me, taking of the fruits
of that land and of sorts of precious stones; and when he had sent away
the man that provided for them, who had prepared meat for him and for
the brethren season by season, he went up into the ship with the
brethren, through the darkness, whence he had begun to sail. And when
they had passed through it, they came unto the Isle Delight some, and
when he had been entertained there for the space of three days, he took
a blessing from the father of the monastery, and then under God's
leading came straight to his own monastery.'

It remains to make some remark upon the character and possible sources
of this curious composition.

In connection with fabulous voyages, it is natural to think not only of
Lucian's _Traveller's True Tale_, but also of _Gulliver's Travels_, but
these are skits, satirizing with wild wit certain features of life which
lay before the authors. The gravity of Brendan's _Voyage_ renders it
impossible to place it in any such category. It can hardly be said to
contain any grotesque adventure except that of the monster's back, and
from the way in which this is told, it is evident that it did not appear
grotesque to the narrator; and the religious tone of the whole thing
forbids any such explanation.

On the other hand, I cannot perceive any hidden meaning in it which
would assign it to the same class of allegorical romance of which
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ is the most famous example.

It is impossible that it could ever have been intended to be believed.
Some of the incidents are so obviously fabulous--for instance, that of
Judas,--that such an hypothesis would be simply to condemn the author as
a profane forger, and his tone is much too pious for that; besides
which, there would have been no possible motive; and again, although
this romance stands alone or nearly alone in the popularity which it has
attained outside its own country, as Professor O'Curry remarks, it does
not stand by any means alone within the native literature of that
country, albeit its literary merit may place it above all or nearly all
the old Irish compositions of its class. It is, however, an
extraordinary fact that it has actually been sometimes taken for sober
truth. This has not been, I think, so much the case in Ireland. There
are, it is true, one or two incidents in the Life which may be remotely
identified at bottom with incidents in the Voyage, there is even
mention of the Land of Promise, but I