by Tim Severin
As the mist broke up before the morning sun, the Aran Islands themselves appeared. Brendan came sailing in past their northwest tip, and we saw first the lighthouse, then the high line of the land itself with its green patchwork of fields sloping down to limestone screes that dipped into the sea. George was steering to take best advantage of the wind, and we hugged the coast as closely as we dared. We could see only one or two farmhouses, standing by themselves, and could just distinguish the figure of a man going to work in a field. What would he think, I wondered, if he looked out to sea and saw a sight which harked back a thousand years—an ocean-going curragh coming in from the Atlantic, a small black curve against the glittering surface of the ocean, and the distinctive black squares of medieval sails? As we drew in behind the island, we glimpsed a small black speck bobbing about in the waves. At first sight it looked like a channel marker buoy. “I think that’s a curragh,” I called to George, and he altered course to investigate. A few minutes later we could pick out the outlines of two men in the boat. They were hauling lobster pots, but the moment they noticed us, they left their work. They bent to their sculls, and sent their curragh racing toward us. Their teamwork was superb. The two oarsmen rowed in perfect unison. If one man took a half stroke, so did the other without even watching his companion’s sculls. Their curragh was not like the Dingle boats, but of the typical Aran type with the stern cut off square. Yet the difference did not seem to affect the sea handling. The two fishermen brought their curragh to within five yards, neatly spun her, and kept pace with Brendan, gazing at us. One of them had a fiery red bush of curly hair and a splendid beard to match. “Are you the crowd for America?” he called out. He had a strong accent, for Irish is the language of the Aran Islands. “Welcome to the islands.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Would you like some crab?”
“Yes, please!”
A hail of crabs flew in an arc from the curragh to Brendan, and Rolf scrambled about the boat trying to seize them before they scuttled into the bilges.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” I called. “Where’s the best place to land?”
“Go into the bay. You’ll be safe enough there. Just follow the line of our lobster pots, and turn in when you no longer see the lighthouse behind you. But don’t turn before then, or you’ll be on the bank.” He meant the Brocklinbeg Bank, a hump of sand and rock lurking just below the surface. “Sea breaks heavily,” said my navigation notes, and as we cautiously dropped sail and rowed into the bay we saw why: for five minutes the sea was calm, and then—by some combination of wind and swell—the water gathered in a heap over the bank and burst upward in a leaping spout. It was no place for Brendan.
Brendan dropped anchor in a wide bay where there was a short pier for the curraghs to bring their lobster catch. We had landed on the largest of the three main Aran Islands, Inishmore. From the anchorage the ground sloped up, past a small sandy beach at the head of the bay, across a flat shelf of land, and then more steeply it rose to the crest of the hill. There the island ended abruptly, with steep cliffs falling sheer into deep water. It was as if the island had been titled on one edge for our inspection, and from sea level we could admire the pattern of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny fields whose loose stone walls divided up the land like a honeycomb. There are said to be more than 1,850 miles of wall on the islands, and the honeycomb effect is all the more striking because the grey walls are not broken by gates. Instead the farmers pull down a section of the wall when they want to drive in cattle, and then build up the stones behind the animals.
That afternoon, after an enormous lunch of crab boiled in a bucket of sea water, we all went ashore and walked up toward the far crest. The sky had cleared, and in the tiny corrals of the fields the turf was sprinkled with thousands upon thousands of spring flowers—buttercups, violets, gentians, and others. We found a narrow track, a “boreen” between the walls, followed it past a cattle pond where a stream trickled into a collecting trough, and finally came out onto open land where the ground sloped steeply up toward the far ridge. Across the hillside the bones of the island lay exposed, enormous slabs of limestone that rain and wind had pockmarked and slashed with scars along the fault lines. These too were filled with wildflowers or little pools of rainwater. Here the stone walls of the small fields were more tumbled down, until suddenly the eye picked out a pattern, and we saw that we were walking through the concentric rings of stone ramparts that encircled the hilltop.
The boreen had turned into an ancient roadway which led straight to the last and most important rampart sitting upon the hill crest like a drum. In its side blazed the bright eye of a single entrance, the light pouring through it. This was the gateway to the fort of Dun Aengus, one of the most spectacular sites of prehistoric Europe. Climbing through the eye of the gate, we came out onto the cleared space inside the rampart, and where the back wall should have been was only empty sky, for we had come to the very lip of the cliff at the far edge of the island. Edging cautiously forward, we poked out our heads over the abyss and looked straight down the cliffs, past the backs of the seabirds wheeling far below us; and to the surface of the ocean two hundred feet below, broken by huge chunks of rocks that had toppled from the cliff edge.
