36 ST. BRENDAN'S ISLANDS known (excepting as a discoverer) for the great religious estab- lishment at Clonfert, not the first which he founded in the sixth century but the most widely known and the greatest. Another explanation casts doubts upon his real existence and supposes the story of the discoveries to have arisen by confusion of language with the well-known pagan "Voyage of Bran," per- haps the earliest of the ancient Irish Imrama, or sea sagas. It has also been said that the origin of the Brendan narratives may be found in "a ninth-century sermon elaborated up to its present form by the eleventh century/' 3 A ninth-century manu- script is said to be in the Vatican library^ A NORMAN FRENCH VERSION A Norman French translation was turned into Norman French verse by some trouvere of the court for the benefit of King Henry Beauclerc and his Queen Adelais early in the twelfth century and partly translated metrically into English for Blackwood's Maga- zine in 1836. It avers that the saint set sail for an Isle beyond the sea Where wild winds ne'er held revelry, But fulfilled are the balmy skies With spicy gales from Paradise; These gales that waft the scent of flowers That fade not, and the sunny hours Speed on, nor night, nor shadow know. 4 They sail westward fifteen days from Ireland; then in a month's calm drift to a rock, where they find a palace with food and where Satan visits them but does no harm. They next voyage seven months, in a direction not stated, and find an island with immense sheep; but, when they are about to cook one, the island begins to sink and reveals itself as a "beast." They reach another island where the birds are repentant fallen angels. From this they journey six months to an island with a monastery founded by St. Alben. They sail thence till calm falls on them and the sea be- Westropp, Brasil, p. 229.
- The Anglo-Norman Trouveres of the I2th and 13th Centuries, Black-wood's
Edinburgh Mag., Vol. 39, 1836, pp. 806-820; reference on p. 808.
