Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic Part 9

Sir Walter Scott tells us, in his "Border Minstrelsy," that on the day of the coronation of James VI. of Scotland the Tweed accordingly overflowed and joined the Pansayl at the prophet's grave. It was also claimed by one of the witnesses at the trial of Jeanne d'Arc, that there was a prediction by Merlin that France would be saved by a peasant girl from Lorraine.

These prophesies have been often reprinted, and have been translated into different languages, and there was published in London, in 1641, "The Life of Merlin, surnamed Ambrosius, His Prophesies and Predictions interpreted, and their Truth made Good by our English Annals." Another book was also published in London, in 1683, called "Merlin revived in a Discourse of Prophesies, Predictions, and their Remarkable Accomplishments."

VIII. LANCELOT

The main sources of information concerning Lancelot are the "Morte d'Arthur," Newell's "King Arthur and the Table Round," and the publications of the Early English Text Society. See also Rhys's "Arthurian Legend," pp. 127, 147, etc.

IX. THE HALF-MAN

The symbolical legend on which this tale is founded will be found in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion" (London, 1877), II. p.

344. It is an almost unique instance, in the imaginative literature of that period, of a direct and avowed allegory. There is often allegory, but it is usually contributed by modern interpreters, and would sometimes greatly astound the original fabulists.

X. ARTHUR

The earliest mention of the island of Avalon, or Avilion, in connection with the death of Arthur, is a slight one by the old English chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth (Book XI. c. 2), and the event is attributed by him to the year 542. Wace's French romance was an enlargement of Geoffrey; and the narrative of Layamon (at the close of the twelfth century) an explanation of that of Wace. Layamon's account of the actual death of Arthur, as quoted in the text, is to be found in the translation, a very literal one, by Madden (Madden's "Layamon's Brut," III. pp. 140-146).

The earliest description of the island itself is by an anonymous author known as "Pseudo-Gildas," supposed to be a thirteenth-century Breton writer (Meyer's "Voyage of Bram," I. p. 237), and quoted by Archbishop Usher in his "British Ecclesiastical Antiquities" (1637), p. 273, who thus describes it in Latin hexameters:--

"Cingitur oceano memorabilis insula nullis Desolata bonis: non fur, nec praedo, nec hostis Insidiatur ibi: nec vis, nec bruma nec aestas, Immoderata furit. Pax et concordia, p.u.b.es Ver manent aeternum. Nec flos, nec lilia desunt, Nec rosa, nec violae: flores et poma sub una Fronde gerit pomus. Habitant sine labe cruoris Semper ibi juvenes c.u.m virgine: nulla senectus, Nulla vis morbi, nullus dolor; omnia plena Laet.i.tiae; nihil hic proprium, communia quaeque.

Regit virgo locis et rebus praesidet istis, Virginibus stipata suis, pulcherrima pulchris; Nympha decens vultu, generosis patribus orta, Consilio pollens, medicinas n.o.bilis arte.

At simul Arthurus regni diadema reliquit, Subst.i.tutique sibi regem, se transtulit illic; Anno quingeno quadragenoque secundo Post incarnatum sine patris semine natum.

Immodice laesus, Arthurus tendit ad aulam Regis Avallonis; ubi virgo regia vulnus Illius tractans, sanati membra reservat Ipsa sibi: vivuntque simul; si credere fas est."

A translation of this pa.s.sage into rhyming English follows; both of these being taken from Way's "Fabliaux" (London, 1815), II. pp. 233-235.

"By the main ocean's wave encompa.s.s'd, stands A memorable isle, fill'd with all good: No thief, no spoiler there, no wily foe With stratagem of wasteful war; no rage Of heat intemperate, or of winter's cold; But spring, full blown, with peace and concord reigns: Prime bliss of heart and season, fitliest join'd!

Flowers fail not there: the lily and the rose, With many a knot of fragrant violets bound; And, loftier, cl.u.s.tering down the bended boughs, Blossom with fruit combin'd, rich apples hang.

