in the seventh century. Carney has stated, ‘ Review o f Selmer, Navigatio\ 4 3, n. 13 [q.v. 49], that the forms Alti (genitive) and Ende (nominative) are seventh-century; but he has also noted that they could have been drawn by his early ninth-century author from an earlier source such as Adom nán’s L ife o f St Columba. T h e form Finlocha (genitive) for Old Irish Findlogo or Findloga was noted by Carney (ibid.) as ‘ unusual’ : its -ch- for -g- may be paralleled in the Book o f Arm agh (c. 800) in a copy o f a text o f c. 700 - see Kelly ‘Notes on the Irish Words’ , 247 (cf. 246, 248), although his examples are all o f palatal consonants. One may perhaps note, from a foreign context, Bede’s Dearmach for Durrow (Old Irish Dairmag) in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 111:4. Brendanus maccu A lti/A lte reappears in four uitae in Codex Salmanticensis, ed. Heist, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae'. Vita S. Finiani abbatis de Cenn Etigh, §4 ( 15 3 ); Vita S. Ruadani abbatis de 56

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is unlikely to have been written much later than the third quarter o f the eighth century.59

Lothra, §3 (16 1 ); Vita S. Cainnechi, §53 (196); Vita PriorS. Fintaniseu Munnu, §31 (208: Brandinus macu Althe). All these belong to a block o f text (Heist, ed. cit., 1 1 8 - 2 3 3 ) assigned on linguistic grounds to the eighth century in work by Sharpe, M edieval Irish Saints’ Lives, which I have been privileged to see in advance o f publication. (T h e saint appears as Brendenus mocu Alti at 1:26 and 111:17 o f Adomnan’s Life o f Columba ed. Andersons, 260, 500, written in the last quarter o f the seventh century.) T h e word moc(c)u/mac(c)u apparently ceased to be productive c. 700, but continued to be recognised and used for historical figures until c. 800, after which time it was corrupted as mac(c) ui (or macc ua): see M ac Neill, ‘ M ocu, maccu’ ; D I L s.v. maccu\ and Byrne, ‘Tribes and Tribalism’ , especially 16 4 -5 . All these indications will support an eighthcentury date, but they do not necessarily preclude an argument for an earlier date. 59 T his paper was written in 1981 and scheduled to be published in a journal where it did not appear (cf. Lapidge and Sharpe, eds, A Bibliography, 106, no. 362). It has now (M arch 1988) been lightly revised to bring it up to date without alteration o f its substance. I am much indebted to Giovanni Orlandi for guidance at every point. T h is paper was also read in draft and commented on by Jam es Carney, Thom as CharlesEdwards, and Michael Lapidge, to all o f whom I am most grateful; they are not, however, to be held responsible for my conclusions.

Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg* Jo h n Carey

In the year 748 Pope Zachary, in a letter to St Boniface, mentioned among other matters a complaint which he had received from the latter concerning an Irish cleric named Virgil, active at that time in Bavaria:1 As for his perverse and abominable teaching which he has proclaimed in opposition to God, and to his own soul’s detriment - if the report o f his having spoken thus be true - that is, that there are another world and other men beneath the earth, or even the sun and moon (‘quod alius mundus, et alii homines sub terra sint, seu sol et luna’): take counsel and then expel him from the church, stripped o f his priestly dignity.2 Whatever action was taken did not interfere with Virgil’s elevation to the bishopric o f Salzburg in 767, or indeed with his canonization in 1233; we have *

1

2

First published in Speculum 64 (1989), 1 - 1 0 . A version o f this paper was presented as part o f the Celtic seminar series at the Harvard Center for Literary Studies, 16 October 19 8 7 . 1 am grateful for the comments and suggestions o f those who attended and for the insightful criticisms o f the readers who reviewed the text for this journal. On Virgil’s life see, e.g., Krusch, ‘ Virgilius’ ; Grosjean, ‘ Virgile de Salzbourg’ ; Kenney, The Sources, 5 2 3 -6 . In this paper I make no attempt to contribute to the debate sparked by H. Low e’s argument that Virgil wrote the Cosmographia o f ‘Aethicus Ister’ (Ein literarischer Widersacher)', for bibliography see Herren, ‘Hiberno-Latin Philology’, 14 and notes. Tangl, ed., ‘D ie Briefe’ : ‘ D e perversa autem et iniqua doctrina, quae contra Deum et animam suam locutus est, si clarificatum fuerit ita eum confiteri, quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sint seu sol et luna, hunc habito concilio ab aecclesia pelle sacerdotii honore privatum’ . T h e phrase ‘seu sol et luna’ has generally been rendered ‘or (another) sun and moon’ , leading to some confusion: various scholars have claimed that this represents an unintelligent distortion o f Virgil’s position, while K rusch (5 18 ) suggests reading ceu for seu. But if we take the ‘ sol et luna’ to be our own luminaries, giving light to both hemispheres, the passage makes sense as it stands. (T h e variant ‘aliusque sol’ is confined to Otloh’s Vita S. Bonifacii; for this work’s place in the text tradition see Tangl’s stemma, xxx.)

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no way o f determining whether he retracted or vindicated his controversial position. This paper will take another look at the ‘perversa et iniqua doctrina’ itself, a topic which has attracted considerable attention for several centuries.5 It has been generally held that Virgil was condemned for maintaining the existence o f the Antipodes, the hypothetical inhabitants o f the hemisphere opposite our own;4 thus a classical writer like Manilius described the Antipodes in terms which vividly recall not only the ideas in Zachary’s letter, but even their sequence: Another part o f the world lies under the waters, inaccessible to us; there are unknown races o f men, and unvisited realms, drawing a shared light from a single sun.5 This notion, although freely entertained by pagan thinkers, encountered stiff resistance from theologians throughout the first Christian millennium.6 Some historians o f science have associated this opposition with the question o f the sphericality of the earth; but in fact the Antipodes were assailed as energetically by those prepared to accept the earth’s roundness (for example, Augustine), or indeed firmly committed thereto (for example, Bede), as by the proponents o f 3

4 5

6

T h e major articles are Gilbert, ‘ L e pape Zacharie’ ; Krabo, ‘Bischof Virgil’ ; and Vander Linden, ‘Virgile de Salzbourg’ . I have not read Strzelczyk, ‘Iroszkocki biskup’, but gather from the appended French summary that he breaks no fresh ground with regard to this specific question. On the Antipodes in antiquity and the M iddle Ages see Kretschmer, ‘D ie physische Erdkunde’ ; Rainaud, Le continent austral, 1 1 - 5 3 , 1 1 8 - 6 7 . Astronomica I. 3 7 7 - 9 (ed. Housman): ‘Altera pars orbis sub aquis jacet invia nobis, | ignotaeque hominum gentes, nec transita regna, | commune ex uno lumen ducentia sole’ . Cf. Solinus, Collectanea 5 3 .1 , where the island o f Taprobane, thought to lie in the southern hemisphere, is described as ‘ another world’ (‘ orbem alterum’ ); the statement recurs in Dicuil’s Liber de mensura orbis terrae, ed. Tierney, 80, line 2. Wesley Stevens has recently asserted that ‘ there never was a doctrine o f the Christian Church condemning the idea that there might be inhabitants o f the southern temperate zone or a presumed fourth continent’ (‘T h e Figure o f the Earth’ , 274); Zachary’s letter, according to Stevens, denounces not the Antipodes but ‘speculation about human life on another planet or universe with another sun or moon’ (‘Review o f Hillkowitz, Zur Kosmographie\ 754). Even if the latter interpretation were correct (and I believe that the evidence presented in his essay indicates that it is not), it remains the case that Augustine’s verdict ‘Antipodas esse ... nulla ratione credendum est’ (De civitate Dei 16.9) represented the orthodox position throughout the period which we are considering: Isidore used Augustine’s very phrase (Etymologiae 9 .2 .1 3 3 , ed. Lindsay), and it was echoed by Bede (‘ Neque ... Antipodarum ullatenus est fabulis accomodantur assensus’ , De temporum ratione §34, 4 5 6 - 5 7 ; cf. the remarks o f the ninth-century glossator, ibid., 453_ 4)* When opinion began to shift in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the first advocates o f the Antipodes were promptly labelled heretics (examples and references in Wright, The Geographical Lore, 16 1, 4 2 9 -30 ; and Kretschmer, ‘Die physische Erdkunde’ , 59). A speculative interpretation o f the church’s position is presented in Flint, ‘Monsters and the Antipodes’ , 6 5 -8 1.

