Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic — 20 - Chapter XX: Bimini and the Fountain of Youth

BIMINI AND THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

When Juan Ponce de Leon set forth from Porto Rico, March 13, 1512, to seek the island of Bimini and its Fountain of Youth, he was moved by the love of adventure more than by that of juvenility, for he was then but about fifty, a time when a cavalier of his day thought himself but in his prime.

He looked indeed with perpetual sorrow--as much of it as a Spaniard of those days could feel--upon his kinsman Luis Ponce, once a renowned warrior, but on whom age had already, at sixty-five, laid its hand in earnest.

There was little in this slowly moving veteran to recall one who had shot through the lists at the tournament, and had advanced with his short sword at the bull fight,--who had ruled his vassals, and won the love of high-born women.

It was a vain hope of restored youth which had brought Don Luis from Spain to Porto Rico four years before; and, when Ponce de Leon had subdued that island, his older kinsman was forever beseeching him to carry his flag farther, and not stop till he had reached Bimini, and sought the Fountain of Youth.

"For what end," he said, "should you stay here longer and lord it over these miserable natives?

Let us go where we can bathe in those enchanted waters and be young once more.

I need it, and you will need it ere long."

"How know we," said his kinsman, "that there is any such place?"

"All know it," said Luis.

"Peter Martyr saith that there is in Bimini a continual spring of running water of such marvellous virtue that the water thereof, being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young."

And he adds that an Indian grievously oppressed with old age, moved with the fame of that fountain, and allured through the love of longer life, went to an island, near unto the country of Florida, to drink of the desired fountain, ...

and having well drunk and washed himself for many days with the appointed remedies, by them who kept the bath, he is reported to have brought home a manly strength, and to have used all manly exercises.

"Let us therefore go thither," he cried, "and be like him."

They set sail with three brigantines and found without difficulty the island of Bimini among the Lucayos (or Bahamas) islands; but when they searched for the Fountain of Youth they were pointed farther westward to Florida, where there was said to be a river of the same magic powers, called the Jordan.

Touching at many a fair island green with trees, and occupied by a gentle population till then undisturbed, it was not strange if, nearing the coast of Florida, both Juan Ponce de Leon and his more impatient cousin expected to find the Fountain of Youth.

They came at last to an inlet which led invitingly up among wooded banks and flowery valleys, and here the older knight said, "Let us disembark here and strike inland.

My heart tells me that here at last will be found the Fountain of Youth."

"Nonsense," said Juan, "our way lies by water."

"Then leave me here with my men," said Luis.

He had brought with him five servants, mostly veterans, from his own estate in Spain.

A fierce discussion ended in Luis obtaining his wish, and being left for a fortnight of exploration; his kinsman promising to come for him again at the mouth of the river St. John.

The men left on shore were themselves past middle age, and the more eager for their quest.

They climbed a hill and watched the brigantines disappear in the distance; then set up a cross, which they had brought with them, and prayed before it bareheaded.

Sending the youngest of his men up to the top of a tree, Luis learned from him that they were on an island, after all, and this cheered him much, as making it more likely that they should find the Fountain of Youth.

He saw that the ground was pawed up, as if in a cattle-range and that there was a path leading to huts.

Taking this path, they met fifty Indian bowmen, who, whether large or not, seemed to them like giants.

The Spaniards gave them beads and hawk-bells, and each received in return an arrow, as a token of friendship.

The Indians promised them food in the morning, and brought fish, roots, and pure water; and finding them chilly from the coldness of the night, carried them in their arms to their homes, first making four or five large fires on the way.

At the houses there were many fires, and the Spaniards would have been wholly comfortable, had they not thought it just possible that they were to be offered as a sacrifice.

Still fearing this, they left their Indian friends after a few days and traversed the country, stopping at every spring or fountain to test its quality.

Alas!

they all grew older and more worn in look, as time went on, and farther from the Fountain of Youth.

After a time they came upon new tribes of Indians, and as they went farther from the coast these people seemed more and more friendly.

They treated the white men as if come from heaven,--brought them food, made them houses, carried every burden for them.

Some had bows, and went upon the hills for deer, and brought half a dozen every night for their guests;

others killed hares and rabbits by arranging themselves in a circle and striking down the game with billets of wood as it ran from one to another through the woods.

All this game was brought to the visitors to be breathed upon and blessed, and when this had to be done for several hundred people it became troublesome.

The women also brought wild fruit, and would eat nothing till the guests had seen and touched it.

If the visitors seemed offended, the natives were terrified, and apparently thought that they should die unless they had the favor of these wise and good men.

