was the patron saint of the island of Bute. There was St. Brendan's haven at Innerbondy. The church of Eassie in Forfarshire was dedicated to him, and several other churches in Scotland rejoiced in him as their protector. In the calendar of David Camerarius St. Brendan is titled "The Apostle of the Orkneys and of the Scottish Isles."1

The greater number of the incidents of the "Navigatio" evidently belong to the first voyage. The legend tells us that St. Brendan saw many islands on his course, and almost on every one where he disembarked he met with anchorites or religious communities originally from Ireland. Nor is this any wonder if he sailed along the Irish and the Hebrides Islands, a number of which were, already at his time, the homes of hundreds and thousands of Irish monks. He visited the "Sheep Island," the name of which is but a literal translation of the Faroe Islands. It seems, indeed, that the first Irish settlers had introduced sheep into this group, and were disposing of their wool, not only in Norway, but also on the Mediterranean shores."

2

If the pious seafarers were greatly rejoiced on the "Paradise of Birds" by the plumed singers of God's glory, we might readily presume that the Shetland Isles were then, as later, the dwelling-place of millions of sea-fowl, which, like all other creatures of the Almighty, praise Him in their own peculiar fashion.

The "Hell" from which molten slags of iron were cast at them singularly reminds us of Iceland's Hekla volcano; and the hard "crystal column" around which

1 Maii 16. die: Sanctus Brendanus, abbas, apostolus Orcadum et Scoticarum Insularum.

2 Far or faer, in the Norse tongue, means sheep, and ey, island; hence

"Fareyr," or in modern orthography "Faroe," signifies "Sheep Islands."

Cf. Peschel, Erdkunde, S. 81; Moosmüller, S. 41; Gravier, p. 17.

they sailed is justly considered as an iceberg of the northern seas.

Fewer are the particulars of the second voyage.

When the large wooden vessel was fitted out, St. Brendan and his companions, to the number of sixty, set sail on a twenty-second day of March, probably about the year 535. Their course lay to the Southwest. They had a fair wind and, therefore, no labor, only to keep the sails properly set; but after twelve days the wind fell to a dead calm, and they had to labor at the oars until their strength was nearly exhausted. The saintly captain relieved them by ordering the oars taken in and the sails unfurled, confiding in Divine Providence for the result.

On such data it would be difficult to locate St. Brendan's vessel at this stage of her voyage, although one might feel inclined to suppose that she may have reached the neighborhood of the Azore Islands.

"Sometimes," the legend continues, "a wind sprung up, but they knew not from what point it blew, nor in what direction they were sailing." After forty days they descried an island, and from this one they sailed, under extraordinary circumstances, to other islands, and to others again. After drifting about for a long time they landed once more on a coast where lived a man who had befriended them before. This time "he said to St. Brendan, 'Embark now in your boat, and fill all the water-skins from the fountain. I will be the companion and conductor of your journey henceforth, for without my guidance you could not find the land you seek,-the Land of Promise of the Saints.' They took provisions for forty days, and sailed to the West for that space of time, during which their guide went on before them. At the end of forty days, towards evening, they were enveloped by a cloud so

dark that they could scarcely see one another; but after an hour had elapsed a great light shone around them, and their boat stood by the shore."

We may here make the simple remark that, no matter where their ship had drifted, unless it should have been far away to the East, the contrary of which is rather intimated, they necessarily made the American continent after their last partial voyage of forty days due west.

"When they had reached the shore they disembarked, and saw a land extensive and thickly set with trees laden with fruits, as in the autumn season; and for forty days they viewed the land in various directions, but they could not find the limits thereof. One day, however, they came to a large river flowing towards the middle of the land," or in a westerly direction, "which they could not by any means cross

over."

From these remarks it is evident that they were exploring, not some western isle, but a western continent, which can be none other than our own America. And since they were guided directly towards our shores by a faithful friend of theirs, it would seem that Mernoc, Barinthus's son, was not the only Irishman at the time acquainted with the route across the Atlantic Ocean.