Irelan d and the Antipodes: The H eterodoxy o f V irgil o f Salzburg

13 5

a flat-earth cosmology (for example, Lactantius, Cosmas and Indicopleustes). The difficulty lay rather in the belief, unquestioned since antiquity, that the other quadrants o f the globe were entirely inaccessible to the inhabitants o f the known world (the oÍKOU|A£VT|): the ocean to the west was impassibly vast, while the equatorial zone was so hot that no human could traverse it. I f the Antipodes were in this way utterly divided from us, how could they be descended from Adam, sole ancestor of humanity according to Scripture? And how could the Gospel come to them, which was to be preached ‘in the whole world, in witness to all peoples’ (‘in universo orbe, in testimonium omnibus gentibus’, Matt. 24:19)? Only in the twelfth century did orthodoxy’s strictures on this point begin to loosen.7 Th is puts Virgil in a remarkable position: in the eight centuries which separate the patristic apologists from the rise o f Scholasticism, he is virtually unique in his advocacy of an inhabited southern hemisphere.8 What led him to put forward so obviously unpalatable a view? Many have seen him as a scientific pioneer, moved by astronomical considerations to proclaim the roundness o f the earth;9 but this is surely to distort the issue. As Augustine noted with some asperity, it had not been evidence (astronomical or other) which had inclined the classical cosmographers to postulate the Antipodes, but rather an a priori sense o f proportion: to prove that the world is a globe is not to prove that there are men on the other side o f it.10 Another motive must have been present: is there any chance o f our discovering it? It has not so far as I know been noted hitherto that certain vernacular works from early medieval Ireland also attest to a belief in the Antipodes; I refer specifically to Saltair na Rann and Tenga Bithnua. Both are generally given a 7 Rainaud, Le continent austral, 13 3 -4 ; Wright, The Geographical Lore, 15 9 -6 5. Even at this date the question was felt to be highly problematical; see Delhaye, Le Microcosmus, 2 8 2 -6 . 8 T h is generalization does not o f course extend to pagan writers like M acrobius and Martianus Capella or to Christian glossators who paraphrased these texts without explicitly concurring in their doctrines (e.g., Eriugena in Lu tz, ed., Iohannis Scotti Annotationes, 14 3 -4 ). T h e only other autonomous Christian reference known to me is a curious statement by Heiric o f Auxerre, writing a century after V irgil’s time: ‘Manifestum est quod Antipodes supra se coelum habent. Ferunt quidem esse Antipodes homines in alio orbe, quos dividit a nobis Oceanus, quos etiam dicunt vivere more et cultu Persarum [!] Quod autem vivere possint subtus terram, non repugnat fidei, quod hoc agit natura terrae quae speroides est’ (cited by L . Traube, ‘ Heirici Carmina’ , 422). T h e ideas strikingly recall V irgil’s: with ‘ homines in alio orbe’ cf. ‘alius mundus et alii homines’, with ‘supra se coelum habent’ cf. ‘seu sol et luna’ . Traube postulated Virgil’s influence, while Rand claimed that Heiric was following Eriugena (‘Johannes Scottus’ , 19, n. 3, and 2 1). Use o f the rare word speroides ( = Greek a^aipoeiörjq) suggests the influence o f Servius (discussed below). 9 Polemical interest in Virgil goes back to 1605, when Michael Maestlin, writing to Kepler, compared Virgil with Copernicus; Kepler subsequently likened himself to Virgil (Vander Linden, ‘ Virgile de Salzbourg’ , 164). 10 De civitate Dei 16.9: ‘Neque hoc ulla historica cognitione didicisse se affirmant, sed quasi ratiocinando coniectant’ .

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date in the early Middle Irish period (approximately 900-1050). Differing from one another in many respects, they share a profound and rather eccentric interest in questions o f cosmology; both, it may be noted in passing, are emphatic in asserting that the earth is a globe.11 One o f the concluding cantos o f Saltair na Rann consists primarily o f a series o f questions about the universe; some o f these are humble protestations of man’s inability to fathom the mysteries o f creation, others the considerably more pointed queries o f an erudite master. T h e quatrains in which I am interested here incline toward the latter category: What is the number o f the hosts, with ranks o f companies, which the noble wave o f the clear sea conceals? What are the multitudes which dwell there, on the other side o f the solid earth? They bend their knees habitually, at every hour without reluctance; it is praise, as they love purely, which each host sings to the bright King. Why did he spread out the world, a mighty circuit? Why did he make a famous, far-ranging road for sportive journeying in the night? And the bright sun, whither does it go?12 The principal source here is a stanza in the hymn Altus prosator, ascribed by Irish tradition to Colum Cille (died r. 597): Beneath the world, as we read, we know that there are inhabitants whose knee bends frequently in entreaty to the Lord; and to whom it is impossible to open the written book, signed with seven seals, concerning the warnings o f Christ, which he himself had unsealed and thereafter stood forth as victor, fulfilling his own prophecies concerning his coming.13 11

12

13

With regard to Saltair na Rami see my article ‘Cosmology in Saltair na Rann\ 3 3 - 5 2 ; in Tenga Bithnua note in particular paragraphs 1 7 - 1 9 o f Stokes’s edition (‘T h e Evernew Tongue’ , 10 6 -7), which present an elaborate exposition o f the doctrine that ‘ the world has been embodied in a round shape’ (‘is i ndeilb chruind ro damnaiged in doman’ ). Saltair na Rami, ed. Stokes, lines 7 9 0 5 -16 : ‘Cialin nasluag, srethaib drong, / dosceil tonn muad mara mind, / ceti arbair trebait ann / dondleith tall dontalmain tinn? / Fillit anglúni cognath / cQchtraxh cennar/mdúiri dréil / molaid marcharait cohóg / canait ce , C o rp u s Christianorum series latina 7 5 A (T u rn h o u t, 1964). Goeje, M .J. de, L a légende de saint Brandan, tiré des Actes du 8e Congrès International des Orientalistes (Leide, 1890). G ordon, C .H ., Before Columbus (N ew York, 1 9 7 1) . --------, Riddles in History (N ew York, 19 74). Gordon, I., ed., The Seafarer (London, i960); repr. with Selected Bibliography by M a ry Clayton (Exeter, 1996).