Farther on, people did not come out into the paths to gather round them, as the first had done, but stayed meekly in their houses, sitting with their faces turned to the wall, and with their property heaped in the middle of the room.

From these people the travellers received many valuable skins, and other gifts.

Wherever there was a fountain, the natives readily showed it, but apparently knew nothing of any miraculous gift; yet they themselves were in such fine physical condition, and seemed so young and so active, that it was as if they had already bathed in some magic spring.

They had wonderful endurance of heat and cold, and such health that, when their bodies were pierced through and through by arrows, they would recover rapidly from their wounds.

These things convinced the Spaniards that, even if the Indians would not disclose the source of all their bodily freshness, it must, at any rate, lie somewhere in the neighborhood.

Yet a little while, no doubt, and their visitors would reach it.

It was a strange journey for these gray and careworn men as they passed up the defiles and valleys along the St. John's River, beyond the spot where now spreads the city of Jacksonville, and even up to the woods and springs about Magnolia and Green Cove.

Yellow jasmines trailed their festoons above their heads; wild roses grew at their feet; the air was filled with the aromatic odors of pine or sweet bay; the long gray moss hung from the live-oak branches; birds and butterflies of wonderful hues fluttered around them; and strange lizards crossed their paths, or looked with dull and blinking eyes from the branches.

They came, at last, to one spring which widened into a natural basin, and which was so deliciously aromatic that Luis Ponce said, on emerging: "It is enough.

I have bathed in the Fountain of Youth, and henceforth I am young."

His companions tried it, and said the same: "The Fountain of Youth is found."

No time must now be lost in proclaiming the great discovery.

They obtained a boat from the natives, who wept at parting with the white strangers whom they had so loved.

In this boat they proposed to reach the mouth of the St. John, meet Juan Ponce de Leon, and carry back the news to Spain.

But one native, whose wife and children they had cured, and who had grown angry at their refusal to stay longer, went down to the water's edge and, sending an arrow from his bow, transfixed Don Luis, so that even his foretaste of the Fountain could not save him, and he died ere reaching the mouth of the river.

If Don Luis ever reached what he sought, it was in another world.

But those who have ever bathed in Green Cove Spring, near Magnolia, on the St. John's River, will be ready to testify that, had he but stayed there longer, he would have found something to recall his visions of the Fountain of Youth.

NOTES

PREFACE

A Full account of the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 will be found in Major's "Life of Prince Henry of Portugal" (London, 1868), p. 138. For the statement as to the lingering belief in the Jacquet Island, see Winsor's "Columbus," p. 111. The extract from Cowley is given by Herman Melville in his picturesque paper on "The Encantadas" (_Putnam's Magazine_, III.

319).

In Harris's "Voyages" (1702) there is a map giving "Cowley's Inchanted Isl."

(I.

78), but there is no explanation of the name.

The passage quoted by Melville is not to be found in Cowley's "Voyage to Magellanica and Polynesia," given by Harris in the same volume, and must be taken from Cowley's "Voyage round the Globe," which I have not found in any library.

I. ATLANTIS

For the original narrative of Socrates, see Plato's "Timaeus" and "Critias," in each of which it is given.

For further information see the chapter on the Geographical Knowledge of the Ancients by W. H.

Tillinghast, in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," I. 15. He mentions (I. 19, note) a map printed at Amsterdam in 1678 by Kircher, which shows Atlantis as a large island midway between Spain and America.

Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World" (N. Y.

1882), maintains that the evidence for the former existence of such an island is irresistible, and his work has been very widely read, although it is not highly esteemed by scholars.

II. TALIESSIN

The Taliessin legend in its late form cannot be traced back beyond the end of the sixteenth century, but the account of the transformation is to be found in the "Book of Taliessin," a manuscript of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Hengwt Collection at Peniarth.

The Welsh bard himself is supposed to have flourished in the sixth century.

See Alfred Nutt in "The Voyage of Bram" (London, 1897), II.

86. The traditions may be found in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," 2d ed.

, London, 1877, p. 471. The poems may be found in the original Welsh in Skene's "Four Ancient Books of Wales," 2 vols.

, Edinburgh, 1868; and he also gives a facsimile of the manuscript.

III. CHILDREN OF LIR

The lovely legend of the children of Lir or Lear forms one of those three tales of the old Irish Bards which are known traditionally in Ireland as "The Three Sorrows of Story Telling."

It has been told in verse by Aubrey de Vere ("The Foray of Queen Meave, and Other Legends," London, 1882), by John Todhunter ("Three Irish Bardic Tales," London, 1896); and also in prose by various writers, among whom are Professor Eugene O'Curry, whose version with the Gaelic original was published in "Atlantis," Nos.

vii.

and viii.

