The Brendan Voyage Read Online Free PDF Page A

test.”
    So the idea of the Brendan Voyage was born. It happened during an after-dinner conversation across the kitchen table in the house in Courtmacsherry where we spend our holidays in the southwest of Ireland. As I look back on that conversation, it was uncanny how our separate views of Saint Brendan’s text had overlapped. To my wife the text was “odd” as a work of literature; to me the whole Saint Brendan story was equally unusual in terms of the history of exploration. And, by a very important coincidence, both of us shared the experience of sailing our small sloop
Prester John,
usually with our three-year-old daughter Ida aboard, as far afield as Turkey. Thus we knew there was nothing theoretically impossible about Saint Brendan’s voyage in a small boat from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and back again. In our personal backgrounds in literature, history, and sailing were three polarized lenses that had swung onto the same axis. Suddenly we found ourselves looking through at the possible solution. There we were, sitting in the west of Ireland, not so far from the area where Saint Brendan had been born and lived, preached, and been laid to rest. In that evocative atmosphere it seemed entirely logical to research and to build a replica of Saint Brendan’s vessel, and see if his famous story could have been true.
    Of course there would be an immense amount of work to do before the idea could be advanced. First, I had to satisfy myself that the scholarshipbehind the project was sound. I was determined at all costs not to let the Brendan Voyage, as I had already chosen to call it, become a mere survival test. I was under no illusion that it would require many months of painstaking preparations to prepare the voyage, followed by a fair amount of physical risk during the Atlantic passage itself. To warrant such risk and effort the endeavor had to produce worthwhile results. It had to strive toward a precise and serious purpose; at no time must that serious purpose be shaken.
    The obvious place to begin was in the British Museum Library, and here I worked for several months, carefully dredging up all the data I could find about Saint Brendan, about early voyages across the Atlantic, and about the key text itself, the
Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot.
The background of Saint Brendan gave me useful clues. He was one of Ireland’s most important saints, classed as a saint of the second order. He was a man who had a profound influence on the Celtic Church. The date and place of his birth are both uncertain, but most probably he was born near the lakes of Killarney in County Kerry in the west of Ireland about A.D. 489. He was baptized and educated by Bishop Erc of Kerry, later studied under the famous teacher Saint Enda, and in due course rose to become an abbot. At that time the Irish church was organized almost exclusively into monasteries scattered around the country, and Brendan was responsible for the foundation of several of these monasteries: at Ardfert in County Kerry, Inishdadroum in County Clare, Annadown in County Galway, and Clonfert—also in County Galway. Indeed, it was at Clonfert that he was buried sometime between A.D. 570 and 583. But what struck me most about Saint Brendan’s career was his proven reputation as a traveler. Again and again I found references to journeys made by him. He sailed on several voyages along the west coast of Ireland. He also voyaged to the Western Islands off Scotland to hold an important conference with Saint Columba, who founded the great monastery at Iona. Then, too, it was said that Saint Brendan had traveled to Wales, where he became the Abbot of Llancarvon and tutored Saint Malo, the Breton saint. Other less well-documented reports spoke of Brendan going to Brittany, to the Orkney and Shetland islands, and even as far afield as the Faroes. These were all boat journeys, and the real Saint Brendan had obviously been a man who