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Index Abraham 2on, 145,156 ii6n, ii7n Adam 28, 57,6 1, 84-5, 88,135,149 Adomnán 2on, 14 3-4 ,155, 202, 232n Vita Columbae i6n, 17-19 ,4 2,4 8 , 95-6,100—i, 10 4 -5,14 3,14 7-8 , 1 5 1 - 3 , 1 6 1 , 174-5, 201-2, 204n, 230, 232,235-7, 240, 245 CáinAdom náin xiii, i6n, 2 3 ,24n, 25, 9911, 14 3-4 ,153-4 , 200 Vision of see LF ís Adomnáin ’ Adso of Montier-en-Der, Liber de ortu et tempore Antichristi 126 Aed Allán mac Coirpri 128 Áed of Sletty 155 Aed ua Raithnén 208 Aegean 243 Aeneas 18,169 Aeneid see ‘Virgil’ Aengus, see ‘Oengus’ ‘Aethicus Ister’, Cosmographia I33n Aidan 97n A ided Echach meic M aireda 83n, 88 A ided Murchertaigh mac Ere xii, xxiv Ailill 102 Áine 68 Airgialla 221 Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) 238 Aldhelm 96,146, i 50n Alet 162-3 Alexander 19m Alfred, King 99, 148 Aliusa 61 Alltraige 4 2 -3 ,12 7 -3 1, i59n Altrom Tige D á M edar 56, 61 Altus prosator 136-7, 139 A maccucáin sruth in tíag 79n America Central 228,237 North 227, 230, 233, 243 South 228 Acallam na Senórach

anchorite, in Terra repromissionis 11 123 Annals o f Inisfalien 88,129 ,193 Annals o f the Four Masters 88, 190 Annals o f Tigernach n6n, 189-90, 221, 229 Annals o f Ulster 129, 190, 212,219-20, 222,229 Annegray 94 Annwfn 118-19 Antichrist 35, 39, 124-7, *59, 165, 214 Antipodes 134-5, i37~4, l 4 2 Aoibheall 68 Apollonius of Tyre 32n Apsarases 69-70 Aran Islands 3, i6n, 19 Archangel Michael 125, 210 Ari Thorgilsson 242 Armagh 16, 53,188, 208, 219-20, 222 Armorica 68 Arthur 139 Artri mac Cathail 130 Atlantic 227-9,229-30, 232, 240 Auör d. of Ketill Flatnev 26 Auerech 4n Augustine 134 -5,19 1 Avalon see ‘islands (legendary)’ Axiochus 140 Annales Bertiniani

Baile in Scá il 1 17n, 187 Baitán ua Nia Taloirc xv, 19, 147-8, 151, 232 Baithéne 101 Ballyshannon 5n B a mol M idend midlaige, 83 Bangor i6n, 86,94 Barrind (Barrintus) 5 -7 ,19 , 43,48, 92,

i n - 1 2 , 12 3 ,15 7 ,17 7 ,18 1- 2 Baudri de Bourgueil (?), Vita Machutis 163 Bavaria 133,14 2 Bayeux 163 279

28o

Index

B ay o f D onegal 5n beasts 4

cats (monstrous) 4, 8 ,11, 211 dragon 12 gryphon 185 sea creatures, 8n, 176, i79n, 235 Bébind d. of Trén 6gn Bécuma 25, 61 Bede De natura rerum 241 De temporum ratione i34 n

96, 145-6 96, 103, 13 m, 14 6 ,14 7,150 ,154 ,155,156 11 In regum librum X X X quaestiones 240 Vita Cuthberti 149, 152 Be' F in d poem 57 Beidach 4n Benedict Biscop 96,145-6 Benignus 149 B eo w u lf 49,226 Berneval 1 in Betha Adamnäin 218 Historia abbatum

86, 88, 9 0 , 113-15» 176,188 Bréifne 219 Bresal Brecc n6n Brí Léith ii7n Britain 4 ,10 ,30 ,9 70 ,139 ,14 4 ,159 -6 0 , 166.174 Brittany sn, 30 -2 ,3 7 -9 ,9 4 ,12 4 ,139 , 15 8 .16 5 .174 Broichan 96 Brude, king of Piets i6in Brug na Bóinne 1 i7n Buile Suibne 217

Historia Ecclesiastica

Bet ha Brénnáin see *Vita Brendani*

145, i49n 20 Bili, Vita Machutis 20 ,2in, 16 1-3 ,16 5 -7 ,

Betha Choluim Chille Betha M a c Creiche

16 9 -71,173-4 Bilis 139 Birr (Co. Offaly) i6n Synod of 154 Blathmac mac Con Brettan, Poems 74,126 Blessed Isles see ‘islands (legendary)’ Boadach (Bóadag, Bóadach) 54 , 6 8 , 1 1 6

Bobbio i6n Bohemia 60 Boisil 149, 155 Bollandists xviii, 27, 37 Book of Ballymote 191 Book of Kells 191 Book of Leinster 9 Book of Taliesin 118 -19 Boyne, see ‘ R iver B oyn e’

Bjarni Herjólfsson 229 Bran mac Febuil i8n, 54, 55, 68, 8 1 - 3,

Cailte 6çn Cain 101 ‘Adomnán’ 24 Caintigern, wife of Fiachna 84 Cambrai Homily 145 Canaan 185 Canada 227, 237 Canary Isles 112 Carndonagh cross-pillar 19 m carpenter, see supernumeraries Carraic Eolairc 89 Cashel 130,194 cats (monstrous) see ‘beasts’ Cathal mac Finguine 128 Cath Cnuca 25 Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh 62 Cellach 192-3 Céli D é 16 5 ,17 7 ,18 1-2 Cenél Conaill 221 Cenél nEogain 218,220 Ceolfrid g6n Cessarn 187 Cétchathrach 61 Chrétien de Troyes 139 Christ 35, 5 5 -6 ,1 14 ,124 ,16 9 -7 0 ,176 , 183,189 Christmas 5,178 Chronicon Scotorum 229 Ciarraige Luachra i27n, 12 8 -31,159 0 Cin Dromma Snechta xv, 53, 74, 79n, Cain Adomndin see

Cain Domnaig

1 13-15

Index

281

Clann Cholm áin 2 2 2

Cuirithir 95

Clem ens, bishop i4 2 n

C yclo ps 20 2

Cliódna 68

Cyn dd elw 1 1 8

Clogher 209

D a Apstól decc na hErenn xvi, x xv ii-xx v iii,

Clonard i6n

18 8

Clonfert 6, i6 n , 12 5

D afyd d ap G w ily m 1 1 8

Clonm acnoise i6 n

D ál nAraide n 6 n

Cobthach mac M aele D ú in 12 9

D am inis 18 8

Cocad Gaedel re Gallaib 12 9

D anes 14 7

Coire Breccan 2 3 2

D avid, K in g 2 50

Collectio Canonum Hibernensis i6 n

D e g a i6 n , 19

Colum ba see ‘ S t Colum ba’

D eluge 8 8 , 1 1 4

Colum bus 10 9, 2 2 6 - 7 , 2 2 9

D ér G réine, daughter o f Fiachn a 86

Compert Con Culainn 74 , i i 7 n

D e rry i6 n , 2 1 7 - 1 9 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 3 0

Conall, sons o f 19

D esert Fathers 2 30

Con gal mac M aie Lachtn a 12 9

D éssi 95

Connacht 2 1 2

D evenish n 6 n

Conn Céthathach 2 5 , 54, 6 1 , 1 8 7

D evil 2 - 3 ,

Connla m ac Con n 5 3 - 5 , 6 1 , 68, 85, 8 7 -8 , 115 -16 cook, o f T o rach i6 n , 19 Copernicus I35n Corán 54 , 6 1 , 8 5, 87 Core 2 5n , 30

ii

, 1 9 ,4 8 - 9 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 1 , 173,

1 8 3 , 1 8 5 , 209 D iarm ait m ac Cerbaill, king o f T ara 53 D icu il 2 3 8 De Mensura orbis terrae 2 1 , 134n , 2 29 , 2 3 1 - 2 , 2 3 8 -4 1, 243 Liber de Astronomia 2 32 n