; Gerald Griffin in "The Tales of a Jury Room"; and Dr. Patrick Weston Joyce in "Ancient Celtic Romances" (London, 1879).

The oldest manuscript copy of the tale in Gaelic is one in the British Museum, made in 1718; but there are more modern ones in different English and Irish libraries, and the legend itself is of much older origin.

Professor O'Curry, the highest authority, places its date before the year 1000. ("Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Irish History," p. 319. ) IV. USHEEN

In the original legend, Oisin or Usheen is supposed to have told his tale to St. Patrick on his arrival in Ireland; but as the ancient Feni were idolaters, the hero bears but little goodwill to the saint.

The Celtic text of a late form of the legend (1749) with a version by Brian O'Looney will be found in the transactions of the Ossianic Society for 1856 (Vol. IV.

p. 227); and still more modern and less literal renderings in P. W.

Joyce's "Ancient Celtic Romances" (London, 1879), p. 385, and in W. B.

Yeats's "Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems" (London, 1889), p. 1. The last is in verse and is much the best.

St. Patrick, who takes part in it, regards Niam as "a demon thing."

See also the essays entitled "L'Elysée Transatlantique," by Eugene Beauvois, in the "Revue de L'Histoire des Religions," VII.

273 (Paris, 1885), and "L'Eden Occidental" (same, VII.

673).

As to Oisin or Usheen's identity with Ossian, see O'Curry's "Lectures on the Manuscript Materials for Ancient Irish History" (Dublin, 1861), pp. 209, 300; John Rhys's "Hibbert Lectures" (London, 1888), p. 551. The latter thinks the hero identical with Taliessin, as well as with Ossian, and says that the word Ossin means "a little fawn," from "os," "cervus."

(See also O'Curry, p. 304. ) O'Looney represents that it was a stone which Usheen threw to show his strength, and Joyce follows this view; but another writer in the same volume of the Ossianic Society transactions (p. 233) makes it a bag of sand, and Yeats follows this version.

It is also to be added that the latter in later editions changes the spelling of his hero's name from Oisin to Usheen.

V. BRAN

The story of Bran and his sister Branwen may be found most fully given in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," ed.

1877, pp. 369, 384. She considers Harlech, whence Bran came, to be a locality on the Welsh seacoast still known by that name and called also Branwen's Tower.

But Rhys, a much higher authority, thinks that Bran came really from the region of Hades, and therefore from a distant island ("Arthurian Legend," p. 250, "Hibbert Lectures," pp. 94, 269).

The name of "the Blessed" came from the legend of Bran's having introduced Christianity into Ireland, as stated in one of the Welsh Triads.

He was the father of Caractacus, celebrated for his resistance to the Roman conquest, and carried a prisoner to Rome.

Another triad speaks of King Arthur as having dug up Bran's head, for the reason that he wished to hold England by his own strength; whence followed many disasters (Guest, p. 387).

There were many Welsh legends in regard to Branwen or Bronwen (White Bosom), and what is supposed to be her grave, with an urn containing her ashes, may still be seen at a place called "Ynys Bronwen," or "the islet of Bronwen," in Anglesea.

It was discovered and visited in 1813 (Guest, p. 389).

The White Mount in which Bran's head was deposited is supposed to have been the Tower of London, described by a Welsh poet of the twelfth century as "The White Eminence of London, a place of splendid fame" (Guest, p. 392).

VI. THE CASTLE OF THE ACTIVE DOOR

This legend is mainly taken from different parts of Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," with some additions and modifications from Rhys's "Hibbert Lectures" and "The Arthurian Legend."

VIII. MERLIN

In later years Merlin was known mainly by a series of remarkable prophecies which were attributed to him and were often said to be fulfilled by actual events in history.

Thus one of the many places where Merlin's grave was said to be was Drummelzion in Tweeddale, Scotland.

On the east side of the churchyard a brook called the Pansayl falls into the Tweed, and there was this prophecy as to their union:-- "When Tweed and Pansayl join at Merlin's grave, Scotland and England shall one monarch have."

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, pubes Ver manent aeternum.

Nec flos, nec lilia desunt, Nec rosa, nec violae: flores et poma sub unâ Fronde gerit pomus.

Habitant sine labe cruoris Semper ibi juvenes cum virgine: nulla senectus, Nulla vis morbi, nullus dolor; omnia plena Laetitiae; 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 nobilis arte.

At simul Arthurus regni diadema reliquit, Substitutique sibi regem, se transtulit illic;

Anno quingeno quadragenoque secundo Post incarnatum sine patris semine natum.

