The Brendan Voyage

by Tim Severin

  Among the first to scramble aboard as we tied alongside the fishing boats was a deputy from the community. Would we attend a little celebration? Of course we would. All next day the fishermen’s wives cleaned and prepared the food that their menfolk brought in from the sea and donated—piles of lobsters, heaps of crabs’ legs, and the local delicacy of cod tongues fried in batter.

  That evening I found myself gazing down the long table piled with food and reflecting to myself how lucky we on Brendan had been with all the people we had met on our long path to the New World. With their encouragement we had achieved what we had set out to do, and we had very many happy memories of our landfalls around the North Atlantic.

  Then the band, three men who themselves worked by day as fishermen, began to play the local songs of the Newfoundland coast, many of their tunes based on traditional Irish airs that were brought to Newfoundland by the Irish immigrants who came there in the last century. The dancing began. Listening to the swirl of the music and watching the spontaneous gaiety of the dancers, I thought of what lay ahead for us. George would be returning home to England with his wife Judith and looking to start a new job very different from his role as Brendan’s sailing master. Trondur had his ticket back to the Faroes, where he would be working up the sketches that he had made aboard and taking up his sculpture once more; and Arthur, as easy-going as ever, planned to tour the United States and Canada. I had the reports and results of the entire project to correlate and develop back at my desk and in the libraries where the preliminary work had been done so very many months ago.

  It seemed a good time to ask myself the question that I knew we would be asked many times in the future: Would we go on the Brendan Voyage again, knowing the discomfort and difficulties that faced us? For my own part I was sure of my answer: If the venture would help our understanding, if it would increase our appreciation of the past, and if there was the same enthusiasm and help—and good luck—available from the beginnings of the project to its journey’s end, the answer was—yes.

  APPENDIX I

  THE NAVIGATIO

  So many manuscripts of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis have survived that it took an American scholar nearly thirty years to track them down—and even then he admitted that he had not found them all. Nevertheless a great debt is owed to this scholar, Carl Selmer, for his painstaking labors in compiling a much-needed comprehensive edition of the Navigatio in its Latin version. He used eighteen of about 120 Navigatio manuscripts to produce his edition, which was printed by the University of Notre Dame Press as Number IV in their Publications in Medieval Studies (1959).

  Until Selmer’s work there was no good composite edition generally available to scholars of the Navigatio’s Latin test. Since then, both Penguin Books in Lives of the Saints (1965) and Professor John J. O’Meara of University College Dublin, with his The Voyage of Saint Brendan (1976), have produced English translations. Their translations, particularly the latter, catch the flavor of the original narrative with all its important religious, scholarly, and maritime overtones. The following synopsis is only intended as a paraphrase. It is the bare bones of the Navigatio, rendered down into the factual narrative of a remarkable venture by sea:

  THE TEXT

  Chapter 1. Saint Brendan was living at Clonfert as the head of a community of 3,000 monks when he was visited by a monk named Barrind. Barrind told Brendan how he had visited Saint Mernoc, a former disciple who had gone to live as an anchorite and was now the abbot of a monastery on an offshore island. Saint Mernoc had invited Barrind to go with him by boat to the Promised Land of the Saints. Setting out westward, they passed through a thick fog and reached a wide land, rich in fruit and flowers. For fifteen days they walked around the land, until they reached a river flowing from east to west. There they were met by a man who told them that they should go no farther, but return home. He told them that the island had been there since the beginning of the world, and that they had actually been ashore for a year, though they had not needed food or drink. This man accompanied the travelers back to their boat and they re-embarked. Then he vanished, and the travelers sailed home through the fog back to Saint Mernoc’s monastery. There the monks told Barrind that Saint Mernoc often sailed away to the same Promised Land and stayed away a long time.

  Chapter 2. After Barrind had left him to return to his own cell, Brendan picked fourteen monks from his own community, and told them that he dearly wanted to visit this Promised Land of the Saints. Promptly they volunteered to accompany him.

