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On the flowery shore of a tropic isle, under clustering boughs of lime and citron, knelt the venerable figure of Saint Brandan, and upon a towering, jagged iceberg, whose crystal cliffs and diamond peaks glittered with the ghastly radiance reflected from arctic moon and boreal flames, lay Judas, pressing his hot palms and burning breast to the frigid bosom of his sailing sapphire berg.
In reward for this, the angel now told him, he was to have, once a year, an hour's respite from his pain; he was allowed in that hour to fling himself on an iceberg and cool his burning heat as he drifted through the northern seas. Then St. Brandan bent his head in prayer; and when he looked up, the hour was passed, and Judas had been hurried back into his torments.
I am no better than those awful ponces in Leicester Square, who can be flogged if they are caught, and serve them right too. And all that filthy Yoshiwara, it belongs to Asako, to my sweet innocent little girl, just as Brandan belongs to my father; and with all this filthy money we have been buying comforts and clothes and curios and rubbish."
But the fairies took to the water-babies, and taught them their lessons themselves. And some say that St. Brandan will awake and begin to teach the babies once more: but some think that he will sleep on, for better for worse, till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.
Some of these men were occupied, in various mechanic arts, some in mining, but most of them in agriculture, which they carried on with their own hands, without the aid of animals, and in total silence. Having thus labored in the fields until noonday, Brandan then returned that he might work in the library, transcribing ancient manuscripts or illustrating books of prayer.
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 often told the people and the brethren of the wonders he had seen in lands Columbus was to rediscover nine hundred years later, and he dwelt with marvelling on the mercy of God as shown to Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ, who was encountered in the northern seas, lying naked on an iceberg in silent delight. St. Brandan recognized him by portraits he had seen and hailed him.
Brandan. Here in Lisbon, poring over old maps, by fortunate miscalculation underestimating the size of the earth, noting, as expedition after expedition returned, the indefinite southern extension of the African coast, Columbus became convinced that the Portuguese had chosen the longer route to the East, and that "the Indies in the east might in the Earth's Globositie be as readily found out by the west, following the sun in his daily journey."
REFERENCES: Babcock: Early Norse Visits to North America, Smithsonian Publication 2138 ; Baring-Gould: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages; Beauvois: The Discovery of the New World by the Irish; Cantwell: Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America; Daly: The Legend of St. Brandan, Celtic Review, vol. I, A Sequel to the Voyage of St. By REV. P.S. DINNEEN, M.A., R.U.I.
Gautier, in a geographical chart, annexed to his Observations on Natural History, published in 1755, places it five degrees to the west of the island of Ferro, in the 29th deg. of N. latitude. Such are the principal facts existing relative to the island of St. Brandan: Its reality was for a long time a matter of firm belief.