IRISH/CELTS
Despite their almost stubborn and concerted efforts to do so, it’s hard for scientists to ignore the evidence when it’s staring them in the face. In Maine there’s a carving of a dude, sorry druid, who looks very Celtic. In Vermont a burial chamber has been found which is decorated with Celtic script proclaiming it as being dedicated to Bel, the ancient Sun god of the Celts while in - perhaps ironically - Salem (not that one), New Hampshire, a collection of dolmens and megaliths look very Celtic too. Bel pops up again in Colorado, where in a cave called, um, Crack Cave, there’s an inscription in Ogham (ancient Celtic alphabet, see my History of Ireland journal for more) which says “Strike on here.” Huh? Sorry, sorry: “Strikes here on the day of Bel.” Okay, well, still sounds like a call to the Celts to down tools... All right, if you insist. You're no fun anymore.
Rather like the burial chamber in Newgrange in Ireland, the sun’s first rays at the summer solstice (June 21) do indeed strike the inscription first.
A small tool believed to be a bone comb was found at the hilariously-named Snapp’s Bridge (wouldn't fancy crossing that!) in Tennessee, but was later discovered to be a stamping tool for use on pottery, made by, you guessed it, Celts again. Iberian ones this time. No not Siberian: Iberian, the countries now known as Spain and Portugal. Oh, and two skeletons too - or what was left of them - which date from about the third century BC. Inscribed stones believed to have been the work of Basque Celts have been found all over Pennsylvania, while back in Stephen King country, there are Celtic Ogham inscriptions in Maine which say “Ships from Phoenicia; Cargo Platform”, and that leads us to the next bunch who got more than a jump on Columbus.
Land of Saints and Sailors: The Voyage of Saint Brendan
Personally, when someone has “saint” before their name, I tend to treat with a certain amount of skepticism the evidence of their existence, but I probably should not. I mean, essentially these are men and women who surely existed, are perhaps credited with miracles which then elevated them to be canonised by the Catholic Church. Saint Patrick certainly seems to have existed, as did Saint George and Saint Bernadette; in fact, most if not all saints probably were real people.
Opinion, however, remains divided as to the actual existence of Saint Brendan, an Irish monk who, in the sixth century, set sail across the Atlantic, something I believe no Irishman had attempted before. Whether he was real or not - the account of his voyage was only compiled three hundred years after his death - there’s also doubt as to whether he made the voyage described therein, but there are those who believe he did. Taking those people as our lodestar, we’ll cast off with this enigmatic Irish priest and see where he takes us.
From what we know of him, Brendan was born in Tralee in County Kerry in about 484. Rising to the position of abbot, he seems to have perhaps missed his calling, as he was said to have been an expert sailor and very interested in exploration, sailing the coast of Ireland and on to Scotland and Wales, the Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands, and as far as Brittany in France. He seems to have lived to about 90, a good age for the time, especially for someone who engaged in such strenuous and potentially dangerous activities. Unlike the Spanish and even, as discussed above, the Chinese Buddhist missionaries, Brendan did not set out to convert, but as a monk simply to find a place of solitude and grace, a place to be at one with God, a retreat at which he could dedicate his life to pure prayer. Sure we’ve all felt like that at one time or another, right? Right? Hello? Have it your own way then.
From what we’re told in
Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot) it seems he was not the first Irish monk to see America, at least according to another one called Barinthus, who came to him (according to the book) and told him he had found a beautiful land in the west, the “Promised Land of the Saints.” Brendan decided he’d go and have a look for this mythical place, as it sounded just like the sort of thing for a man ready to settle down and devote his life to God, with no distractions or interruptions. “Promised Land of the Saints?” he almost certainly did not say, “That sounds just the ticket.
Go raibh mile mhath agat, mo chara (Thanks pal) - I’ll go and take a butchers.”
