The journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Vol. IX, 1910Various
History
The journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Vol. IX, 1910
Various
American-Irish Historical Society -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- United States -- Periodicals; Irish Americans -- Periodicals
There is every reason to believe that before the close of that eventful
century the story of St. Brendan’s voyages and discovery was well known
in every part of Europe. There are still extant thirteen Latin
manuscripts in the National Library of Paris which have come down from
the tenth century, and contain elaborate accounts of St. Brendan’s
discovery of America. The Bodlien Library of Oxford and the Nuremburg
Library of Germany contain several of the Brendan MSS. There are also
versions of the discovery in Gaelic, German, Spanish, Portuguese and
Italian.
In the year 1892, the late General Daniel Butterfield, the noted
American soldier and scholar, photographed one of the original Latin
manuscripts of Brendan in the Bibleothèque Nationale of Paris, which he
translated on his arrival in this country, and he subsequently prepared
a learned lecture on the subject, which he delivered before the New York
Gaelic Society. The translation, has been vouched for by Cardinal
Gibbons of Baltimore as being almost literal.
The manuscript begins with a sketch of St. Brendan’s career and of the
confession made to him by Father Barindus, which was instrumental in
firing the imagination of the great abbot to make a voyage in search of
the Land of Promise, which was America. St. Brendan laid his full
statement of the confession before the seven wisest counsellors of his
community, which concluded in the following words, as translated:
“My Beloved Fellow Warriors: I now ask of you counsel and help,
inasmuch as my thoughts and my heart are bent on one desire, if it be
the will of God. That land whereof Father Barindus has spoken, is the
land of promise of the saints. I have yet set my heart upon. What say
you? What counsel do you give me? Their answer was, ‘Abbot, your will
is ours; have we not left our parents, have we not forsaken our
inheritance, have we not delivered ourselves up unto you? Therefore
with you we are ready to go unto life or death.’”
They considered the story or confession a revelation to enable them to
reach the land, of which Patrick’s prophecy had foretold. When once upon
the highlands of Munster, and looking out upon the Atlantic Ocean, St.
Patrick said that a man of renown should arise in those lands and go out
upon the sea and find the promised land. That prophecy has been a
household word with the people in the Kerry region for more than
fourteen centuries, and was well known for several years before St.
Brendan was born. The traditions of the Brendanian voyages, like
Banquo’s ghost, will never down, because they are embodied in the
literature of many European nations.
The following passage appears in Otway’s Sketches, published in Dublin
in 1845.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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