BRENDAN’S FABULOUS VOYAGE.

[A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society of Literature and Art.]

Brendan, the son of Finnlogh O’ Alta, was born at Tralee in Kerry, in the year 481 or 482.[1] He had a pedigree which connected him with the rulers of Ireland, and thus perhaps secured for him a social prominence which he would not otherwise have enjoyed.  Nature seems to have endowed him with an highly wrought and sensitive temperament.  Putting aside altogether the idealism which caused him, like so many others of his time and race, to give himself to the Church, he displayed throughout life a restlessness which led him to constant journeys, sometimes of the nature of migrations, and the constant inception of projects to which he did not continue long to adhere; and in the statements about him there are elements from which I conjecture that he was probably of the class of persons who furnish good subjects for hypnotic experiments.  When he was a year old he was handed over to the care of the nun Ita, when she dwelt at the foot of Mount Luachra.  With her he remained until he was seven years old, when she sent him to Bishop Erc, by whom he had been baptized, but during the whole of her life, which lasted nearly as long as his own, he never ceased to regard and to treat her with all the affectionate reverence of a son.  His education was continued under Erc, until he grew towards manhood, when he visited other parts of Ireland for the sake of study, but it was to Erc that he returned to be ordained to the Presbyterate.  At that period there was a sort of passion among the Celtic clergy for retiring into deserts after the manner of the monks and hermits of Egypt, and the islands of the Western and Northern ocean, if they could show nothing like the burning sands of Africa, supplied deserts enough of a different sort.  It was only in accordance then with a common custom of his day, that Brendan, after his ordination, set out by sea with a few companions, to find a place where to found a monastery.  It is to be remarked also that this was just about the time of the migration of the Royal Race of the Dalriads to the country which has ultimately received from them the name of Scotland, and the project therefore bears a strong resemblance to that in which Columba succeeded about 60 years later.  If Brendan had not failed, perhaps Columba would not have come.  The wanderings or explorations of Brendan and his companions appear to have lasted several years, during which it may be presumed that they were in the habit of laying up somewhere for the winter.  It was doubtless partly owing to the restlessness which was a part of his nature, that he finally settled nowhere, and returned to Ireland.

[Footnote 1:  Reeve’s Adamnan, 221.]