THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 763
an equally oriental look about it. One of the liveliest medieval legends of the sea steers exclusively towards this island: the voyage of St Brendan. The voyager himself,
St Brendan, is historically documented, he was abbot of an Irish monastery and lived in the sixth century. It was the age of sea­hermits, that is, of monks who fled to
lonely islands (as the Egyptian monks fled into the desert), to lead a life of contemplation there. The Faroes and Shetland Islands were discovered in this way, and some
real experiences may underlie Brendan's legendary voyage too. But the utopian longing for the golden Somewhere of an enclave of happiness which escaped the Fall
features far more lavishly in it and its legend. The legend of the Navigatio St Brendani dates in the existing version from the eleventh century, but it is much older, on that
occasion it was revised from a sermon of the ninth century, was recorded in many more versions, was translated into almost all European languages, and kept the
awareness of an island of paradise alive for centuries (cf. Babcock, Legendary Islands of the Atlantic, 192–2., p. 34ff.). The content resembles an epic religious
adventure; Brendan hears the voice of an angel in the night: God has given you what you are looking for, even the Promised Land. He mans a boat, sails westwards
from Ireland for fifteen days, finds a palace with sumptuous food and invisible hosts, sails on for seven months in an unspecified direction, and finds an island with
countless herds of sheep. When the crew attempt to roast a sheep on the fire, the island sinks; it was the back of an enormous whale, and the fire had interrupted its
rest. After a host of fresh adventures, full of poisonous fish and fire­breathing sea­serpents, fiendish birds and even entrances to Hell, Brendan reaches an old islandhermit
far out in the Atlantic who knows the way to the Promised Isle. Here a predecessor of Brendan's also turns up, Meruoc, who had made the voyage to the
Promised Land a long time before; he concealed himself so thoroughly that he can live ‘in the first home of Adam and Eve’, i.e. in the earthly paradise, despite the
curse. A further sign of the approaching paradise is the insula uvarum, the wine island of Bacchus, on which the sailors spend forty days, to load their ship with grapes in
the end. Brendan reaches the island that was promised to him, saints live there who have been expecting him, he wakes a mysterious giant in the cave of sleep: the
earthly paradise, behind the dark sea of the Atlantic, has been opened up. After seven years Brendan and his crew of monks return via the Orkades, bringing their
account of the ‘Promised Land of Saints’, this vine­growing India in the west or right through the west. So much for the most famous sea yarn of the Christian Middle
Ages and one which was completely believed, in