  Chapter 3. After fasting, the Saint and his companions paid a three-day visit to the island of Saint Enda (Inishmore, Aran Islands) for his blessing.

  Chapter 4. Then Brendan and his monks pitched tent on a narrow creek under a mountain called Brendan’s Seat. There they built a wood-framed boat, covered in oak-bark-tanned oxhides, and smeared the joints of the hides with fat to seal them. In the boat they put a mast and sail, steering gear, supplies for forty days, spare hides and fat for dressing leather.

  Chapter 5. Just as they were about to set sail, three monks came down to the beach, and begged to be taken aboard. Brendan agreed, but he warned that two of them would meet a hideous fate, and the third also would not return from the voyage.

  Chapter 6. Sailing westward for fifteen days, they lost their bearings after a calm and were blown to a tall rocky island, with streams falling down the cliffs. With difficulty they found a tiny harbor like a cleft. Here they landed and were met by a stray dog who led them to a settlement, where they entered a hall and found food set out for them, which they ate. For three days they stayed, seeing no one but always finding food ready set out.

  Chapter 7. Toward the end of their visit, one of the latecoming monks tried to steal a silver bridle he had found, but Brendan rebuked him. At that, a small devil jumped out of the monk’s bosom, and the man died.

  Chapter 8. Just as they were re-embarking in their boat, a young man came up with a basket of bread and jar of water which he gave them for their voyage, which he warned would be a long one.

  Chapter 9. Their next landfall was an island with many large streams, full of fish. It was called the Island of Sheep, because flocks of splendid white sheep ran wild all year round. Here the travelers stayed from Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday. An islander brought them food, and prophesied they would visit a nearby island for Easter Day and then land on a third island not far to the west called the Paradise of Birds, where they would remain until the eighth day of Pentecost.

  Chapter 10. This nearest island was stony and without grass. Beaching their boat on it, the monks hauled it up with ropes and lit a fire to cook some of the meat from the Island of Sheep. But as the pot began to boil, the island started to shake and move, and the monks scrambled back into their boat in panic. They watched the “island” move off to sea, the fire still burning on it, and Brendan told them that the “island” was the biggest fish in the ocean, called Jasconius.

  Chapter 11. Now the monks sailed to the Paradise of Birds, lying across a narrow channel to the west of the Island of Sheep. They hauled their boat for almost a mile up a narrow stream to its source, where they found a vast tree covered with a multitude of white birds. One bird was very tame and flew down to land on the boat and spoke to Saint Brendan to explain that the birds were men’s spirits, and that Saint Brendan would search seven years before he reached the Promised Land. At vespers and other times of prayer the birds sang hymns and chanted verses. The travelers spent some time on the Paradise of Birds, eating supplies brought over by the Procurator or “Steward,” the same man who had supplied them on the Island of Sheep. He also brought them fresh water, warning them not to drink direct from the island spring, water from which would send them to sleep.

  Chapter 12. Continuing on their voyage for three months with only sea and sky around them, the travelers were so exhausted when they next sighted land that they could scarcely row there against the unfavorable wind. But they managed to reach a small landing place and fill t
heir water-vessels at two wells, one clear and one muddy. Here they were met by a grave and white-haired elder who led them to a monastery two hundred yards from the landing place. Eleven silent monks greeted them at the entrance with reliquaries, crosses, and hymns. They embraced the travelers, and the abbot of the monastery washed their feet. Then they sat down to a meal of sweet roots and white bread, sitting down with the monks. The abbot now broke his rule of silence to explain to Brendan that the loaves were brought miraculously to their larder and that the lights in their chapel never burned away. No cooked food was eaten at the monastery and the monks, of whom there were twenty-four in all, never seemed to grow any older.

  After the meal Brendan was shown their church with its circle of twenty-four seats and church vessels of square-cut crystal. The church itself was also square. After compline, the visiting monks were taken away and given accommodation in the cells of the monks, but the abbot and Brendan stayed behind to witness the miraculous lighting of the lamps. As they waited, the abbot explained that they had been on the island eighty years, hearing no human voice, and communicating only by gestures, and no one had ever been sick or afflicted by worldly spirits. Abruptly a fiery arrow sped in through a window, touched and lit the lamps, and then suddenly sped out again.