The great fort of Dun Aengus is one of several massive stone fortresses on the Aran Islands, built in the first centuries A.D. by Irish clans. They were constructed before Saint Enda settled his community of monks in modest stone cells down by the seashore, and began the monastic school that was to become one of the most famous and important in all Ireland. In a sense, the massive forts looming over the Christian cells represented another strand to Saint Brendan’s quest for the western land, for they reached far back into a Celtic past. Among the old Celtic beliefs had been the ancient idea of a land that lay toward the sunset peopled by departed souls and strange creatures. This theme of the Other World occurred in the early poetry of the pagan Irish, whose bards described the journeys of famous heroes to this destination and their experiences there. Sometimes the hero traveled over the water in a magic chariot; or he dived beneath the waves and found a submarine world of beautiful maidens who wooed him; or occasionally he rode up into the sky to find this strange realm. Usually the Other World was described as a place that was mystical yet attainable. It lay within the grasp of specially fortunate mortals, and this theme passed easily enough to the Christians when Christianity was introduced to Ireland, because many of the Christian priests lived and worked alongside the older order of seers and sages, sometimes in conflict with them but also sharing knowledge with them. As a result the old idea of the Other World became entwined with the new religion, only given Christian garb. The Christians thought of the Other World as peopled with saints and holy men. It became a land promised by God to men of great virtue. Still attainable, it was a reward on earth, a target for men to explore. Even more important, the journey itself became an act of faith, so that the dangers of the venture only enhanced its appeal. In short, Christian voyages to seek a far-off land gained their vital motive.
The Christian monks were well equipped to fit this notion of the distant land into a more accurate frame of geography. Irish monks gathered an incredible store of scholarship from all over western Europe. During the troubled fifth and sixth centuries many scholars came to Ireland from the upheavals of the Continent, bringing with them manuscripts and knowledge of the classical authors. Ireland became the grand repository for this intellectual treasure, and the Irish monks copied and codified this information. They wrote commentaries on it, and handed the knowledge on from one generation to the next. They read Virgil and Solinus and, in translation or original, had access to Greek authors. In their geographical concepts the monks understood that the world was round—“like a well-formed apple” was how it was sometimes put. They understood Ptolemy’s concept of geography, and could read how the Romans had sent a fleet around Scotland and found islands lying to the north. The flowering of early Christian culture in Ire
land, about which so much has been written, was a process that lasted almost five hundred years. Irish monks were acknowledged to be the best-educated and best-informed men in all of western Europe; and in due course they set out to carry their knowledge back into the mainland. They founded schools, advised kings and even emperors (Charlemagne was a great admirer of Irish learning) and established monasteries from Lombardy to Austria. They and their pupils were regarded as Europe’s wandering intelligentsia. As a Frankish observer put it, “Almost all Ireland, despising the sea, is migrating to our shores with a flock of philosophers.”
This vitality also produced Saint Brendan’s Navigatio. Here was a story from the very core of Irish tradition, Christian in inspiration and composition, but drawing also upon the old Celtic heritage. Like the heroes of old, Saint Brendan was the hero who set out to find the Promised Land, and experienced many adventures on the way. Only now the saint traveled by a different route, not in a wave-riding chariot but in a prosaic vessel of skins stretched on wood. And now, instead of the imaginary islands of the Celtic heroes, the saint’s itinerary could be based on the real geographical knowledge of the monks. Until recently the earliest surviving version of the story was thought to have been written down no earlier than the tenth century, four hundred years after Saint Brendan’s death. But new investigations have suggested a date closer to the year 800, and naturally the date of the story’s composition could go back even earlier.
I had met the scholar who, as much as anyone, had traced Brendan’s Navigatio back deep into the golden age of Irish monastic achievement. Professor Jim Carney of the School of Celtic Studies was a brilliant light in the field of early Irish literature. He made sensitive translations of Irish and Latin poems, and his knowledge of the Irish literary background was outstanding. “Of course we don’t yet know exactly when Brendan’s Navigatio was first composed,” he told me when we had met in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. “But I’ve actually come across a reference in a seventh-century Irish poem to the fact that Saint Brendan was known as a composer of poems. So maybe the Navigatio is very old.”
“What do you think about the theory that the Navigatio isn’t a Christian work at all, but merely a Christian gloss on an old and imaginary Celtic tale?”
“You mean that it’s one of the Celtic voyage-tales, an imram. Well, I think it’s been shown that most of the surviving imrama are either contemporary with Brendan’s Navigatio or even later. In fact, instead of the Navigatio being a copy of them, I think in one case at least the imram has borrowed from the Navigatio. By the way, there’s something about a Christian boat voyage in my book of early Irish poems I’ve translated. It’s a poem dedicated to Saint Columbanus.” He riffled through the pages until he found what he wanted, and began reading:
See, cut in woods, through flood of twin-horned Rhine,
Passes the keel, and greased, slips over seas—“Heave, men!”
And let resounding echo sound our “Heave.”
With a snap he closed the book and glanced at me mischievously.
“Sounds as if your voyage will be hard work. But if there’s any help on the literary side I can give you, let me know. And incidentally, why don’t you tell Mairin O’Dalaigh about your plans? She may be able to help you on the linguistic side. She’s an expert on the early Irish language.”
“Where can I get in touch with her?”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult. Try Aras an Uachtararn in Phoenix Park, the residence of the President of Ireland. She’s his wife.”
So I went up to the Presidential Lodge, set in the elegance of Phoenix Park, and was met on the steps by a jovial equerry. “Are you the madman who wants to sail round the world in a leather boat?” he hailed me. “Just as far as America will do nicely,” I murmured. “Oh well, step this way. Mrs. O’Dalaigh has asked if you’d like to join her for tea.”