Corcom roe (Corco mRuad) xv, 1 9 ,2 0 6 ,

D ilm un 59

234 C orcu Ochae 130

Dom nall mac A ed a 2 1 6

C o r mac Condlongas 50

Dom nall o f T ara 2 1 4

D ol 1 6 2 - 3

Corm ac mac Ailello 130

D onegal 2 2 4

C orm ac mac A irt 18 8

Donnchad M id i mac Domnaill 1 9 3 , 2 1 5 - 1 6

C orm ac mac Cuilennáin 19 4

D onnchad s. o f Brian 2 1 2

C o rm ac’s G lossary see \Sanas Chormaic ’

D onnchad U a Cerbaill 2 1 9 - 2 0

C orm ac U a Liatháin xv, xx, 1 7 - 1 9 , 4 8 ,

Draco Normannicus 139

14 8 , is 8 n , i 6 i n , 1 7 5 - 6 , 2 3 2 - 5

druid, in Immram M aele Duin 18 , 2 0 4 - 5

Cornw all 30 , 38, 14 8 , is 8 n

D ru im Inesclainn (Co. Lo u th ) 2 1 9

Cosm as 13 5

D rum cullen (Co. O ffaly) 4 4

Crim thann N ía N á ir i i 7 n

D rythelm 2 0 1

Crith Gablach xviii

D ublin 26 , 2 2 3

Cronos 39n

D ú n m Brain 8 0 - 1

crossán see ‘ supernum eraries’

D u rro w i6n

C rúachu 18 7 crystal column 1 7 6 , 1 7 8 , 20 8

East A nglia u n , 108

C ú Chongelt mac C o irpri 12 9

Easter 2 x 1,5 , 1 0 3 1 1 , 1 5 5 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 3 , 1 6 7 - 7 4 ,

C ú Chulainn 10 2 , n 6 n , i i 7 n C ú l D rebene 14 5 , 2 0 1

17 8 ,18 3 -4 Ecgb erct 9 6 , 1 0 3 , 1 4 7 , 1 5 5

Index

282

Faustus o f R iez 95n

E ch tra A i r t meic C u in d 2 5 , 6 1

‘E ch tra’ Brain see 'Im m ram B ra in

’

* ‘Ech tra Bresal B recc’ see ‘ Bresal B re cc’ E chtra Clérech Choluim C ille

26, i8çn

Fearbhlaidh 62 Febal 1 1 4 Feidlim id mac Crim thainn 1 3 0 , 13 m

Ech trae C onle xv, 15 , 46, 5 3 - 5 , 5 7 , 64,

Fé lire Oengusso 1 5 4

6 8 -9 , 7 1 , 8 3, 8 7 - 9 , 115 -16 ,

F é lire U i G orm din

119

Ech trae C orm aic m aic A i r t H 7 n , 18 8 Ech tra Fergusa m aic L é t i

ii6n

Fergal 4 4 Fergus m ac L é ti see 'E ch tra Fergusa maic

echtrai xi, 1 7 7 , 2 0 1 E ch tra Láegaire mac Crim thainn

86, 115,

H7n

L é ti

’

Fergus (mac Roich) 10 2

E chtra N e r a i 20 , i i 7 n , 1 3 8 , 1 8 7 E ch tra T aidg meic C éin

I9n

Felix Vita G u th la ci 96

60-1

Fergus son o f Conall G ulban 4 5 Ferns 2 1 2

Eden 3 2 , 1 7 7 , 1 8 5 , 1 9 m , 2 4 6

Fiacha, K in g 2 1 6

Edrisi, ‘M oslem Wanderers o f L isb o n ’ 29

Fidelis 2 3 8

Ehfridus i4Ön

Fin d 69n

Eithne 56

F in d m ag 82

Elijah (Elias) xiv, 16 , 3 2 - 7 , 39 , 1 2 4 - 5 , 2 1 4 - 1 6 , 246

F in g a l R ón áin xviii

Finistère, 3 2 - 7 , 2 4 6

Eliusa 6 1

F ir Rois 19 , 1 2 4 , 2 1 5 - 1 7 , 2 1 9

Elysiu m 140

F is A d om n áin xxiii, 2n , 8 , 1 0 , i8 9 n , 2 0 2 ,

E m ly 1 6 , 1 2 9 Em peror Julian 32n

2 17 , 220 Flaithbertach U a Brolcháin 2 1 8 - 1 9

England 19 9 , 2 0 1

Flann Sin a 2 2 2

En och xiv, 16 , 3 2 - 7 , 3 9 , 1 2 4 - 5 , 2 1 4 - 1 6 ,

F lé d B ricre n d

246 Eóganacht 48

I5n

F lé d D ú in na n G é d 2 1 8

Fom óire ii 6 n , i i 7 n

Chaisel 1 3 0 , 13 m

‘ F o reir Choluim b’ 2 0 1

Glendam nach 130

Forfess f e r Fa lg a e 7 4 , 1 i7 n

L o ch a L éin 4 3 , 4 8 , 1 2 7 - 3 1

France 3 1

Epiphany 15 8

Frederick Barbarossa 3 1

Erebus 13 9

Frisia 1 4 6 - 7 , 1 5 4

Erfurht 40 Etain 7 1 , i i 7 n

Gáidhiar, son o f M anannán 2 5

Ethelhun 1 5 5

G alicia 2 1 2

Ethiopia 3 7 - 8

Galilee, Galileans 3 5 - 6 , 1 1 2 , 1 2 4 , 1 7 6 ,

Eucharist 4

247-8

E v e 60, 8 5 , 149n

G au l 5n , 9 4 ,1 0 8

Exodus 2 1 7

G eo ffrey o f M onm outh , Vita M e r lin i 69 G erm any 3 1

Fand i i 7 n

G ervase o f T ilb u ry 139

Farne Island 149

giant girl 3 , 1 1 , 2 0 , 1 6 8 - 7 0

Faroes 2 1 , 1 0 9 - 1 0 , 1 4 3 0 , 1 7 6 , 2 2 8 - 9 , 2 3 L

G illa M e ic L ia g 2 1 8 - 9

2 4 0 -1 Fam ily o f M o rn a 69n

G irald us Cam brensis i i 7 n , 1 1 8 , 13 9 Glaber, R u d o lf 1 1

Index G lenn U isen 2 1 2 G od frey o f Viterbo, Pantheon xxi, 3 1 - 9 , 12 4

283

Im acallam in D ru a d B ra in x vxvi, xxi,

7 3 - 4 , 7 7 - 9 0 , 1 14 Im lech Ibuir 19 3

G om orrah 88

immrama xi, xv, xx, 1 6 4 - 5 , 1 7 ° , 1 7 6 -7 , i79n ,

G ospel o f N icodem us 3ç n G reeks 3 1

18 5 -6 ,18 8 ,19 5 ^ 7 ,2 0 1-3 ,2 13 ,2 17 Im m ram B ra in xii-x iii, xxi, xxv, 1 5 , 4 6 - 7 ,

Greenland 1 10 , 2 2 8 ,2 2 9 , 2 4 4 G rego ry the G reat M o ra lia in lo b 12 6 H om iliae in E uangelia 12 6

