Brendan's Fabulous Voyage: A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society of Literature and ArtBute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Marquess of
Religion
Brendan's Fabulous Voyage: A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society of Literature and Art
Bute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Marquess of
Brendan, Saint, the Voyager, approximately 483-577
We now reach an incident founded upon that fact from the contemplation
of which the human mind perhaps shrinks more than from any other. But
the literary treatment of it is so curious and striking, and is rendered
all the more so, at least to me, because I am aware of only one other
attempt to grapple with it in the whole cycle of human invention, and
that in the very highest sphere of imaginative literature, that I think
that you will forgive me if I deal with it, and give at any-rate a part
of it in full. 'And after these things,' says the novelist, 'the Father
Brendan saw as it were a very thick mist, and when they drew nigh
thereto, there appeared unto them a little shape as it had been the
shape of a man sitting upon a stone, and before him a veil of the size
of a bag hanging between two forks of iron, and thus the waves beat him
about as it were a boat when it is in peril in a tempest. And when the
brethren saw it, some of them thought that it had been a bird, and
others thought that it had been a ship. Then the man of God answered
them, "Brethren, let be this strife, and turn the ship unto the place."
And when the man of God drew nigh thereto, the waves round about stood
still as though they had been frozen. And they found sitting upon a
stone a man shaggy and mis-shapen, and from every side when the waves
came upon him, they smote him up to the crown of his head; and when
again they fell away from him then was seen the stone whereon the
unhappy one sat. And the wind moved about from time to time the cloth
that was before him, and it smote him upon the eyes and upon the
forehead. And when the blessed one asked him who he was, and for what
fault he was set there, and how he had merited such punishment, he said,
"I am that most unhappy Judas, the worst of bargainers. Neither for any
desert of mine do I have this place, but through the pardon and pity of
the Redeemer of the world, and in honour of His holy resurrection, have
I this rest" (now, it was the Lord's Day), "and when I sit here it
seemeth to me as though I were in the Garden of Eden, by reason of the
torments which I shall have this even, for when I am in torment I am
like a bit of lead molten in a crucible day and night. In the midst of
the mountain which ye have seen, there is Leviathan with his crew, and I
was there when it swallowed up your brother, and therefore hell was
glad, and sent forth great flames, and thus doth it ever when it
devoureth the souls of the wicked. But that ye may know the measureless
goodness of God, I will tell you of my rest. I have here my rest every
Lord's Day from evening to evening--,"' and then follow some words as to
other days which are evidently corrupted both in Jubinal's text and in
that of the Salamanca MS. Then it continues, '"But the other days I am
tormented with Herod and Pilate, with Annas and Caiphas; and therefore
I beseech you for the sake of the Redeemer of the world, that ye be
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