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Voyage of St Brendan

tr. O’Donoghue, 1893

St. Brendan is Stimulated by the Example of St. Barinthus to Seek the Land of Promise

St. Brendan is stimulated by the example of St. Barinthus to seek the Land of Promise

St. BRENDAN, son of Finnlug Ua Alta, of the race of Eoghan, was born in the marshy district of Munster¹ He was famed for his great abstinence and his many virtues, and was the patriarch of nearly three thousand monks. While he was in his spiritual warfare, at a place called Ardfert-Brendan² there came to him one evening, a certain father, named Barinthus, of the race of King Nial, who, when questioned by St. Brendan, in frequent converse, could only weep, and cast himself prostrate, and continue the longer in prayer; but Brendan raising him up, embraced him, saying: “Father, why should we be thus grieved on the occasion of your visit? Have you not come to give us comfort? You ought, indeed, make better cheer for the brethren. In God’s name, make known to us the divine secrets, and refresh our souls by recounting to us the various wonders you have seen upon the great ocean.” Then Barinthus, in reply, proceeds to tell of a certain island: “My dear child, Mernoc, the guardian of the poor of Christ, had fled away from me to become a solitary, and found, nigh unto the Stone mountain, an island full of delights. After some time I learned that he had many monks there in his charge, and that God had worked through him many marvels. I, therefore, went to visit him, and when I had approached within three days’ journey, he, with some of the brethren, came out to meet me, for God had revealed to him my advent. As we sailed unto the island the brethren came forth from their cells towards us, like a swarm of bees, for they dwelt apart from each other, though their intercourse was of one accord, well grounded in faith, hope, and charity; one refectory; one church for all, wherein to discharge the divine offices. No food was served but fruits and nuts, roots and vegetables of other kinds. The brethren, after complin, passed the night in their respective cells until the cock crew, or the bell tolled for prayer. When my dear son and I had traversed the island, he led me to the western shore, where there was a small boat, and he then said: “Father, enter this boat, and we will sail on to the west, towards the island called the Land of Promise of the Saints, which God will grant to those who succeed us in the latter days.” When we entered the boat and set sail, clouds overshadowed us on every side, so dense that we could scarcely see the prow or the stern of the boat. After the lapse of an hour or so, a great light shone around us, and land appeared, spacious and grassy, and bearing all manner of fruits. And when the boat touched the shore, we landed, and walked round about the island for fifteen days, yet could not reach the limits thereof. No plant saw we there without its flower; no tree without its fruit; and all the stones thereon were precious gems. But on the fifteenth day we discovered a river flowing from the west towards the east, when, being at a loss what to do, though we wished to cross over the river, we awaited the direction of the Lord. While we thus considered the matter, there appeared suddenly before us a certain man, shining with a great light, who, calling us by our names, addressed us thus: “Welcome, worthy brothers, for the Lord has revealed to you the land He will grant unto His saints. There is one-half of the island up to this river, which you are not permitted to pass over; return, therefore, whence you came.”

When he had ceased to speak, we asked him his name, and whence he had come. But he said: “Why do you ask these questions? Should you not rather inquire about this island. Such as you see it now, so has it continued from the beginning of the world. Do you now need food or drink? Have you been weighed down by sleep, or shrouded in the darkness of the night? Know then for certain that here it is for ever day, without a shadow of darkness, for the Lord Jesus Christ is the light thereof, and if men had not transgressed the commandment of God, in this land of delights would they have always dwelt.”

Hearing this we were moved to tears, and having rested awhile, we set out on our return journey, the man aforesaid accompanying us to the shore, where our boat was moored. When we had entered the boat, this man was taken from our sight, and we went on into the thick darkness we had passed through before, and thus unto the Island of delights. But when the brethren there saw us, they rejoiced with great joy at our return, as they had long bewailed our absence, and they said: “Why, O fathers, did you leave us, your little flock, to stray without a shepherd in the wilderness? We knew, indeed, that our abbot frequently departed somewhere from us, and remained away sometimes a month, sometimes a fortnight, or a week more or less.” When I heard this I tried to console them, and said: “Brethren, harbour no thought of evil, for your lives here are certainly passed at the very portals of paradise. Not far away from you lies the island, called the ‘Land of Promise of the Saints,’ where night never falls nor day closes; thither your abbot, Mernoc, resorts, as the angels of God watch over it. Do you not know, by the fragrance of our garments, that we have been in the paradise of God?” They replied: “Yes, father, we knew well that you had been in the paradise of God, for we often found this fragrance from the garments of our abbot, which lingered about us for nearly forty days.” I then told them that I had abided therein with my dear son, for a fortnight, without food or drink; yet, so complete was our bodily refreshment, that we would seem to others to have been filled to repletion. When forty days had passed, having received the blessings of the abbot and the brethren, I came away with my companions, that I may return to my little cell to which I will go on to-morrow.

