![]() ![]() The Hereford map of 1275 indicates his island as just west of the Canaries - “fortunate Insulae sex sunt Insulae Sct. The Canaries!īrendan’s adventures were first recorded by cartographers several centuries after he left Dingle. There are different versions of the story and another tells of Brendan’s desire to go to an island “just under Mount Atlas”. See the main picture, above, and make up your own mind! On the advice of his foster mother, St Ita, St Brendan built a wooden boat and, with 60 men, sailed off in search of an island retreat off northwest Africa. WH Babcock cast some cold water on this record, to wit: “Its full blown development of certain marvels such as the spending of every Easter for at least five years on the back of a vast sea monster as a substitute for an island may well awaken a question as to the validity of this conjecture.” The 15th century Book of Lismore records that St Brenainn (St Brendan) “desired to leave his land and his country and he urgently besought the lord to give him a land secret, hidden, secure, delightful, separated from men”. The same is true of St Brendan’s Isle off the volcanic ridges beside the Canaries. The journey to the “Isles of the Blest” took five years to accomplish.Īs discussed on these pages in the last few weeks the mythical islands of Hy Brasil and Buss, if they existed, were situated on volcanic territory and may have subsided under the sea due to earthquakes. St Brendan’s peregrinations took him far and wide and on one such trip to the mythical St Brendan’s Isle near the Canary Islands. And Tim Severin took the journey a step further in 1976 by crossing the Atlantic in a currach built from ash, oak and oxhide proving St Brendan could have crossed the Atlantic itself. ![]() The late Danny Sheehy retraced St Brendan’s voyage in 2011 to Iceland starting from the south of the peninsula at Dingle. ![]()
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