May, 1079, and ends the volume by asking the reader to pray for the salvation of his soul.

TRANSCRIPTION: In all the monasteries a vast number of scribes were continually employed in multiplying copies of the Sacred Scriptures. These masterpieces of calligraphy, written by Irish hands, have been scattered throughout the libraries of Europe, and many fragments remain to the present day. The beauty of these manuscripts is praised by all, and the names of the best transcribers often find mention in monastic annals. The work was irksome, but it was looked upon as a privilege and meritorious.

It remains to speak of that glorious monument of the Irish monks, the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland. It was here that Celtic influence was most felt and endured the longest. Within its walls for centuries the sacred sciences were taught and classic authors studied. Many of its monks excelled as musicians and poets, while others were noted for their skill in calligraphy and the fine arts. The library was only in its infancy in the eighth century, but gradually it grew, and eventually became one of the largest and richest in the world. The brethren were in correspondence with all the learned houses of France and Italy, and there was constant mutual interchange of books, sacred and scientific, between them.

They manufactured their own parchment from the hides of the wild beasts that roamed in the forests around them, and bound their books in boards of wood clamped with iron or ivory.

Such was the monastery of St. Gall, which owes its inception to the journey through Europe of the great Columbanus and his monk-companions-men whose lives, according to Bede, procured for the religious habit great veneration, so that wherever they appeared they were received with joy, as God's own servants. "And what will be the reward," asks the biographer of Marianus Scotus, "of these pilgrim-monks who left the sweet soil of their native land, its mountains and hills, its valleys and its groves, its rivers and pure fountains, and went like the children of Abraham without hesitation into the land, which God had pointed out to them?" He answers thus: "They will dwell in the house of the Lord with the

angels and archangels of God forever; they will behold the God of gods in Sion, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever."

REFERENCES:

Lanigan: Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (Dublin, 1829); Montalembert: Monks of the West (Edinburgh, 1861); Moran: Irish Saints in Great Britain (Dublin, 1903); Dalgairns: Apostles of Europe (London, 1876); Healy: Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars (Dublin, 1890); Barrett: A Calendar of Scottish Saints (Fort Augustus, 1904); Stokes: Six Months in the Apennines (London, 1892), Three Months in the Forests of France (London, 1895); Fowler: Vita S. Columbæ (Oxford, 1894); Wattenbach: Articles in Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. 7 (Belfast, 1859); Gougaud: Les Chrétientés celtiques (Paris, 1911); Hogan: Articles in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1894, 1895; Drane: Christian Schools and Scholars (London, 1881).

THE IRISH AND THE SEA

BY WILLIAM H. BABCOCK, LL.B.

HE beginning of Irish navigation, like the beginning of everything else, is hidden in the mist of antiquity. Vessels of some kind obviously must have borne the successive waves of immigrants or invaders to the island. Naturally they would remain in use afterwards for trade, travel, exploration, and war. Irish ships may have been among those of the Breton fleet that Cæsar dispersed at Vannes after an obstinate struggle. Two or three centuries later we find Niall of the Nine Hostages making nautical descents on the neighboring shores, especially Britain: and there is every probability that ships of the island conveyed some at least of the "Scots" (Irish) whom Gildas in the sixth century describes as joining the Picts in furiously storming the Roman wall.

The equally adventurous but more pacific work of exploration went on also, if we may judge by that extraordinary series of Irish sea-sagas, the Imrama, comprising the Voyages of Bran, Maelduin, the Hui Corra, and St. Brendan-the lastmentioned deservedly the most famous. These vary in their literary merits and in the merits of their several parts, for they have been successively rewritten at different periods, receiving always something of the color, belief, and adornment which belonged to the writer's time; but under all may be dimly traced, as in a palimpsest, the remote pagan original. At their best they embody a lofty and touching poetry very subtle and significant, as when we read of Bran's summoning by a visitant of supernatural beauty to the isles of undying delight, where a thousand years are but as a day; his return with a companion who had been overcome by longing for Ireland and home; the man's falling to ashes at the first touch of the native soil, as though he had been long dead; and the flight of Bran and his crew from the real living world to the islands of the blessed. At least equally fine and stirring is St. Brendan's interview with the exiled spirit of Heaven, whose "sin was but little", so that he and his fellows were given only the pleasing penance of singing delightfully, in the guise of beautiful birds, the praises of

the God who showed them mercy and grace, amid the charms of an earthly paradise. "Then all the birds sang evensong, so that it was an heavenly noise to hear."

