least according to the critics, of whose opinion Lucian credits him with so low an estimation—­and the great Bollandists had their historical equanimity—­much as experience must have already taught it to bear—­so upset by the brilliancy of the fable that they have omitted to print the real life at all, a life which is, at the worst, no more startling than a good many with which they have enriched their pages—­e.g., those of Patrick, Brigid, and Columba—­and after a denunciation of what their authorities call the vana, fictaque vel apocrypha deliramenta, ’the silly, lying, or apocryphal ravings,’ simply proceed to give a compilation of isolated notices drawn from a variety of different sources.

Prof.  O’Curry, in his Lectures on the MS. Material of Ancient Irish History, page 289, mentions four ancient Irish romances in the form of voyages, of which the voyage of Brendan is one.  He gives an epitome of that of the sons of Ua Corra, which seems at least in parts to be almost equally wild.  But that of Brendan has certainly been the most popular.  M. Achille Jubinal, who edited one Latin and two French translations of it, says that it also exists in Irish, Welsh, Spanish, English, and Anglo-Norman.  The Spanish, English, and Anglo-Norman I have never read, and of the Welsh I have never heard.  Of the Latin I once made a complete translation from the Latin text published by Jubinal, but I have lost it, and have had to do the work again so far as necessary for the present lecture.  I remember, however, that from several features, I came to the conclusion that the Latin text was a translation from Irish, and the Irish text must present considerable variants, as Dr. Todd in his book on St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, page 460, cites from ’An Irish Life of St. Brendan,’ but which must evidently be the fabulous voyage, four incidents, of which one is about the finding of a dead mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being devoured alive by sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large as an ox which swam after them to destroy them, until another sea-monster rose up and fought with the cat, and both were drowned, none of which incidents occur in the Latin.  However, to the Latin version my defective knowledge must confine me, and there is enough of it for one lecture, and to spare.  I may, however, say that by the Latin text I do not here mean only the text published by Jubinal.  The present Bollandists were good enough, some years ago, to edit for me the ‘Codex Salmanticensis,’ which contains both the romance and the Life, and I find in the romance serious divergences from the text given by Jubinal; they are of a kind which, in my judgment, stamp it beyond all doubt as a later and corrupt edition, but I have largely compared the texts, although not word for word.