"Beneath such mantling shades for ever dwell In virgin innocence and honour pure, Damsels and youths, from age and sickness free, And ignorant of woe, and fraught with joy, In choice community of all things best.

O'er these, and o'er the welfare of this land, Girt with her maidens, fairest among fair, Reigns a bright virgin sprung from generous sires, In counsel strong, and skill'd in med'cine's lore.

Of her (Britannia's diadem consign'd To other brow), for his deep wound and wide Great Arthur sought relief: hither he sped (Nigh two and forty and five hundred years Since came the incarnate Son to save mankind), And in Avallon's princely hall repos'd.

His wound the royal damsel search'd; she heal'd; And in this isle still holds him to herself In sweet society,--so fame say true!"

XI. MAELDUIN

This narrative is taken partly from Nutt's "Voyage of Bram" (I. 162) and partly from Joyce's "Ancient Celtic Romances." The latter, however, allows Maelduin sixty comrades instead of seventeen, which is Nutt's version.

There are copies of the original narrative in the Erse language at the British Museum, and in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The voyage, which may have had some reality at its foundation, is supposed to have taken place about the year 700 A.D. It belongs to the cla.s.s known as Imrama, or sea-expeditions. Another of these is the voyage of St. Brandan, and another is that of "the sons of O'Corra." A poetical translation of this last has been made by T. D. Sullivan of Dublin, and published in his volume of poems. (Joyce, p. xiii.) All these voyages ill.u.s.trated the wider and wider s.p.a.ce a.s.signed on the Atlantic ocean to the enchanted islands until they were finally identified, in some cases, with the continent which Columbus found.

XII. ST. BRANDAN

THE legend of St. Brandan, which was very well known in the Middle Ages, was probably first written in Latin prose near the end of the eleventh century, and is preserved in ma.n.u.script in many English libraries. An English metrical version, written probably about the beginning of the fourteenth century, is printed under the editorship of Thomas Wright in the publications of the Percy Society, London, 1844 (XIV.), and it is followed in the same volume by an English prose version of 1527. A partial narrative in Latin prose, with an English version, may be found in W. J.

Rees's "Lives of the Cambro-British Saints" (Llandovery, 1853), pp. 251, 575. The account of Brandan in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists may be found under May 16, the work being arranged under saints' days. This account excludes the more legendary elements. The best sketch of the supposed island appears in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ for 1845 (p. 293), by D'Avezac. Professor O'Curry places the date of the alleged voyage or voyages at about the year 560 ("Lectures on the Ma.n.u.script Materials for Irish History," p. 289). Good accounts of the life in the great monasteries of Brandan's period may be found in Digby's "Mores Catholici" or "Ages of Faith"; in Montalembert's "Monks of the West" (translation); in Villemarque's "La Legende Celtique et la Poesie des Cloistres en Irlande, en Cambrie et en Bretagne" (Paris, 1864). The poem on St. Brandan, stanzas from which are quoted in the text, is by Denis Florence McCarthy, and may be found in the _Dublin University Magazine_ (x.x.xI. p. 89); and there is another poem on the subject--a very foolish burlesque--in the same magazine (Lx.x.xIX. p. 471). Matthew Arnold's poem with the same t.i.tle appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_ (LXII. p. 133), and may be found in the author's collected works in the form quoted below.

The legends of St. Brandan, it will be observed, resemble so much the tales of Sindbad the Sailor and others in the "Arabian Nights"--which have also the island-whale, the singing birds, and other features--that it is impossible to doubt that some features of tradition were held in common with the Arabs of Spain.