5 1 - 7 2 , 8 9 - 9 0 ,9 m , 9 2 , 1 1 3 - 1 5 , 1 19 , 1 3 9 ,14 1 ,14 3 n , 1 7 6 , 1 8 8 , 1 9 5 - 7 - a s ‘E ch tra’ Brain, 8 1 - 9 Im m ram curaig M á e le D ú in xii-xiv, xvi,

gryphon see ‘beasts’

x ix -x x i, xxiii, x x v -x x v i, i5 n , i6 n ,

G uibert o f N ogen t, D e pignoribus

i 7 n , 18 , 3 0 , 4 7 - 9 , 5 1 , 9 1 , 1 2 0 , i4 3 n ,

sanctorum

39n

G u th lac 1 4 9 - 5 0 , 1 5 2 - 3

1 8 8 , 1 9 6 - 8 , 2 0 3, 2 0 5, 2 0 8 - 1 1 , 2 1 3 , 2 2 5 - Egerton 17 8 2 Im m ram curaig U a C orra xi, xiii, xviii,

H ades 16 9

xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, 3 , 4n, i6 n , 1 7 , 1 8 ,

H ebrides 2 1 , 1 0 9 , 2 0 1, 2 3 0

22,46,49,14311,188,198,203,

H eiric o f A uxerre i3 5 n

2 0 9 - 1 2 , 2 3 5 - early modern

H ell 1 2 , 5 7 , 1 7 3 , 1 7 9 1 1 , 1 8 4 , 2 0 1 - 2 , 2 3 6 ,

243 H en ry

1 13

recension xxvii Im m ram Snédgusa ocus M a ic R ia g la

x ii-x iii, xvi, xviii, xxviii, i6 n , 2 6 ,4 6 ,

Hereford world map 1 1 2

5 in , 1 2 4 , 1 4 3 1 1 , 1 8 8 - 9 0 , 1 9 3 , 1 9 8 ,

H eth 4n

2 0 3, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 2 1 8 , 2 2 4 - M e r u g u d

H ew ald, Black 1 4 7 , 1 5 5

cléirech Choluim C h ille xxvi, i8 9 n ,

H ew ald, W hite 1 4 7 , 1 5 5 H istoria de Enoch et E lija h 3 2 - 9 , 52 ,

124-S, 246-9

19 8 , 2 2 4 India 1 9 m Indicopleustes 13 5

Homer, I lia d 1 1 2

Ine, laws 9 6 ,9 9 11

H orace 3 1 , 9 2

Inis Cain (Fair Island, ? insula deliciosa)

‘H osini mac F in t dixit contra filium side for Sru ib B rain ’ 7 4 - 5 H úi C o rra see ‘U i C o rra ’

xvi, 4 4 - 5 , 9 2 - 3 , 2 3 1 , 2 3 3 Inis-da-D rom m and 6 Inishm urray i6n

H vitram annaland 2 2 9 , 2 4 4

Inis Subai see ‘ islands (legendary)’

H y B r a z il see ‘islands (legendary)

insulae fortu n ae see ‘ islands (legendary)’

Iona i6 n , 18 , 2on, 9 5 , 9 7n , 1 0 0 , 1 4 4 - 5 , Iarm um u 1 2 7 - 3 1

14 7 , 1 5 5 , 1 6 4 , 1 9 3 , 2 0 0 , 2 1 8 - 1 9 , 2 2 3 ,

Iasconius (‘ whale’ ) 2n, 5, 6, 8n, 1 1 ,

2 30 , 2 3 8

167-73» 176 ,178 ,18 3-5,236 Iceland 2 1 , 2 6 , 1 0 9 - 1 0 , i4 3 n , 1 7 6 , 2 2 8 - 9 , 2 3 1-2 ,2 4 1,2 4 3 -4

Ireland 4 - 6 , 20, 30, 3 9 ,4 6 ,4 9 , 6 1 , n o - 1 1 , 1 9 9 - 2 0 2 ,2 2 2 Irish Sea 2 3 2

Ilia d , see ‘ H om er’

Isidore o f Seville 2 9 , 32 n

Illaunloughan (Co. K e rry ) 2 3 0

islands (legendary)

Ima, island o f 16 1 Im a callam Choluim C h ille ocus in d Ó claig

x vxvi, xxi, 5 5 , 79n , 8 8 -9 , 1 1 4 , U 7 n

H y B ra z il 47 insula fortu n atae

91

In is S u b a i (Island o f Joy, ? insula

Index

284 deliciarum ) xviii, 4 5 , 5 5 , 9 2 - 3

I. o f Avalon 3 7n I. o f birds (Im m ram Snédgusa ocus M e ic R ia g la ) 1 8 9 - a l s o see

K a e r S id i 119

K ells 1 8 9 - 9 0 , 1 9 3 , 2 1 7 - 1 9 , 2 2 1 - 2 , 2 2 4 Book o f see ‘Book o f K ells’ T o w er Cross at 2 2 3

‘ Paradise o f B ird s’

K epler 13 5

I. o f fountain (M alo) 1 1 , 1 7 3

K e rry 10 9

I. o f grapes 18 5

Kilbarron 5n, 4 4

I. o f monstrous cat 4 , 1 1 , 2 0

K illarney 1 2 7

islands (legendary) (cont.) I. o f M ic e 3

K invarra 2 1 2 Labraid n 6 n , i i 7 n

I. o f Paul the H erm it 1 3 , 1 7 8 , 1 8 0 - 1

Lactantius 13 5

I. o f pygm y demons 3 , 8n

Láegaire mac Crim thann see \Echtra

I. o f S t A ilbe 5, i in , 1 2 , 1 9 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 8 , 1 8 0 - 1 ,18 3 ,2 3 1 ,2 3 3

L á egaire mac C rim th a in n * Lan dn dm abok 2 in , 2 2 9

I. o f Sheep 5 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 2 , 1 8 3 , 2 2 8 , 2 3 6 - 8

L an d o f Prom ise see ‘promised land’

I. o f Sm iths 8n, 1 7 , 17 6 , 1 8 4 ,2 2 8 ,

L an d o f W om en, see ‘ islands (m ythical)’

2 3 6 ,2 4 3 I. o f soporific well 18 5 I. o f T h ree Choirs 14, 1 8 0 - 1 , 2 3 1 , 2 3 7

L an n Rónáin F in n 2 1 9 L ’A nse aux M eadow s (N ew foundland) 229

I. supported by four columns 9n

late-com ing monks, see ‘supernum eraries’

Isles o f the Blessed 6 0 , 1 1 2 , 140

L a x d œ la S a g a 20n

L o fty island 3 - 4 , 8n

Lazarus 17 0

Ttr inna m B a n xiii, xvii, xxi, 5 4 - 5 , 58,

L eb o r na h U id re xxvi, 88

6 7 - 9 , 8 2, 88, i7 6 n , 2 0 7 , 2 2 5

L e if Eiriksson 2 2 9

Italy 38, 200

Leinster 9 4 , 1 9 4

Iter a d Paradisum 19 m

L e n t 17 8 L éo n 3 7

Jacobus o f Varazze, Golden Legen d 4on

Letiusa 6 1

Jasconius, see ‘ Iasconius’

Leviathan i7 9 n , 1 8 3 - 5

Jean de M eu n 60

L ew is, Isle o f 2 3 9

Jerom e 2 8 , 1 2 6

L e x P a tric ii 208

Vita P a u li

i9n

In D anielem 12 5

L ia d a in a n d C u irith ir 9 5 , 10 7

Liban 3n

Jocelyn o f Furness, Vita K entigerni 4 9 - 5 0

L i B a n , d. o f K in g Eo ch u 8 5 - 6

Johannes Scottus Eriugena 13 sn

L i B a n , wife o f Labraid Luathláin ar

Jonah 1 7 3 , i7 ç n , 1 8 3 - 4 Jonas, Vita Colum bani 9 4 , 95n , 98, 10 2 , i o 6 n , 1 0 8 ,2 3 0