Mairin O’Dalaigh was a most composed and elegant hostess, and we talked about the Brendan project until there was a knock at the door and the President himself came darting in. At once the tranquillity collapsed. President O’Dalaigh was, it turned out, a great supporter of the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area of the west, and most enthusiastic for the Brendan project. He dashed to his bookshelves. “Have you seen this? Or this one?” he asked, pulling down one volume after another in rapid succession. “Ah! And here’s another.” Soon the floor, sofa, and chairs were covered with opened books as he scurried from one to the next. “And wait a minute, there’s something I want to show you.” He whisked me off to another wing of the building where the walls were hung with his collection of paintings. “Here we are.” We stopped in front of a small painting. It was a picture of a curragh nestling in the cleft of some rocks. “Found that years ago,” said the President. “I’ve always liked it very much indeed. Where do you think it was done—in Donegal, or in the Aran Islands perhaps?”
The memory of President O’Dalaigh’s bubbling enthusiasm came back to me during Brendan’s stay in the Aran Islands. Everyone on Inishmore seemed equally determined to help us. It was as if the Brendan Voyage had struck a chord in the imaginations of the Irish-speaking peoples of the Gaeltacht, and they associated themselves with the project. Brendan was their boat. The curragh men came back twice more to present us with more crabs and lobster. The local wives took it in turns to bake us fresh scones, and when I made a phone call, the postmistress interrupted in order to wish us well in the venture.
A bush telegraph was also signaling Brendan’s passage along the Irish-speaking coast. Half an hour after we made landfall in Inishmore, there was scarcely an Aran islander who did not know we were there, and later I discovered that schoolchildren had been stationed on headlands all along the coast to look out for Brendan and report her progress. Nor was the help limited to the island. A newspaper paragraph mentioned that our radio was not yet installed, and next day a volunteer flew out to Inishmore and busily soldered connections and tested circuits. When I called up to test the radio, the operator at Valentia coast station spent hours patiently listening in to our signals. “What’s your call sign?” he asked over the air. “We haven’t got one,” I replied. “In fact we never even had time to apply for a license.”
“Never mind then. We’ll call you up as Yacht Brendan. That should do.”
“Let’s make it Curragh Brendan,” I responded.
He laughed. “Yes, there won’t be any other curraghs with a radio link. Report in daily if you can. Good luck.”
Two days of bad weather held us in the Aran Islands, and then the wind eased enough to let Brendan slip out from Inishmore, and we headed across the sound for the mainland coast of County Mayo. I didn’t want to risk the open sea, for the wind was blowing too strongly and we didn’t know how Brendan would behave. We hoisted both our flax sails, and soon discovered that it was too much. The mainmast again bent alarmingly, and Brendan leaned over so far that I thought we would scoop water aboard. George called out to Rolf to ease away the mainsail, and he lowered the mainyard about three feet. The effect was immediate. Brendan came level; the mast straightened; and we ploughed briskly across the channel toward a line of small islands that extended from the shore. At the right moment the sails came tumbling down; Brendan rounded the outer reef, and we rowed our way into shelter and dropped anchor.
Brendan had picked our spot for us. Not half a mile away lay a small uninhabited island, which in the sixth century had been the home of Saint MacDara, “son of the fox.” We could not have wished for a more perfect example of the chosen retreat of an early Christian monk. Its feeling of isolation was very strong. There was not a house nor a person in sight, and the sea teamed with wild life. Where we anchored, a flock of terns was busily quarreling and diving for fish around the boat, quite unconcerned by our arrival. A pair of curious seals surfaced ten yards away and watched us calmly for two or three minutes before they too resumed fishing, and a patient row of cormorants sat on a half-submerged rock keeping an eye on the efforts of three Great N
orthern divers. In the air above Saint MacDara’s Island hovered a mass of gulls, calling and wheeling; and when we landed on the island we found the reason: the place was a thriving gull colony. We picked our way carefully across the boulder-strewn turf to avoid stepping on the gulls’ nests, usually containing three brown and black speckled eggs or an ungainly chick crouching in terror while its parents shrieked and mewed their agitation above us. The island had kept its feeling of lonely serenity. We walked the circuit around the stations of the pilgrimage made by faithful devotees who came out in boats on the Saint’s day to make a circuit of the island and to pray in the simple grey stone chapel, one of the oldest in Ireland, with its curiously steep roof and one narrow window slit looking out toward the mainland. Near the strand, half sunk in the turf, stood a low stone cross, just like the crosses on Brendan’s sails, but no more than two feet high, and on the surface of the cross we could trace its pattern of intricate carving, still visible after a thousand years of wind and rain. As the sunlight faded, the crew of Brendan gathered on the rocks above our landing place and quietly watched the idyllic scene. The wind had died away completely; the place was calm and still. Even the gulls had ceased their calling. Silently, George pointed to the rocks beneath our feet. There, undisturbed, was the rarely seen, sleek form of a large otter, quietly fishing along the foreshore.