Others have speculated upon the "river flowing towards the middle of the land," and have concluded that St. Brendan went as far as the Ohio River. Others have suggested the obvious opinion that the saint, at his return, has left in this country some of his sailors, who were not clerics, besides some of his religious brethren, to whom he gave charge to evangelize the natives; and that the zealous efforts of these apostles were soon doubled and multiplied by the

arrival of more Irish settlers and missionaries, who in the course of time extended their labors and peaceful conquests even into Mexico, Central America, and farther still.

We, more reserved, will only state that, if the voyage of St. Brendan is not a myth from beginning to end, it is probable, at least, that the saint has crossed the Atlantic Ocean and set foot on the American continent.

That, however, the voyage is no myth is sufficiently established by various collateral testimonies. Not only the legend relates the facts, but every version of St. Brendan's Life or History, which is a quite different composition, gives a synopsis of the incidents of the voyages. Particulars of the "Navigatio" are found also in other records, such as that of the whale on whose back the saint is said to have celebrated Easter in midocean, which is copied in the Life of St. Machutus or Malo;1 and of the prayer made by St. Brendan for the preservation of his companions in the midst of a fearful storm; which, considerably enlarged, is found in an ancient manuscript in the monastery of St. Gall, as well as in the former Sessorian Library of Rome, where the following rubric is affixed: "St. Brendan, the monk, when seeking the Land of Promise for seven successive years, made this prayer from the Word of God, through St. Michael the Archangel, while he sailed over the Seven Seas." 2 An ancient Irish poem states that St. Brendan sailed with a fleet of three vessels, each manned by thirty mariners.3 St. Engus Cele-Dé makes the following invocation in his Book of Litanies, composed before the year 787: "I invoke unto my aid

1 Acta SS. Bolland., Maii t. iii., Antverpiæ. De St. Brendano, cap. ii. ¶ 11, p. 602.

2 Card. Moran, Acta Sti. Brendani, ap. O'Donoghue, p. 98.

3 Egerton MS. in British Museum, ap. O'Donoghue, pp. 26, 84.

the sixty holy men who accompanied St. Brendan in his quest of the Land of Promise." 1

Should we follow Vincent of Beauvais, who rejected the whole legend, we would have to erase several paragraphs from the Lives of a dozen saints, which plainly refer to St. Brendan's voyage. Thus is it related in the Life of St. Brigid that, at his return, St. Brendan asked the holy nun why the monsters of the ocean had become harmless at her invocation. In the Life of St. Abban, the Leinster saint, in the Codex Salmanticensis, we read that he made special friendship of brotherhood with St. Brendan, and that, "soon after the latter's seven years' pilgrimage on the ocean, he paid him a visit, on the occasion of which the holy voyager related at large to his visitor all the wonderful things he had seen on the waters." St. Molua, in the Life of St. Flannan, appoints the latter as his successor, because "among the many marvellous things the holy Father Brendan had seen and related during his voyage to the islands of the ocean was his prophecy of this succession." Other references to the voyages of St. Brendan are made in the Histories of St. Fintan Munnu, of St. Malo, and St. Ita. The most conclusive argument, however, in favor of the reality of St. Brendan's extraordinary "pilgrimages" consists in the fact that there was in the early Irish Church a special festival in honor and commemoration of the "setting sail of St. Brendan's crew." This feast is fixed, in the Martyrology of Tallaght, for the 22d day of March, and must have been religiously observed long before the year 787, in which the Martyrology was compiled by St. Engus and St. Moelruin, at Tallaght, near Dublin.

166 Sexaginta qui comitati sunt Stum. Brendanum in exquirenda terra promissionis invoco in aux

ilium meum," ap. O'Donoghue, p. 84.

2 O'Donoghue, pp. 85, 247.