Claideb 86 L ib e r de ortu P ila t i

39n

Lib ran 19

Jordan 5n

Lin disfarn e i4 9 n

Joseph o f Arim ithea 37n

L is na m Ban 69n

Josephus 246

Litan y o f the Pilgrim Saints (‘L itan y o f

Ju das Iscariot 8n, 1 2 - 1 3 , 17911, 1 8 3 - 5

O engus’ ) xiii, xxvii, 4n , 1 0 - 1 1

Ju liu s Caesar 2 1 7

Loch án 18 8

Juvenal 3 1

L o c h Febuil (L o u g h Foyle) xv, 7 3 - 6 , 8 8 - 9 , i 14

Index L o ch L a ig 1 i6 n

285

M a r e Concretum 2 3 5

L o ch L éin 4 3 , 1 2 9

M artianus Capella 1 3 5 0 , 1 3 8

L o ch L u ch ra 1 i6 n

M a rty ro lo g y o fT a lla g h t see ‘ Tallagh t’

L o c h na n E n 1 1 5 , 1 i7 n

M au n d y T h u rsd ay 5 , 1 5 8

L o ch nEchach (L o u gh N eagh ) 8 3, 8 5, 8 7,

88

M eath 2 1 9 - 2 1 , 2 2 3 M ed b 5 0 , 1 0 2

L o ch Riach (Loughrea, Co. G alw ay) 83

M elrose 2 0 1

L o ch R ib (L o u g h Ree on Shannon) 83

M ernóc, see ‘ S t Ern an ’

loinges xi

M e ru g u d cléirech Choluim C h ille see

Loinges mac n D u il n D erm ait

I5n

Lotharingia 4 5 - 6 , 4 9 , 1 2 0 , 1 5 8 , i7 s n

4Im m ram Snédgusa ocus M a te R ia g la

Lo uth 2 1 9 - 2 2 1

M id as 84

Lu creth [m occu Chiara], B a m ol M id e n d

M id ir 7 1 , i i 7 n

midlaige j g n

M il Espaine 138

L u ga id 100

M illd u u s 29n, 17 0

Lugh 6 5 ,1 8 7

M ongán m ac Fiachna 5 3 , 5 5 , 84, 8 9 -9 0 ,

L u n d y Island 1 i9 n L u xeu il 94

’

M esca U la d 138

1 14 M o n s Aitche, see ‘ Slieve A u g h ty ’ M o n s La p id is, see ‘ Slieve L e a g u e ’

M a c C u ill m occu G reccae xiv, 2 2 ,9 9 ; 14 4 , 2 0 2 - 3 , 2 1 °> 2 3 2

M o rgan la F a y 68 M o rvah (Cornw all) 65

M a c Riagla see ‘ Snédgus and M a c Riagla’

M oses 16 9 - 7 0

M acrobius 13 5n

M oun t Zio n 5n, 16 9

M áel B rigte mac Tornáin 2 2 2 - 3

M oville i6n

M aeldub 96

M u gd o rn a M ai gen 2 1 9

M áel D úin 18 , 2 1 , 29n , 3 7 n , 4 3 , 4 8 - 9 , 84,

M uirchertach M ac Lochlainn 2 1 8 - 2 0 , 2 2 3

18 8 , 2 0 4 - 9 , 2 1 3 M ael D ú in mac A ed o 1 2 8 - 3 1 , i5 9 n

M u irch ú , Vita P a tricii xiii, xxi, 99, 14 4 ,

149-50» 1 5 3 ,155» i 56n, 202,232

M áel na m B ó 2 1 2

M u ll, Isle o f 100

M aelruain, abbot 1 6 5 , 1 8 1

M u n n i, daughter o f T ad h g 2 5

M aestlin, M ichael i3 5 n

M u nster 2 1 , 4 3 , 2 3 2 , 2 3 6

M a g D a Chéo 1 1 5 , 1 i7 n

M urchertaigh m ac E re xii - also see A id e d

M a g Febuil 7 5 - 6 , 8 1 , 88

M u rchertaigh mac E re

M a g Fuindsidi 8 1 , 88

M úscraige 130

M ag M ár 71

M yrd d in poems 58

’

M a g M ell 5 4 - 5 , 8 6 , 1 1 4 - 1 6 , i i 7 n , 139 M aicn ia U a hU chtáin 190

N ad Froich 130

M ain e 2 1 9

N antcarfan n n

M áine m ac N éill 2 1 7 , 2 1 9 - 2 0

N auigatio S an cti Brendani Abbatis x i-x ix ,

M ain z 9n

xxiii, xxvii-xxviii, 1 0 , 1 8 , 2 7 - 3 1 , 3 8 -

M anannán m ac L ir 2 5 , 54 , 5 6 - 8 , 68,

4L 4 5 - 5 L 9 L

8 3 - 4 , 8 9 - 9 0 , 1 1 3 - 1 5 , I J 7n as R e x A q u a ru m 83 M anilius 13 4 M a n , Isle o f 9 9 , 1 1 7 , 14 4 , 20 3

109, i n - 1 2 , 1 2 0 - 3 2 ,

139,142, H3n, 157-61,167,170-86, 195,199» 202-3,205,210,213,226-7, 229-31,234,236-8,240,243-5 Coll. Line. O xon. 2 7

Index

286 historicity 1 0 9 - 1 2 as ‘ Im m ram B re n d a in ’ 9 - 1 0

Palm Su n d ay 17 0

L a u d 4 4 10

Pantheon see ‘ G o d frey o f V iterbo’

Laud 17 3 10

Papey (Iceland) 2 4 3

Laud 2 3 7 10

Paradise 1 2 , 6 1 , 2 0 2

L a u d 3 1 5 10

Paradise o f Birds 5 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 2 , 1 7 8 - 9 , 2 2 8 , 2 3 6 -8

L a u d 4 1 0 10 Paris, B N M S lat. 3 7 8 4 1 2 2 - 3

Paulinus o f N o la 18

Lism ore 10

Pelagius 28

N orm an French version 1 1 2

Pentecost 1 5 8 , 1 7 8

as 'u r-N a u ig a tio ’ xvi

Peredu r 69

Peter, the Apostle 19 4

N era i i 7 n , 18 7 N ew England 2 2 8

Phoenicians n o

Newfoundland 1 0 9 - 1 0 , 2 2 9

Ph ysio logus

N ew Hebrides 59n

Plant R h ys D d w fn 1 1 8

171

N ew Jerusalem xxiii, 1 8 1 - 2

Pliny 2 4 1

N iall Noigiallach 4 4

Plutarch 39n

Nicolaus de Bibera, Carm en satiricum 40,

Poenitentiale C um m eani

246 , 250

101

Pomponius M ela, D e Chorographia 68,

N inevah 1 7 3

69n

N oah 8 8 , 1 9 4

precot see ‘ supernumeraries’

Norsem en 10 9, 2 2 8

Preideu A n n w n 1 1 9

N o rth Am erica xxii, 1 0 9 - 1 1 2

Priscian 2 4 1

N orthum bria 96

promised land 169,176,188 as peregere proficsi 8, 166 as peregrinandi uoluntas 8,166 as terra repromissionis sanctorum xiv, xvi, xxi, xxiii, 2n, 4n, 5n, 6,16,27-8, 3on, 47, 51, 55, 9 I - 3, 1 1 1-12 ,

N o rw ay 2 4 1 N o v a Legenda A n g lie 1 , 4 , 5n, 7 - 8

N u ca 1 9 ,4 8 O ’ D onnell, M anus, B eth a C olaim C hilie i8 n , 56, 13 7 , i8 7n

