Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/112

102 the best claim, to be the Tlapallan of the Mexicans. It is the most western part of Europe; it is insular, and in the earlier centuries of the Christian era was known as the "Holy Island"; between a. d. 500 and a. d. 800 it was the most active center of missionary enterprise in Europe, and its missionaries were conspicuous above all others for their daring maritime adventures. It is natural, therefore, to suspect that Ireland may have been the home of Quetzatcoatl, and, if that were so, to expect that early Irish records would contain some references to him and his extraordinary voyage. Upon this the inquiry suggests itself, Do the early Irish chronicles, which are voluminous and minute, contain anything relating to a missionary voyage across the Atlantic at all corresponding to that which Quetzatcoatl must have taken from some part of western Europe?

To one who, step by step, had arrived at this stage of the present inquiry, it was not a little startling to come across an obscure and almost forgotten record, which is, in all its main features, in most striking conformity with the Mexican legend of Quetzatcoatl. This is the curious account of the transatlantic voyage of a certain Irish ecclesiastic named St. Brendan, in the middle of the sixth century about a. d. 550. The narrative appears to have attracted little or no attention in modern times, but it was widely diffused during the middle ages. In the Bibliothèque at Paris there are said to be no fewer than eleven MSS. of the original Latin narrative, the dates of which range from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. It is also stated that versions of it in old French and Romance exist in most of the public libraries of France; and in many other parts of Europe there are copies of it in Irish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is reproduced in Usher's Antiquities, and is to be found in the Cottonian collection of MSS.

This curious account of St. Brendan's voyage may be altogether a romance, as it has long been held to be; but the remarkable thing about it is the singularity of its general concurrence with the Mexican tradition of Quetzatcoatl.

St. Brendan, called the "Navigator" from his many voyages, was an Irish bishop, who in his time founded a great monastery at Clonfert on the shores of Kerry, and was the head of a confraternity, or order, of three thousand monks. The story of his transatlantic voyage is as follows: From the eminence now called, after him, Brendan Mountain, the saint had long gazed upon the Atlantic at his feet, and speculated on the perilous condition of the souls of the unconverted peoples who possibly inhabited unknown countries on the other side. At length, in the cause of Christianity, and for the glory of God, he resolved upon a missionary expedition across the ocean, although he was then well