Immodicè 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 passage 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 encompass'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, clustering 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 class 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 illustrated the wider and wider space assigned 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 manuscript 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 Manuscript 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 Villemarqué's "La Legende Celtique et la Poésie 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_ (XXXI.

p. 89); and there is another poem on the subject--a very foolish burlesque--in the same magazine (LXXXIX.

p. 471).

Matthew Arnold's poem with the same title 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 Honoré 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 Japan, 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 shore.

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 hell!

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 passers-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 pass'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!

"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I Did that chance act of good, that one!

Then went my way to kill and lie-- Forgot my good as soon as done.

"That germ of kindness, in the womb Of mercy caught, did not expire;

Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom, And friends me in this pit of fire.

"Once every year, when carols wake On earth the Christmas-night's repose, Arising from the sinner's lake, I journey to these healing snows.

"I stanch with ice my burning breast, With silence balm my whirling brain;

O Brandan!

to this hour of rest That Joppan leper's ease was pain."

Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;

He bow'd his head, he breathed a prayer-- Then look'd, and lo, the frosty skies!

The iceberg, and no Judas there!

The island of St. Brandan's was sometimes supposed to lie in the Northern Atlantic, sometimes farther south.

It often appears as the Fortunate Isle or Islands, "Insulae Fortunatae" or "Beatae."

On some early maps (1306 to 1471) there is an inlet on the western coast of Ireland called "Lacus Fortunatus," which is filled with Fortunate Islands to the number of 358 (Humboldt, "Examen," II.

p. 159), and in one map of 1471 both these and the supposed St. Brandan's group appear in different parts of the ocean under the same name.

When the Canary Islands were discovered, they were supposed to be identical with St. Brandan's, but the latter was afterwards supposed to lie southeast of them.

After the discovery of the Azores various expeditions were sent to search for St. Brandan's until about 1721. It was last reported as seen in 1759. A full bibliography will be found in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," I.

p. 48, and also in Humboldt's "Examen," II.

p. 163, and early maps containing St. Brandan's will be found in Winsor (I. pp. 54, 58).

The first of these is Pizigani's (1387), containing "Ysolae dictae Fortunatae," and the other that of Ortelius (1587), containing "S. Brandain."

XIII. HY-BRASAIL

"The people of Aran, with characteristic enthusiasm, fancy, that at certain periods, they see Hy-Brasail, elevated far to the west in their watery horizon.

This has been the universal tradition of the ancient Irish, who supposed that a great part of Ireland had been swallowed by the sea, and that the sunken part often rose and was seen hanging in the horizon: such was the popular notion.

The Hy-Brasail of the Irish is evidently a part of the Atlantis of Plato; who, in his 'Timaeus,' says that that island was totally swallowed up by a prodigious earthquake."

(O'Flaherty's "Discourse on the History and Antiquities of the Southern Islands of Aran, lying off the West Coast of Ireland," 1824, p. 139. ) The name appeared first (1351) on the chart called the Medicean Portulana, applied to an island off the Azores.

In Pizigani's map (1367) there appear three islands of this name, two off the Azores and one off Ireland.

From this time the name appears constantly in maps, and in 1480 a man named John Jay went out to discover the island on July 14, and returned unsuccessful on September 18. He called it Barsyle or Brasylle;

and Pedro d'Ayalo, the Spanish Ambassador, says that such voyages were made for seven years "according to the fancies of the Genoese, meaning Sebastian Cabot."

Humboldt thinks that the wood called Brazil-wood was supposed to have come from it, as it was known before the South American Brazil was discovered.

A manuscript history of Ireland, written about 1636, in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, says that Hy-Brasail was discovered by a Captain Rich, who saw its harbor but could never reach it.

It is mentioned by Jeremy Taylor ("Dissuasives from Popery," 1667), and the present narrative is founded partly on an imaginary one, printed in a pamphlet in London, 1675, and reprinted in Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy" (1831), II.

p. 369. The French Geographer Royal, M. Tassin, thinks that the island may have been identical with Porcupine Bank, once above water.

In Jeffrey's atlas (1776) it appears as "the imaginary island of O'Brasil."

"Brazil Rock" appears on a chart of Purdy, 1834 (Humboldt's "Examen Critique," II.

p. 163).

Two rocks always associated with it, Mayda and Green Rock, appear on an atlas issued in 1866. See bibliography in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," I. p. 49, where there are a number of maps depicting it (I.

pp. 54-57).

The name of the island is derived by Celtic scholars from _breas_, large, and _i_, island; or, according to O'Brien's "Irish Dictionary," its other form of O'Brasile means a large imaginary island (Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," I. p. 369).