12 3 -4 ,15 7 ,16 7 -8 ,17 0 ,17 7 ,

Oengus (D agda) 5 6 , 1 i7 n

1 7 9 - 8 0 , 1 8 2 - 3 , 18 s , 2 4 4

Oengus U a Domnalláin 190, 2 2 1

as terra secreta 2-5, 7 -8 ,16 5 ,16 7 ,17 9 as tir B re a sa il 47

ogham 1 8 7 - 8 , 2 2 8

as tir tairngire xiii-xiv, 2n, 4 7 , 5 5 , 9 1 ,

Oengus mac N ad Froich 130

O lafr H riti, 26

n 6 n , ii7 n

Olchobur mac Cinaeda 12 8

Provence 3 1

O lchobur mac Flainn 130

Pseudo-A bdias 38n

O ld English M a rty ro lo g y

1560

O ld English Riddles 1 5 1

pygm y demons 8 Pytheas o f M arseilles n o , 2 4 1 , 2 4 4

Orb, s. o f Febul 7 5 - 6 Origen 1 1 2

Quetzalcoatl 2 2 8

O rkneys u , 2 1 , i4 3 n , 1 6 1 , 2 3 2 , 2 3 9 Oséne, son o f Febul 7 5 - 6

Ráith M ó r M aige L in e 1 i6 n

Osraige 208

Rath M elsigi, Co. Carlow 1 4 6 - 7 , 1 5 4 - 5

Otloh, Vita B o n ifa cii i3 3 n

Ratw ili, bishop 2 in , 16 1

Index Reicne Fothaid Canainn 117 11 Revelation 1 8 2 - 4 , 2 I ^ Rhiannon 68

287 heroe colloquium ’ see Imacallam Choluim Chille ocus ind Oclaig'

S t Colum banus i6 n , 94, 95n , io i n , 10 2 ,

Rhipaen M ountains 2 4 2

io 6n , 10 8 , 1 2 5 , 1 4 3 , 1 6 4 , 1 7 6 , 1 9 4 ,

R iver B oyne 2 2

200

R iver Fergus 4n

S t Com gall i6 n , 9 4 , 95n

Roman de la Rose 60

S t Cum m éne A lbe 1 7

Roman du Renard 30

S t Cuthbert 1 4 9 , 1 5 2 - 3 , 1 5 5

Rom e 9 1 , 1 7 8

S t Éim ín e 19 1

Rónán F in d 2 1 7 , 2 1 9

S t E n d a 3 ,18 ,19

Rónáin m ac B erach 2 1 9

S t E re 2 - 3

Ruad mac R igdond 86

S t Ernan (M ernóc) 5, 19 , 4 4 - 5 , 9 2 ,

R u d o lfu sGlaber, i m Rugians 14 7 Saigir 208 S t A ilbe 5,

i n - 1 2 , 12 3 ,17 7 ,18 1,2 3 1 S t Fin barr (Barrfind, Barra) i6 n S t *F in lu g (Findlocha) 49n, 1 2 7 , 13 m

ii

, i6 n , 1 9 - 2 1 - 5 ^ also

‘ islands (im aginary)’ S t A ntony 2 2 3

S t Finnian o f Clonard i6 n , i7 n , 2 10 , 212 S t Finnian o f M ovilla i6 n

S t Bairre, see ‘ S t Fin n b arr’

S t F u rsa u n , 108, 2 0 1

S t Basil o f Caesarea 14 9 0

S t G all i6n

S t Benedict, rule o f 16 4, 1 6 7 , 1 7 7

S t G ildas 4n, 166

S t Bernard 12

S t G uthlac 9 6 , 1 5 0 , 1 5 2 - 3

S t Boniface 1 3 3 , 1 4 2

S t Ita 2 - 3 , 4n, 16 , I79 n

S t Brendan o f B irr xvi, i6 n , i7 n , 1 2 m ,

S t K entigern 50

18 8 S t Brendan (o f Clonfert) xi, xvi, 2 - 3 , i6n ,

S t K ild a 2 3 9 S t Lasrén (M olaisse o f D evenish) 18 8

9 2 - 3 , 1 0 9 - 1 1 2 , 10 9, i n - 1 2 , 1 2 3 - 5 ,

S t M aedóc o f Fern s 20, 2 1 2

127,130 -1,157-62,165-71,173-86,

S t M alo (M achutis) 1 1 , 1 9 - 2 0 , 1 5 7 , 1 6 0 - 1 ,

18 8 ,20 4,211 , 227-8,232-3,237, 244,246,250

Sain t-M alo 16 3

165-7,169-74

death 7 , i7 n

S t M artin 2 1 5 , 2 2 2

moccu A lti 1 2 7 - 3 1 1 1 59n

Sain t-M athieu (A bbey) 3 2 - 3 , 3 6 - 9 , 1 2 4 ,

ordination 6

2 4 6 -8

S t B rigit 4n, 4 0 - 1 , 2 50

S t M olaise i6n

S t Buti 20

S t M olaisse o f D evenish see ‘ S t L asrén ’

S t C h ad 1 5 5

S t Patrick 1 6 , 2 2 , 2 8 , 5 m , 5 5 - 6 , 8 2 - 3 ,1 0 4 ,

S t Ciarán i6 n , 130

1 0 5 ,1 0 7 - 8 ,1 4 9 - 5 0 , i56 n , 1 9 0 - 1 , 203,

S t Colum ba (Colum Cille) xiii, i6 n , 18 ,

2 15 , 2 2 2 -3

4 8 , 5 0 , 5 5 - 6 , 8 8 - 9 , 9 5 - 6 , 9 7 1 1 , IOO-I,

S t Patrick’ s Purgatory 20 2

1 1 4 , 1 1 7 1 1 ,1 3 6 ,1 4 4 -5 ,1 4 7 ,1 5 5 .1 5 6 1 1 ,

S t Paul de L éo n (Paul Aurelien) 3 7 - 8

i 6 i n , 1 6 4 , 1 7 9 , 1 8 9 - 9 2 , 2 0 0 -2 , 2 1 4 ,

S t Paul o f T h eb es (the H erm it, the F irst

2 1 5 , 2 1 7 , 220 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 4 , 2 2 5 Famila 2 1 5 , 2 1 7 - 8 , 220 , 2 2 2 - 3 , 2 3 0 , 2 32 , 2 4° ‘ S . Colum bae Hiensis cum M ongano

M onk) 1 3 , 1 9 , 1 8 1 , 18 4 , 2 2 3 S t Peter’s, Canterbury 96 S t Philip 37n S t R ioc 20

288

Index

S t Ruadán 5 3

S rú b Brain (Co. D on egal) 7 4 , 8 0 , 1 1 4

S t Sam son o f D o l 39n

Stow e M issal 19 4

S t Sam thann 18 1

Struel Wells 66

Salerno 38

Suibhne, abbot o f Iona 2 3 8

Saltair na Rann 1 3 5 - 9 , I49n

supernumeraries

Salvator, bishop o f A let 16 3

buffoon 1 7

Salzburg 13 3

carpenter 3

Sanas Chormaic 2 2 , 65

crossán 2 1 0 - 1 1

Sargasso Sea n i , 2 3 7

preco 3

Scéla Mucce M eic Dáthó xviii

smith(s) 3 , 1 7

Scotland 1 9 0 , 1 9 9 , 2 0 1 , 220 , 2 2 8 ,

wrights 1 7 Synodus Patricii 10 5

236 Seafarer \ \ ii, xxiii, 14 3 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 3 , 1 5 6

S y ria 29

Sechráan Clérech Choluim Chille 18 90 T ad h g 2 5 , 6 0 - 1 , 8 5

Secundinus 5 m Sena (island) 68 Serglige Con Culaind

Tailtiu 65

15,

57,

86, n6n,

H 7n, 138 Sermo Venerabili Pauli see ‘Translatio S. M atthaei’ Sertorius 9 1 Servius, commentary on the Aeneid 1 4 0 - 1 Seti 49n