Apparently monks were good at other things than praying and tsking at single mothers, as Brendan and fourteen others of his order constructed the ship that would take him across the ocean, then another three appeared and, not having taken part in the work, cadged a lift so that there were eighteen people eventually in the curragh, or skin-covered low-sitting boat, when it departed. With so much symbolism, mythology and outright fiction included in the narrative, it’s hard to plot the course Brendan and his monks followed, but scholars (those who believe he existed as well as those who believe he made the voyage and didn’t just cobble the account together from details of other journeys) reckon he made landfall around the Faroe Islands first. In a twist used almost twelve hundred years later in
Star Wars, it’s related that at one point the boys landed on an island but that when it began to move they realised they were actually on the surface of a whale! No doubt they blessed it and moved on.
But sure isn’t it always the same? You can go to the farthest corners of the earth on holidays and who will you meet but your next-door neighbour or office colleague? So it was that when the monks landed on what is believed to be one of the islands in the Azores, Flores, they met a party of Irish monks who were living there, and had a monastery and all sorted out and going for nearly as long as Brendan had been born. Sure throw on the kettle there will ya, like a good lad! I’m gasping, so I am! Christmas being near, nobody wanted to spend it bobbing along on the ocean so they decided to kip down with the lads till the festive, sorry holy season was over, and sure didn’t they have a grand time? Well, I don’t know that they did, but I assume it was better than constant cries of “Any land yet?” with attendant groans in the negative, and some possibly very unholy comments on why they had ever left Ireland in the first place, and how they could murder a pint of mead.
565 didn’t start too well for our Brendan, with his craft constantly being blown back the way he had come. “I said WEST, damn it I mean darn it I mean if you please brother!” Like some sort of aquatic ping-pong ball the monks’ vessel bounced from west to east, east to west, played with by the prevailing winds, called, maddeningly for the boys, the Westerlies. But they blow east… Look, don’t ask me, all right? I’m just the author here. I don’t know nothing about winds in the Azores, okay? After a bad pint (of water) at São Miguel the lads weren’t feeling too clever, but pushed on regardless, fifth time lucky perhaps? No such luck. This time they got trapped, Coleridge’s
Ancient Mariner-like, in the Sargasso Sea, where they remained becalmed for twenty days. Brendan told the monks to trust in God. It’s possible some of the monks advised him where he could shove God, but eventually a wind rose and they were able to sail on… right into the path of an approaching killer whale, whose attentions they only avoided by the rather convenient expedient of another whale appearing and fighting it. I didn’t know whales fought. Well these did, if we’re to believe the old
Navigatio, and I guess Brendan and the lads must have credited the appearance of the second one to God, and the monk or monks who had blasphemed his name possibly looked sheepish.
“Hey! We’re going to Barbados!” they almost categorically did not sing, for three reasons. One, they had no idea where they were going, two the song would not be written for another millennium and a half and three, well, they were monks, and in all likelihood only sang for the greater glory of God, or to give Him a headache and remind him they were, yes, still out here, Lord, drifting around like frigging drifting things, pardon our Irish. If you could see your mighty way clear any time soon to finding us some bloody land that would be just great, if it’s not too much trouble, yours in adoration but very much approaching exasperation now, Brendan and the monks. PS No we are not a bloody rock band. Rock has not been invented yet.
Anyway, they found Barbados distinctly lacking in scantily-clothed natives and without suspicious clouds of smoke wreathing the place, thought “well this can’t be the Promised Land of the Saints, can it?” and moved briskly on, though for centuries afterwards, right up to and after indeed 1492, Barbados was known as “St. Brendan’s Isle.” Staying a mere three months (some say three days: doesn’t time fly when you’re on a completely uninhabited island with a bunch of irritable monks?) off they went. On the way they had a pink flamingo - oh no wait: a pink flamingo dropped a branch on their boat. This led them to the Bahamas, where they stayed for a while, snaffling all the cool fruit they could when they left, and quite possibly sporting a most un-monkish (and un-Irish) tan. Finding themselves north of Newfoundland and south of Greenland they came across an iceberg, which would surely have been the first time any Irishman had seen such a thing. They weren’t the Titanic though and didn’t crash into it, though they did circle it and measure it at 2,100 feet. That’s more than five times the size of the one that did for the world’s most famous shipwreck.
