It was, however, outside Ireland, in countries where less was known of the facts, and the Voyage was isolated from other works of its class, that this romance was most largely accepted as serious matter of fact.  The possession of St. Brendan’s Isle whenever it should be discovered was, according to M. Jubinal, actually made the subject of State documents, and he names no less than four maritime expeditions which were despatched in search of it, the last from Santa Cruz in Tenerife in 1721, at the instance of Don Juan de Mur, Governor of the Canaries, and under the command of Caspar Dominguez.  I must, however, avow that I have great difficulty in believing that such an expedition as this could have been motived by any other hypothesis than that the romance was the legendary record of some really existing island in the Atlantic.

The mention of such a belief brings me to the consideration of another and very different form of what I may call the naturalistic school of interpretation.  This theory throws overboard the whole of the elements of the class commonly called supernatural, and even treats the identity of the voyagers as a matter of comparative indifference, but it sees in the wild narrative a distorted and legendary account of some actual voyage and some actual adventures and discoveries in the Atlantic.  By some the Canary Archipelago, with perhaps Madeira, the Cape de Verde Islands, and some parts of the African coast, if not even the Azores, have been supposed to be the original scene of the wanderings of some early navigators, even if not of Brendan, and the Burning Island with its savage inhabitants, and the infernal volcano would of course be interpreted of the great volcano of Tenerife.  But a more interesting interpretation is that which sees in the voyage of Brendan a distorted account of some ancient voyage by the Western Islands, the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and finally to the coast of America.  I need not remind you that the earliest voyages to America of which we have historical accounts are those of the Norsemen, who, as early as the year 1001, proceeded so far South as to come into a land where the vine was growing wild, and which they consequently named Vineland.  It matters comparatively little to the naturalistic interpretation of this romance whether it be based upon mutilated and gossiping accounts of the voyages of the Norsemen, or upon some still earlier adventures of which all truly historical record has perished.  The shores of America here become the Land of Promise, the clouds which veil it are the fogs of the coasts of Newfoundland or Labrador, the great and impassable river which divides it, perhaps the St. Lawrence:  the crystal column is an iceberg:  the rough and rocky island, and the black, cloud-piercing volcano, which burnt in the midst of the Northern Ocean, are Iceland and its volcanoes; the Eden of white birds in some region, perhaps the Faroes, where sea-fowl congregate in vast flocks:  and the minor isles