  Chapter 13. Brendan and his monks spent Christmas with the Community of Saint Ailbe, and on the eighth day after Epiphany set out again by sea, rowing and sailing until Lent. Their food and drink ran out and they were very distressed, but three days later they came upon another island. On it they found a clear well of water, surrounded by plants and roots, and fish swimming along the river bed toward the sea. They gathered the plants and roots to eat, but the well water caused some of them to fall into a deep sleep, some for three days, others for two days, some for a day. Saint Brendan prayed for them and, when they recovered, told them they must quit the island. Loading only a little water and taking fish from the river, they set out again in their boat and sailed north.

  Chapter 14. Three days later the wind dropped and the sea was so smooth it seemed to be coagulated. Brendan ordered his crew to ship their oars and let God direct the boat. For twenty days they drifted aimlessly until a westerly wind sped them eastward.

  Chapter 15. The wind brought them back to the Island of Sheep where, at the same landing place as the previous year, the Steward greeted them joyfully, pitched a tent, made ready a bath, and provided them with fresh clothes. Then after they had celebrated Holy Saturday and eaten supper, he told them to go again to the whale to celebrate Resurrection Sunday and afterward to proceed to the Paradise of Birds. He himself would ferry across bread and drink while they stayed there.

  This they did—landing on the whale, then sailing on to the Paradise of Birds and listening to the birds. The Steward told Brendan that for seven years he would repeat the cycle, spending Maundy Thursday on the Island of Sheep, Easter on the whale; from Easter to Pentecost on the Paradise of Birds; and Christmas with the Community of Saint Ailbe.

  So it turned out, and the Steward brought them their food until it was time to set out again in the curragh with provisions from the Island of Sheep.

  Chapter 16. After sailing in the ocean for forty days, they saw a beast of huge size following the boat. He spouted foam from his nostrils and came ploughing toward them at great speed as if to devour them. The monks were very frightened and called upon the Lord, but Brendan comforted them. Then the huge beast came even closer, pushing great waves before him right up to the boat, and the monks were even more terrified. At that moment another mighty beast appeared from the opposite direction, the west. Passing near the boat, he attacked the first monster, breathing fire. Before the monks’ eyes, he cut the first great beast into three pieces, then swam back the way he had come.

  Another day, the travelers saw a very large wooded island. Landing on it, they came across the tail portion of the dead sea beast. Brendan told them they would be able to eat it. Setting up a tent, they cut off as much flesh as they could carry, and in the south part of the island found a clear well and many plants and roots which they gathered. In the night, unseen beasts stripped the carcass, leaving nothing but bones next morning.

  Storms, strong winds, hail, and rain kept the monks on the island for three months. One day a dead fish was washed ashore and the monks ate part of it, and Saint Brendan told them to preserve the rest in salt, for the weather would improve, and the swell and waves would diminish, and allow them to leave.

  Loading the boat with water and food and collecting supplies of plants and roots, the monks launched and, raising sail, headed north.

  Chapter 17. One day they came to an extraordinary flat island, barely above sea level. It had no trees, but was covered with purple-and-white fruit. Around the island moved three choirs, one of boys in white, one of youths in blue, and one of elders in purple. As they moved, they sang hymns. Brendan’s curragh landed at ten in the morning, and at midday and 3:00 P.M. the choirs chanted appropriate psalms, as well as for vespers. When they finished, a bright cloud rolled over the island and hid the singers from view. Next morning dawned cloudless, and the choirs sang again and celebrated communion, after which two members of the choir of youths brought a basket of purple-and-white fruit to the boat. They also asked the second of the latecoming monks to join them. Brendan gave his permission, and this man stayed behind with the choir of youths when the curragh set to sea again. At three o’clock the travelers ate one of the purple-and-white fruit which had been given them. The fruit were all the same, the size of a large ball and full of juice. Saint Brendan squeezed a pound of juice from one fruit, which he divided between his men. Each fruit fed a man for twelve days and tasted of honey.

