The Brendan Voyage (38 page)

A leather boat that some had feared would disintegrate in the first gale off the Irish coast had successfully crossed the Atlantic.

When
Brendan
nuzzled her bow onto Peckford Island, she may have looked more like a floating bird’s nest than an ocean-going vessel, an untidy muddle of ropes and flax, leather and wood. But she was strong and sound; and the four of us who sailed her knew that she was still seaworthy to our highest expectations. She had brought us safely through gales and pack ice and through two seasons across some of the most unforgiving waters in the Atlantic. We had put our trust in her, and she had repaid that confidence. She was a true ocean-going vessel, and there was no longer any practical objection to the idea that Irish monks might have sailed their leather boats to North America before the Norsemen, and long before Columbus.

Brendan
had demonstrated that the voyage
could
be done with medieval material and medieval technology. But in the final analysis the only conclusive proof that it
had
been done will be if an authentic relic from an early Irish visit is found one day on North American soil. Perhaps it will be a rock scratched with an early Irish inscription, or the foundation of an Irish beehive hut that can be dated accurately to the days of the extraordinary Irish voyages. Admittedly the chances of such a discovery are slim. Irish relics have not yet been found in Iceland,
where it is known the Irish hermits settled for some time; and if the early Christian Irish did touch on North America, they would have left only the lightest fingerprint. It would be singularly fortunate if such a faint trace is located on a very long coastline which is either desolate and little known, or in well-favored areas covered over by more recent development.

This being so, it was all the more vital that
Brendan
’s successful voyage should have rescued the early Irish seafaring achievement from the category of speculation and doubt, and returned it to its proper arena of serious historical debate. At best, land archaeologists should now be encouraged to search for Irish traces in the New World, and at very least, it is difficult any longer to bury the early Christian Irish sailors into a footnote in the history books of exploration on the excuse that too little is known about them and their claims are physically impossible.

Brendan
’s success also went a long way to vindicate the
Navigatio
itself. Episodes in that remarkable narrative, which had seemed so fanciful, now appeared in a new light. In fact it was remarkable to review the number of times where it had formerly been necessary to conjure up imaginative, learned parallels to explain the puzzles of the
Navigatio
when simpler and more practical explanations would have fitted the facts better. For example, it is easier to explain the episodes of the Island of Smiths and the Island of the Fiery Mountain as first-hand descriptions of volcanic Iceland seen from a visiting curragh than to ransack the classics for similar Latin descriptions of submarine and land volcanos. And it is more logical to place the Island of Sheep in the Faroes, in company with the Island of Birds, when we know that the Irish could easily have sailed there and seen the very scenes that the
Navigatio
touches on than to dismiss such places as fantasies.

Then
Brendan
had also produced some unexpected solutions to the
Navigatio
’s riddles. Surely the famous story of Jasconius, the friendly “great fish” who returned again and again to Saint Brendan’s leather curragh, is rooted in the actual reaction of the great whales when they meet leather boats at sea and come back time after time to inspect the stranger at close quarters. Such leviathan behavior must have made a deep impression on the minds of the medieval monks, perhaps seeing these huge creatures for the first time in their lives and astonished by their massive bulk swirling alongside an open boat far smaller than the
animal. And the great Pillar of Crystal with its surrounding net of “marble” fragments is sufficiently like an iceberg, newly freed from the pack ice and still surrounded by its patch of broken field ice, that it would be impossible for the storyteller to imagine the details without first-hand knowledge at his disposal. Even today it is difficult for the scholar to understand the allusion unless he too has seen the northern icebergs.

Brendan
helped to redress the balance. She demonstrated that the
Navigatio
is more than a splendid medieval romance. It is really a story hung upon a framework of facts and observation which mingles geography and literature, and the challenge is how to separate one from the other. This mixture is hardly surprising. Scholars of epic literature know from experience that many of the truly durable legends, from the
Iliad
to the
Romance of Alexander,
are founded upon real events and real people which the later storytellers have clothed in imaginative detail.

Where, then, was the Land Promised to the Saints which Saint Brendan is said to have found beyond the swirling fog? There is no reason to suppose that the Promised Land was any more fictional than the Island of Smiths, the Paradise of Birds, the Island of Sheep, the island monastery, or any other locality in the
Navigatio.
The text gives a few clues to its identity. When Saint Brendan’s boat reached the shore of the Promised Land, it says, “they climbed out of the boat and saw a spacious land full of laden fruit trees as if in autumn. But when they had made a circuit of that land, night had still not come upon them. They took as much fruit as they wanted and drank from the springs, and for forty days explored the whole land without finding an end to it. But one day they came to a great river flowing through the middle of the island. Then Saint Brendan said to his brothers: ‘We cannot cross this river and we do not know how big this land is.’ When they were considering this to themselves, behold a young man arrived, embraced them with great joy, and calling each one by his name, said, ‘Blessed are they who dwell in your house. From generation to generation they will praise you.’

“When he had said this, he said to Saint Brendan, ‘Behold this land which you sought for so much time. You could not find it immediately, because God wanted to show you his diverse secrets in the great ocean. Return, then, to your native land carrying with you the fruits of this
land and as many jewels as your little boat can hold. The final day of your wanderings draws nigh so that you may sleep with your fathers. After many ages have past, this land will be made known to your successors, at a time when Christians are undergoing persecution. This river which you see divides this island. Just as it appears to you laden with fruit, so the land will remain for ever without the shadow of night. For its light is Christ.’ ”

What facts can be extracted—with caution—from this rapturous medieval description of the Promised Land? There is the great extent of the land; the abundance of the natural fruit; and the great river dividing it. They are all general features which could apply to many places on the North American coast. But what is immediately striking is how these features resemble the descriptions which later visitors first remarked when they reached North America, whether the Norsemen who wrote of its woods and wild grapes, or later settlers who praised the favorable climate for crops. The overlap might well be another simple coincidence, but it could equally well be a hazy description passed down by word of mouth of the great land which lay at the far rim of the great western ocean and at the end of the Stepping Stone Route which the
Navigatio
so consistently seems to follow and identify. Even the obvious exaggerations, such as the claim that the land provided precious stones, are no hindrance to treating the
Navigatio
as a possible description of North America. Christopher Columbus was to make very much the same claim for the West Indies when he returned to Spain, and it is hardly surprising that the goal of Saint Brendan’s long search, when he finally reaches it in the pages of the
Navigatio,
should be credited with fantastic wealth by the storyteller. Our modern error would be to dismiss the statements of the
Navigatio
themselves as no more than imaginary.