In later years (the twelfth century), a geographer named Honore d'Autun declared, in his "Image of the World," that there was in the ocean a certain island agreeable and fertile beyond all others, now unknown to men, once discovered by chance and then lost again, and that this island was the one which Brandan had visited. In several early maps, before the time of Columbus, the Madeira Islands appear as "The Fortunate Islands of St. Brandan," and on the famous globe of Martin Behaim, made in the very year when Columbus sailed, there is a large island much farther west than Madeira, and near the equator, with an inscription saying that in the year 565, St. Brandan arrived at this island and saw many wondrous things, returning to his own land afterwards. Columbus heard this island mentioned at Ferro, where men declared that they had seen it in the distance. Later, the chart of Ortelius, in the sixteenth century, carried it to the neighborhood of Ireland; then it was carried south again, and was supposed all the time to change its place through enchantment, and when Emanuel of Portugal, in 1519, renounced all claim to it, he described it as "The Hidden Island." In 1570 a Portuguese expedition was sent which claimed actually to have touched the mysterious island, indeed to have found there the vast impression of a human foot--doubtless of the baptized giant Mildus--and also a cross nailed to a tree, and three stones laid in a triangle for cooking food. Departing hastily from the island, they left two sailors behind, but could never find the place again.

Again and again expeditions were sent out in search of St. Brandan's island, usually from the Canaries--one in 1604 by Acosta, one in 1721 by Dominguez; and several sketches of the island, as seen from a distance, were published in 1759 by a Franciscan priest in the Canary Islands, named Viere y Clarijo, including one made by himself on May 3, 1759, about 6 A.M., in presence of more than forty witnesses. All these sketches depict the island as having its chief length from north to south, and formed of two unequal hills, the highest of these being at the north, they having between them a depression covered with trees. The fact that this resembles the general form of Palma, one of the Canary Islands, has led to the belief that it may have been an ocean mirage, reproducing the image of that island, just as the legends themselves reproduce, here and there, the traditions of the "Arabian Nights."

In a map drawn by the Florentine physician, Toscanelli, which was sent by him to Columbus in 1474 to give his impression of the Asiatic coast,-- lying, as he supposed, across the Atlantic,--there appears the island of St. Brandan. It is as large as all the Azores or Canary Islands or Cape de Verde Islands put together; its southern tip just touches the equator, and it lies about half-way between the Cape de Verde Islands and Zipangu or j.a.pan, which was then believed to lie on the other side of the Atlantic.

Mr. Winsor also tells us that the apparition of this island "sometimes came to sailors' eyes" as late as the last century (Winsor's "Columbus,"

112).

He also gives a reproduction of Toscanelli's map now lost, as far as can be inferred from descriptions (Winsor, p. 110).

The following is Matthew Arnold's poem:--

SAINT BRANDAN

Saint Brandan sails the northern main; The brotherhoods of saints are glad.

He greets them once, he sails again; So late!--such storms!--the Saint is mad!

He heard, across the howling seas, Chime convent-bells on wintry nights; He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides, Twinkle the monastery lights;

But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd-- And now no bells, no convents more!

The hurtling Polar lights are near'd, The sea without a human sh.o.r.e.

At last--(it was the Christmas-night; Stars shone after a day of storm)-- He sees float past an iceberg white, And on it--Christ!--a living form.

That furtive mien, that scowling eye, Of hair that red and tufted fell-- It is--oh, where shall Brandan fly?-- The traitor Judas, out of h.e.l.l!

Palsied with terror, Brandan sate; The moon was bright, the iceberg near.

He hears a voice sigh humbly: "Wait!

By high permission I am here.

"One moment wait, thou holy man!

On earth my crime, my death, they knew; My name is under all men's ban-- Ah, tell them of my respite, too!

"Tell them, one blessed Christmas-night-- (It was the first after I came, Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite, To rue my guilt in endless flame)--

"I felt, as I in torment lay 'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch my arm and say: _Go hence, and cool thyself an hour!_

"'Ah, whence this mercy, Lord?' I said; _The Leper recollect_, said he, _Who ask'd the pa.s.sers-by for aid,_ _In Joppa, and thy charity._

"Then I remember'd how I went, In Joppa, through the public street, One morn when the sirocco spent Its storm of dust with burning heat;

"And in the street a leper sate, Shivering with fever, naked, old; Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, The hot wind fever'd him five-fold.

"He gazed upon me as I pa.s.s'd, And murmur'd: _Help me, or I die!_-- To the poor wretch my cloak I cast, Saw him look eased, and hurried by.

"Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine, What blessing must full goodness shower, When fragment of it small, like mine, Hath such inestimable power!