It is not very surprising that St. Brendan's legend, with such qualities in prose and verse, made itself at home in many lands and languages, and became for centuries a widespread popular favorite and matter of general belief, also influencing the most permanent literature of a high contemplative cast, which we might suppose to be out of touch with it altogether. Certain of its more unusual incidents are found even in Arab writings of romance founded on fact, as in Edrisi's narrative of the Magrurin explorers of Lisbon and the adventures of Sinbad related in the Arabian Nights; but perhaps here we have a case of reciprocal borrowing such as may well occur when ships' companies of different nations meet.

The most conspicuous, insistent, and repeated feature of all these Imrama is a belief in Atlantic islands fair enough or wonderful enough to tempt the shore dwellers of Ireland far away and hold them spell-bound for years. It is easy to ascribe these pictures to sunset on the ocean, or the wonders of mirage; but all the time, within long sailing distance, there actually were islands of delightful climate and exceeding beauty. These had been occasionally reached from the Mediterranean ever since early Carthaginian times, as classical authors seem to tell us; why not also from Ireland, perhaps not quite so distant? It is undoubted that the Canary Islands were never really altogether forgotten, and the same is probably true of the Madeiras and all three groups of Azores, though the knowledge that lingered in Ireland was a distorted glimmering tradition of old voyages, occasionally inciting to new ventures in the same field.

Some have supposed, though without sufficient evidence, that Saint Brendan even made his way to America, and parts of that shore line in several different latitudes have been selected as the scene of the exploit. His first entry into serious geography is in the fine maps of Dulcert, 1339, and the Pizigani, 1367, both of which plainly label Madeira, Porto Santo, and Las Desertas "The Fortunate Islands of St. Brandan." That there may be no possibility of misunderstanding, the Pizigani

brothers present a full-length portrait of the holy navigator himself bending over these islands with hands of benediction. The inscription, though not the picture, was common, thus applied, on the maps of the next century or two, and no other interpretation of his voyage found any place until a later time.

Of course the fourteenth century was a long way from the sixth, when the voyage was supposed to have been made, and we cannot take so late a verdict as convincing proof of any fact. But it at least exhibits the current interpretation of the written narrative among geographers and mariners, the people best able to judge; and here the interval was much less. The story itself seems to corroborate them in a general way, if read naturally. One would say that it tells of a voyage to the Canaries, of which one is unmistakably "the island under Mount Atlas", and that this was undertaken by way of the Azores and Madeira, with inevitable experience of great beauty in some islands and volcanic terrors in others. Madeira may well have been pitched upon by the interpreters as the suitable scene of a particularly long tarrying by the way. Of course magic filled out all gaps of real knowledge, and wonders grew with each new rewriting.

Whatever Brendan did, there is no doubt that Irish marinermonks, incited by the great awakening which followed St. Patrick's mission, covered many seas in their frail vessels during the next three or four centuries. They set up a flourishing religious establishment in Orkney, made stepping stones of the intervening islands, and reached Iceland some time in the eighth century, if not earlier. The Norsemen, following in their tracks as always, found them there, and the earliest Icelandic writings record their departure, leaving behind them books, bells, and other souvenirs on an islet off shore which still bears their name.

Did they keep before the Norsemen to America too? At least the Norsemen thought so. For centuries the name Great Ireland or Whitemen's Land was accepted in Norse geography as meaning a region far west of Ireland, a parallel to Great Sweden (Russia), which lay far east of Sweden. The saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, first to attempt colonizing America, makes it plain that his followers believed Great Ireland to be some