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