  Chapter 18. Some days later a great bird flew over the boat, carrying the branch of an unknown tree. The bird dropped the branch into Saint Brendan’s lap. At the tip of the branch was a cluster of bright red grapes the size of apples. The monks ate the grapes, and lived on them for eight days. Then, after three days without food they came in sight of an island covered with trees bearing the same fruit. The air smelled of pomegranates. For forty days they stayed, pitching a tent on the island, gathering the fruit and also plants and roots of all kinds which grew near the springs.

  Chapter 19. Sailing on at random with a store of fruit, their boat was attacked by a flying Gryphon. But just as the Gryphon was about to strike its talons, the same bird which had brought the grapes reappeared and drove off the Gryphon, tearing out its eyes, so that the Gryphon flew higher and higher and was finally killed, falling into the sea in view of the monks. Then the savior-bird flew away.

  Chapter 20. Soon afterward the travelers regained Saint Ailbe’s Community, and again spent Christmas with them. Then they sailed in the ocean for a long time, only calling at the Sheep Island and Bird Paradise as before from Maundy Thursday to Pentecost.

  Chapter 21. Once on these travels, on the Feast of Saint Peter, they found themselves sailing in sea water so clear that they could see the different kinds of fish lying on the sand, like herds at pasture. They lay in rings, head to tail, and when Saint Brendan sang, they swam up to the curragh and swam in a great shoal around it as far as the monks could see. When Mass ended, the fish swam away as if fleeing. It took eight days at full sail to cross the area of clear sea.

  Chapter 22. Another day they saw a pillar in the sea. It seemed close by, but they took three days to come up to it. It was so high that Brendan could not see the top of it, and a wide-meshed net was wrapped around it. The boat could pass through an opening in the mesh which was the color of silver but harder than marble, while the column itself was of bright crystal. Taking down the mast and sail and shipping the oars, the monks pulled their boat through the mesh, which they could see extending down into the clear water, as did the foundations of the pillar. The water was as clear as glass and the sunlight was as bright below as above.

  Saint Brendan measured the mesh as six to seven feet each side. Then they sailed along one side of the pill
ar, which was square, and Saint Brendan measured each side at seven hundred yards. In its shadow they could still feel the heat of the sun. On the fourth day they found a chalice and paten of the crystal, lying in a window in the side of the pillar.

  After taking his measurements, Saint Brendan told his monks to eat. Then they took hold of the mesh and worked their boat out of it, raised the mast and sail, and sailed to the north for eight days.

  Chapter 23. On the eighth day they came to a rocky, rough island, full of slag and forges, without grass and trees. Brendan was worried, but the wind blew them straight toward it, and they heard the sound of bellows and thud of hammer and anvil. An islander came out of a forge, caught sight of the curragh, and went back indoors. Brendan told his men to row and sail as fast as they could to try to clear the place. But even as he spoke, the islander reappeared and hurled a great lump of slag at them. It flew two hundred yards over their heads, and where it fell, the sea boiled and smoke rose up as from a furnace. When the curragh had gone about a mile clear, more islanders rushed down to the shore, and began hurling lumps of slag at the monks. It looked as if the whole island was on fire. The sea boiled; the air was filled with howling; and even when they could no longer see the island, there was a great stench. Brendan said they had reached the edges of Hell.

  Chapter 24. On another day they saw through the clouds to the north a high smoky mountain. The wind drove them fast toward it, and they ran aground a short way from land. Before them was a coal-black cliff like a wall, so high they could not see the top of it. The third of the latecoming monks jumped from the boat and began to walk toward the base of the cliff, crying out that he was powerless to come back. The monks saw demons carrying him off and set him on fire. Then a favorable wind blew them clear, and looking back they saw that the smoke of the mountain had been replaced by flames which shot up and sucked back, so that the whole mountain glowed like a pyre.