Having heard all this, St. Brendan and his brethren cast themselves on the ground, giving glory to God in these words: “Righteous Thou art, O Lord, in all Thy ways, and holy in all Thy works, who hast revealed to Thy children so many and so great wonders; and blessed be Thou for Thy gifts, who hast this day refreshed us all with this spiritual repast.” When these discourses were ended, St. Brendan said: “Let us now proceed to the refection of the body, and the “new commandment.”³ The night having passed, St. Barinthus, receiving the blessing of the brethren, returned to his own cell.

Note.—In the beginning of this chapter is given the earliest Latin translation that I have met of the name of Ardfert-Brendan, or Clonfert-Brendan, in the form “Saltus virtutis Brendani,” as some of the earliest MSS. have it, or “Saltus virtutum B.,” as others give it. I translate this Ardfert-Brendan, for I believe the context points to that location of the scene of the story, while I am aware that “saltus” is curiously ambiguous, and may mean a “clearance in a wood,” or a “wood-pasture” (in Irish, cluain), as well a “height or bluff” (in Irish Ard) in land or river; and that therefore, the Latin may mean either Ardfert-Brendan or Clonfert-Brendan. The Latin word virtus, given by those early writers who must have been familiar with the ancient Gaelic, as an equivalent for the second part of the name, feart, clearly indicates the true etymology of those names, for it shows that the word feart, or its earlier form firt, was simply borrowed from the Latin virtus, and had exactly the same meaning. Ardfert-Brendan does not, therefore, mean the “height of the grave” (fert in Irish), as some authorities have suggested, but the Ard or bluff of the ‘virtue,’ or the powers of St. Brendan; that is, of the house or place where the virtues or spiritual powers of the saint and his children were exercised, and which was the scene of many of his marvellous works. The name, when fully and correctly given, is Ardfert-Brendan, and this could not refer in any way to “the grave” of St. Brendan, which was certainly not at Ardfert, but, as all his Lives tell us, at Clonfert, where his remains were interred, and from which, as far as we know, they were never translated.

The interesting story of the visit of Baruin, or as the name is Latinized, Barinthus, to St. Brendan, told so circumstantially and dramatically in this chapter of the Navigatio, has no counterpart in any Irish version of the Voyage of St. Brendan that has been as yet discovered; nor is there, as far as I have heard, any trace of this very curious tale of the Voyage of St. Barinthus and his “dear son Mernoc” to the “Land of Promise of the Saints,” such as we find it detailed here, in any other account of such early voyages that has come down to us in ancient MSS. Whether the tale is purely legendary, fancifully devised to explain why St. Brendan “had set his heart” upon his ocean quest of this same “Land of Promise of the Saints,” or whether there had been an old-world tradition of some voyage on the Atlantic by a real Father Baruin, which was dressed up in this form, as a preface to Brendan’s Voyage, by some writer or reciter of that wonderful tale in later times, it is now, I suppose, impossible to determine. We know, indeed, that there existed a real Father Baruin, who was abbot of a monastery at Druimcuillen, on the borders of Munster and Leinster (now Drumcullen parish, King’s County), and whose feast is noted in the Martyrology of Tallaght on the 3rd of May, and also on the 21st of that month; but his period does not fit in with the date of such a tale as this visit to St. Brendan, which should be early in the sixth century; whereas the abbot of Drumcullen is stated “to have flourished” at the end of that century, many years after St. Brendan’s death.

There is a very ancient church at Baruin, now Barrow, a few miles west from Ardfert, which is still called in Irish Teampul Baruin (Church of Barun). This old church, now a desolate ruin, with a few remains still existing, dates probably from the eleventh century, when the district around it may have been formed into a distinct parish, which was valued and taxed as a separate benefice, in the Taxation of Ardfert Diocese, in 1300, as “ecclesia de Barun” (Church of Barun or Barrow). From the appearance of the site and the surroundings of this old church, we can infer that there had been a much earlier religious foundation at the place, which may have been, in fact, contemporaneous with St. Brendan’s foundation of his monastery at Ardfert; and here, at ancient Barun, may have stood the “little cell” (cellula, in the Latin text) or oratory, to which, we are told, St. Barinthus returned on the close of his visit to his saintly brother at Ardfert. However this may be, the name still survives in the little church and district of Baruin, and it is not improbable that the founder of the oratory there, where he had the harbour beside Fenit, opening into the Atlantic, near at hand, was a sea-faring saint, like so many of the earliest founders of such oratories and monastic houses along the coast of Ireland, who may have made some voyages on the great ocean, and recounted his adventures thereon to his neighbours at the Ardfert Monastery, which he, no doubt, visited occasionally. Hence may have come the germ of this interesting legend of Baruin and Mernoc, as narrated in this chapter.

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