Tain B o Cuailnge 4 9 -5 0 , 20 40 in Book o f Leinster 2 1 7 tale lists xii Tallaght (Co. D ublin) 1 6 5 , 1 8 1 - 2 Martyrology o f Tallaght Rule o f 1 7 7 Tangu idu s 38

Shetlands 2 1 , i4 3 n , 2 3 9

Taprobane 5n , i34 n

Sicily 3 1

T ara (Co. M eath) 5 3 , 6 1 , 1 8 8 , 2 2 2 - 3

S id Crúachan i i 7 n

Tartaru s 140

Sidonius Apollinaris 95n

T e c h D uinn i i 7 n

Sigeberht 108

T ele see ‘T h u le ’

Sigbert de G em bloux, Vita Machutis 16 3

Tenga Bithnua xxiii, 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 3 9 , 2 3 5

Sindbad n n , 2 9 - 3 0

Tennyson 2 7

Sinilis 9 4 , 95n

T ern ó c 4 5

Skye 2 3 9

Terra repromissionis sanctorum, see

Sletty, Co. Laois 1 5 5

‘ promised land’

Slieve A ughty (mons aitche) 2 , 7

Terra secreta, see ‘ promised land’

Slieve Croob, Co. D ow n 65

Tethba 2 1 9

Slieve Leagu e (Co. D onegal) ?mons

Tethra n 6 n

lapidis xvi, 5n, 4 4 , 9 2 , 1 1 1 , 2 3 6

Theod ore 96

Sluagadach 208

Thietm ar, abbot 16 3

smith, see ‘ supernum eraries’

T h u le 2 3 2 , 2 3 4 , 2 3 6 , 2 4 1 , 2 4 3 - 4

Snédgus and M a c Riagla 9, 2 1 5

T h etis 2 4 8

Sodom 88

Tigern áin U a Ruairc 2 2 0

Solinus i34 n

T i r Conaill 190

‘S o n g o f So n g s’ 2 0 7

Tírech án , Collectanea 8 2 - 3 , 1 4 4 , 1 5 0 - 1 ,

So n s o f Conall 19 Spain 3 1 , 3 5 , 3 7 , 1 2 4

153 Tir inna mBan see ‘islands (legendary)’

Index T ir inna mBeo 16 , 54 , 59

289

Virgin M a ry 34

tir tairngire see ‘ promised land’

Visio Pauli 12 6 , 2 0 1

Tochmare Becfliola 18 8

Visio Tnugdali 20 2

Tochmarc Emire 86

Vita A lbei xv, xx, 2 3 2 , 2 3 4 , 2 4 5

Tochmare Etaine 5 7 , 60, 7 1 - 2 , 84, i i 7 n

Vita Brendani xii, x ix -x x , xxvii, 1 2 8 , 1 5 7 ,

Togail Bruidne D a Choca 1 1 5

i5 8 n , 1 5 9 - 6 1 , 1 6 3 , 1 6 5 - 7 , 1 6 9 - 7 L

tokens from otherworld 6n, 1 1 5 , 1 8 7 - 9

1 7 4 , 1 7 9 , 199

Tomaidm Locha hEchach 88

*Vita Prima 1 2 m , 16 0 , 17 4

T o u rs 16 2

Betha Brénnain 2 1 1

T o ry

L ism ore 2n, 3n , 4n, 8 , 1 0 , 1 6 0 ,

167-9,171-3

H erm it o f 20 6 M onastery o f 206 Tralee 4 3

Brussels 6n o f C apgrave 1 , 2n, 4

Translatio S. M atthaei 39

Kilkenniensis xvii, 1 , 4 , 6n, 7n, 8 - 9 ,1 6 0

T u am 2 1 2

Rawlinson B 4 8 5 xix, 1, 2n , 3 , 4

Tuatha D é D anann 690, 138

Rawlinson B 50 5 (Insulensis) xix, 1,

Tucait Inderba na nDéssi 23n twelve travellers from Ireland 4 , 1 1 U eniusa U i Breasal 4 7 , d. o f A dam 6 1 , 85 U i Chonaill G abra 12 9 U i C o rra 19 , 2 1 , 26 , 2 0 9 - 1 2

2n, 3 , 4 , 7 - 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 2 8 , i5 8 n , 160 , 16 7 -8 Salmanticensis I xvii, 1 , 2 , 6n, 8 - 1 0 , 12 Salmanticensis II xvii, 1 , 2n , 3n , 4, 6n, 8 ,1 0 ,1 6 0 , 16 7 -8

U i Fhidgeinti 130

Vita Columbae see ‘A dom nán’

U i N éill

Vita Fintani (M unnu) i3 2 n

northern 2 1 6 - 8 , 2 2 0 - 1

Vita Fintani Cluana Ethnich 13 m

southern 2 1 7 , 2 1 9 , 2 2 2

Vita Fursei 2n , 1 0 7 - 8

U i R uairc 2 1 9

Vita Kannechi (Cainnech) i3 2 n

U isnech 54 , 1 1 5

Vita Machutis xx, 2 in , 29n , 30 , 1 5 7 ,

U laid 220 U lster 6 5, 88

1 6 0 - 1 , 16 5 , 1 6 9 - 7 2 , 1 7 4 *primagenia 1 6 1 - 4 , anonymae 20, 1 6 1 , 1 6 3 - 4 , 16 6 , 1 6 9 - 7 1 ,

Valle C ru cis (Wales) 12 Veniusa, see ‘ Veniusa’

173-4 anonyma brevior 1 6 1 - 2

Verba Scàthaige f r i Con Culaind jg n

anonyma longior 16 2 , 1 7 2

Vetus Latina (bible) 10 5

by Bili, see ‘ B ili’

Vikings 1 2 2 - 3 , 1 2 7 , 15 8 -9 » 17 8 , i 96 » 2 1 3

by Sigbert de G em bloux, see ‘ Sigbert

Vincent o f Beauvais, Speculum historiale 39n Vinland 2 2 9 , 2 4 4 V irgil,A en e id xvi, xix, 1 5 , 3 1 , 1 1 2 , 140 , 16 9 Virgil o f Salzbu rg 1 3 3 - 5 , l 3 7 n» 1 3 8 1 1 ,1 4 2

de G em blo u x’ by Baudri de Bourgueil (?) see ‘ Baudri de Bourgueil’ Vita M oling 2n Vita Rodani Lothri (Ruadán) I 3 i - 2 n

Vita Tripartita 2 2 ,2 5 Wales i in , 30 , i5 8 n Walahfrid Strabo xi Wanderer 14 3 Wenlock, M onk o f 2 0 1 West Munster Syn o d 1 2 9 - 3 1 whale see ‘ Iasconius’ whirlpool 3 , 8n, 16 8 W ihtberht 1 4 7 , 1 5 4 - 5 W illibrord 1 4 6 , 1 5 5 W urzburg G losses xiv Yellow Book o f Lecan xii, xxvi, 18911 Zachary, pope 1 3 3 - 4 , r3 7n ,

i 38n

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The jacket design, by SPACE, incorporates a detail from Konrad Gesner, Fisch Büch (Historia Animalium Liber 4), German 1594, folio 98r. Courtesy o f the Founders Library, University o f Wales, Lampeter.