To bring home the tale of his voyage, Saint Brendan had of course to return to Ireland from the Promised Land and make the journey complete. The
Navigatio
treats of the return voyage briskly: “Then, when they had taken from the fruits of the land and all kinds of its gems, and dismissed the steward and the young man with a blessing, Saint Brendan and his brothers returned to their curragh and set sail through the middle of the fog. When they had passed through it they came to an island called the Island of Delights. There they received hospitality for three days and then, after being blessed, Saint Brendan
returned home by the direct route.” Once more there is a sound and straightforward explanation of this passage. Having sailed out from the fog, the Saint’s curragh picked up the Gulf Stream and the steady winds of the great slant of westerlies and southwesterlies which blow across the Atlantic, and they headed directly back to Ireland. This is the logical eastbound route, the path which is still sailed by small yachts and has been taken by open rowing boats smaller than a leather ocean-going curragh. It is the downwind route, and it is perhaps worth noting that the rowing boats, though they started hundred of miles apart on the North American coast, made their landfall directly on to Ireland’s west coast, precisely where the
Navigatio
returns Saint Brendan.

Arriving at his own monastery, concludes the
Navigatio,
Saint Brendan was greeted joyfully and “he told of everything he remembered happening on the voyage and the great and splendid wonders that God had deigned to show him.” Then he reminded his followers of the prophecy that he would soon die, set his affairs in order, and very shortly afterward, fortified with the Sacraments of the Church, lay back “in the hands of his disciples and gave up his spirit to the Lord.” So died peacefully the most famous sailor-monk of the Celtic Church in Ireland. But did the Irish voyages end with his death? Once more the answer lies in the
Navigatio.
Nowhere does it claim that Saint Brendan was the first to reach the Promised Land. On the contrary, it states unequivocally that he was told about the Promised Land by another Irish monk, Saint Barrind, who had already visited it in company with an Irish abbot of the west coast by the name of Mernoc, who was a regular visitor there. And when Saint Brendan still had not reached the Promised Land after seven sailing seasons, it is the “Steward” from the Island of Sheep who acts as his pilot, guides him there, and tells him what to expect.

In the Promised Land too, the newcomers meet a young man who is living there already, knows the Saint’s name, and can speak with him in his own tongue. In short, the picture that the
Navigatio
provides is the same picture that is found in the writings of Dicuil, in the Norse sagas, and in other contemporary sources: the idea that the Promised Land is the ultimate point in a number of scattered North Atlantic localities which have been settled by tiny groups of Irish monks who passed from place to place in small and seaworthy boats. In this context
the voyage of Saint Brendan is less a voyage of primary exploration than a tremendous pastoral tour by a leading churchman who is visiting the farthest outposts of his devout countrymen and, in so doing, ventures to the limits of the ocean and their known world.

Here, then, lies another crucial fact about the
Navigatio.
The text stresses that Saint Brendan did not make a single, long, voyage to the Promised Land. Instead he made a whole series of trips, season by season of his seven-year search, before he is guided to his eventual destination in the Promised Land. In the gap between the Saint’s death and the date the
Navigatio
was composed in the form we now have it, it would have been natural to include into Saint Brendan’s own voyage the experiences and adventures of other Irish monks in their small boats in the North Atlantic and place them as episodes during the seven years of Saint Brendan’s voyage. This is the normal process of building an epic—the central hero is credited with the experiences of lesser figures until his single endeavor embodies the feats of many. Nor does this process detract from Saint Brendan’s own achievement. Rather, it enhances his journey because clearly it was the symbol for the rest, and an example for the monk-navigators who followed him. Also it has stood through the succeeding centuries as a monument to the achievements of the other Christian monks who took to the sea from Ireland. Without the
Navigatio
the least glimmer of their endeavors would be all that is left to us. The collective experiences within the
Navigatio
is not likely to be the story of one boat’s crew who set out on a single voyage to search for the Promised Land. It is the main surviving record of a Christian seagoing culture which sent boat after boat into the North Atlantic on regular voyages of communication and exploration.

If so, then the Irish voyages into the Atlantic stand in very special relationship to the entire history of man’s exploration of his world. Usually the first scouts have been forgotten. Their efforts are not recorded or, if they were written down, few people read them. Outside Scandinavia, for example, the Norse visits to Greenland and North America were little heard of. By contrast the Irish voyages, represented in the
Navigatio
of Saint Brendan, won great attention. The
Navigatio
’s religious flavor ensured that Saint Brendan’s travels achieved intellectual respectability throughout Europe for five hundred
years. Thus strengthened, it helped to demolish the mentality of a closed world, encouraging men of learning to think of a great western land. It prompted map-makers to mark islands in the western sea. And the truly fascinating possibility is that the medieval scholars who read and believed Saint Brendan had reached a western land were right: that the Irish really had sailed their skin boats to Greenland and North America as we now know they could have done. If so, then Europe from the tenth century onward was already perceiving the New World in the manner of the time.