Some time later (there’s no real measurement of time in the
Navigatio: they use phrases such as “on a certain day” as well as using “forty days” as a general yardstick for a long time) it seems Satan must have been trying to scupper the voyage. Perhaps they were getting too close to the Promised Land of the Saints? Anyway here’s the rather amusing take Saint Brendan had on it, with what Huyghe believes to be the explanation following it.
"Suddenly, from a “rocky” island ahead of them, they heard the banging of hammers of iron and anvils, and assumed the island was “full of workers.” One of the “workers” ran down to the shore and hurled a fiery mass at them, which missed, fell into the sea, and began to glow. More fiery masses were hurled after they had passed. “The entire island was burning like a furnace and the sea boiled up... .” From a great distance “a very offensive stench reached their nose.” Brendan called the area “the confines of hell.”
This vivid description suggests that the traveling monks had witnessed the eruption of a submarine volcano. Given the limited geographic occurrence of this phenomenon, the episode provides a good indication of Brendan’s position. Northeast of the summer iceberg region about a thousand miles lies the submarine ridge off the Reykianes Peninsula on the southwestern comer of Iceland. A number of islands are known to have appeared in this region as a result of volcanic eruptions in the course of history.
It’s quite interesting how people who had no idea such things even existed, never mind ever saw one before, interpreted these phenomena. To Brendan’s credit, he didn’t necessarily attribute it to Satan (that was me messing about) though as you can see he did consider the possibility that they had sailed close to Hell.
Bad luck continued to dog the voyage, maybe because of those comments as to where God could stick it, and as they approached “The Land of Fire” (Iceland) one of the monks was chosen to go ashore and explore the dark soil around the boiling mountain. I like to think it was the one I’ve decided grumbled about God. You can just see it can’t you?
Saint Brendan: “Right lads, sure this looks terrible interesting altogether. One of us better check it out. What about you, Brother Sean?”
Brother Sean: “What? Just because I took the Lord’s name in vain? You want me to go onto that dangerous island?”
Saint Brendan: “God moves in mysterious ways, brother. Now get out there before He mysteriously moves me to plant me foot up your arse.”
Brother Sean: “Grumble, grumble AAAAGHHH!”
God: “Got ya ya bastard! Slag ME off, will ya?”
Or perhaps not. Either way, the monks quickly realised, to their cost - but more especially to the cost of the one who went or was sent to investigate - that volcanos are probably best studied ,if at all, by those who know what they’re doing and have all the proper gear. Perhaps ironic that on a country named as the coldest in the world someone should die from excessive heat, but as they say, God moves etc. With one monk less, Brendan and hte lads sailed on till they came to a big rock in the middle of the sea where they met a hermit who told them “Ireland? Ah sure ye can’t miss it lads. Straight on for another seven days and ye’ll be home.” Thereafter the arrived back on the shores of Erin, August 565, having spent years at sea and possibly being able to lay claim to being the true discoverer of America.
Not at all surprisingly, few give this account credence - after all, who wants to admit that a holy man from Ireland discovered America before a dissolute drunk from Italy happened to stumble across it a millennium later? But explorer Tim Severin did at least prove Brendan’s voyage was possible, as in 1976 he retraced the route the monks were said to have taken, in an exact replica of the curragh Brendan and his companions sailed.
The voyage of Saint Brendan may be the most famous - if least credited - visit of the Irish to America, but it was not the only one. When Norsemen arrived there in 982 they spoke of a colony called
Hvitramannaland, White Man’s Land, where monks had established a settlement there prior to the arrival of the Norse.
The other name for this colony was Great Ireland.