Maelduin ("The Isle of Wailing," and "The Queen of the Magic Clew"), are also found in "The Voyage of Bran." In an essay accompanying Prof. Meyer's edition and translation of the latter work I have brought together all the Irish variants of the theme, including those found in Maelduin, and discussed their relation to each other and to the general body of Aryan mythical beliefs and imaginings.
Thus, "The Voyage of Maelduin" gives us an idea of the sources open to the Irish story-teller of the eighth century, and of the influences to which he was exposed. We must picture Aed the Fair, chief among the story-tellers of Ireland as the Tennyson or Morris of his day, a knower of men and things as well as of books. He took the old mythic tales of his race in which the gods and goddesses of the Tuatha de Danann wooed mortals to their fairy home, and he used them in his account of the islands of the Queen of the Magic Clew, or of the Musical Brazen Gate. He took Christian legends and worked them into the weft of his story. He was familiar with the marvels told of his saintly countrymen who evangelized the Northern seas. He picked up I many a yarn spun by seafarers to the distant Faroes or the more distant Iceland, that land of boiling springs, fiery mountains, and ice-clad plains. He handled all these elements with singular perception of their romantic quality and effect, little thinking that his fancies re-told in Latin by the author of Navigatio S. Brendani, would delight Western Europe for ages, and, translated into English more than a thousand years later, would inspire the chief English poet of his time to breathe fresh life and beauty into the old legend.
Source.—From the Arabian Nights though it does not occur in the ordinary editions from Galland. I have condensed from the versions of Lane and Burton. (See my
