He caused a boat to be built of a fashion which one may still see in
Welsh and Irish rivers, and known as a curragh or coracle; made of an
osier frame covered with tanned and oiled skins. He took with him
seventeen priests, among whom was St. Malo, then a mere boy, but
afterwards celebrated. They sailed to the southwest, and after being forty
days at sea they reached a rocky island furrowed with streams, where they
received the kindest hospitality, and took in fresh provisions. They
sailed again the next day, and found themselves entangled in contrary
currents and perplexing winds, so that they were long in reaching another
island, green and fertile, watered by rivers which were full of fish, and
covered with vast herds of sheep as large as heifers. Here they renewed
their stock of provisions, and chose a spotless lamb with which to
celebrate Easter Sunday on another island, which they saw at a short
distance.

This island was wholly bare, without sandy shores or wooded slopes, and
they all landed upon it to cook their lamb; but when they had arranged
their cooking-apparatus, and when their fire began to blaze, the island
seemed to move beneath their feet, and they ran in terror to their boat,
from which Brandan had not yet landed. Their supposed island was a whale,
and they rowed hastily away from it toward the island they had left, while
the whale glided away, still showing, at a distance of two miles, the fire
blazing on his back.

The next island they visited was wooded and fertile, where they found a
multitude of birds, which chanted with them the praises of the Lord, so
that they called this the Paradise of Birds.

This was the description given of this island by an old writer named