There are several families named Brazil in County Waterford, Ireland ("Transactions of the Ossianic Society, Dublin," 1854, I. p. 81).

The following poem about the island, by Gerald Griffin, will be found in Sparling's "Irish Minstrelsy" (1888), p. 427:-- HY-BRASAIL, THE ISLE OF THE BLEST

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;

Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest, And they called it Hy-Brasail, the isle of the blest.

From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim, The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;

The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay, And it looked like an Eden away, far away!

A peasant who heard of the wonderful tale, In the breeze of the Orient loosened his sail;

From Ara, the holy, he turned to the west, For though Ara was holy, Hy-Brasail was blest.

He heard not the voices that called from the shore-- He heard not the rising wind's menacing roar;

Home, kindred, and safety he left on that day, And he sped to Hy-Brasail, away, far away!

Morn rose on the deep, and that shadowy isle, O'er the faint rim of distance, reflected its smile;

Noon burned on the wave, and that shadowy shore Seemed lovelily distant, and faint as before;

Lone evening came down on the wanderer's track, And to Ara again he looked timidly back;

O far on the verge of the ocean it lay, Yet the isle of the blest was away, far away!

Rash dreamer, return!

O ye winds of the main, Bear him back to his own peaceful Ara again, Rash fool!

for a vision of fanciful bliss, To barter thy calm life of labor and peace.

The warning of reason was spoken in vain;

He never revisited Ara again!

Night fell on the deep, amidst tempest and spray, And he died on the waters, away, far away!

XIV. ISLAND OF SATAN'S HAND

The early part of this narrative is founded on Professor O'Curry's Lectures on the manuscript materials of Irish history; it being another of those "Imrama" or narratives of ocean expeditions to which the tale of St. Brandan belongs.

The original narrative lands the three brothers ultimately in Spain, and it is a curious fact that most of what we know of the island of Satanaxio or Satanajio--which remained so long on the maps-- is taken from an Italian narrative of three other brothers, cited by Formaleoni, "Il Pellegrinaccio di tre giovanni," by Christoforo Armeno (Gaffarel, "Les Iles Fantastiques," p. 91).

The coincidence is so peculiar that it offered an irresistible temptation to link the two trios of brothers into one narrative and let the original voyagers do the work of exploration.

The explanation given by Gaffarel to the tale is the same that I have suggested as possible.

He says in "Iles Fantastiques de l'Atlantaque" (p. 12), "S'il nous était permis d'aventurer une hypothèse, nous croirions voluntiers que les navigateurs de l'époque rencontrèrent, en s'aventurant dans l'Atlantique, quelques-uns de ces gigantesques icebergs, ou montagnes de glace, arrachés aux banquises du pôle nord, et entraînés au sud par les courants, dont la rencontre, assez fréquente, est, même aujourd'hui, tellement redoutée par les capitaines.

Ces icebergs, quand ils se heurtent contre un navire, le coulent à pic; et comme ils arrivent à l'improviste, escortés par d'épais brouillards, ils paraissent réellement sortir du sein des flots, comme sortait la main de Satan, pour précipiter au fond de l'abîme matelots et navires."

As to the name itself there has been much discussion.

On the map of Bianco (1436)-- reproduced in Winsor, I. p. 54--the name "Ya de Lamansatanaxio" distinctly appears, and this was translated by both Formaleoni and Humboldt as meaning "the Island of the Hand of Satan."

D'Avezac was the first to suggest that the reference was to two separate islands, the one named "De la Man" or "Danman," and the other "Satanaxio."

He further suggests-- followed by Gaffarel--that the name of the island may originally have been San Atanagio, thus making its baptism a tribute to St. Athanasius instead of to Satan.

This would certainly have been a curious transformation, and almost as unexpected in its way as the original conversion of the sinful brothers from outlaws to missionaries.

XV. ANTILLIA

The name Antillia appears first, but not very clearly, on the Pizigani map of 1367; then clearly on a map of 1424, preserved at Weimar, on that of Bianco in 1436, and on the globe of Beheim in 1492, which adds in an inscription the story of the Seven Bishops.

On some maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there appears near it a smaller island under the name of Sette Cidade, or Sete Ciudades, which is properly another name for the same island.

Toscanelli, in his famous letter to Columbus, recommended Antillia as a good way-station for his voyage to India.

The island is said by tradition to have been re-discovered by a Portuguese sailor in 1447. Tradition says that this sailor went hastily to the court of Portugal to announce the discovery, but was blamed for not having remained longer, and so fled.

It was supposed to be "a large, rectangular island extending from north to south, lying in the mid Atlantic about lat.

35 N."