PREFACE.
I HAVE compiled this volume of Brendaniana, or a miscellaneous collection of "matters and things" relating to St. Brendan, the patron of the dioceses of Clonfert and Ardfert, as well as of my church and parish of Ardfert-Brendan, from various sources. I have drawn largely upon the texts edited some years ago by Cardinal Moran and published in his Acta Sti. Brendani, the most valuable and the most accessible repertory we have of "matters Brendanian"—of the most important documents, bearing on the history of St. Brendan, whether in its authentic or in its legendary phases, and I have translated those texts from their mediaeval Latin, as literally as I could, not always an easy task, into fairly readable English. I have put into a modern English dress, and prepared to present in a complete and separate form, before readers of English, the famous Navigatio, the Latin version of the voyage of St. Brendan, which is known as the Brendan Legend  par excellence—the most widely popular "Tale of the Sea" in the middle ages, which had passed, in various shapes and versions, into almost every language and dialect of mediaeval Europe. What had afforded entertainment, and edification also, to so many in those past ages, may surely be read nowadays with some interest, and perhaps instruction. To this primary legend of the saint I have added some minor ones from the luxuriant growth of legend that had clustered around his name from generation to generation  in many countries of

Preface.
Europe, and, as occasion served, I have suggested the plain and simple facts that may have been the germs of the extravagant growth of many of those fanciful legends.
The most important document I have translated from the Acta Sti. Brendani is, undoubtedly, the tract known as the Vita Sti. Brendani, or Latin Life of the saint, which records many interesting facts of his authentic history, after his famous voyages, as well as of the histories of many of his contemporary Irish saints, that cannot now be found elsewhere; and I have endeavoured to supplement the record of those facts by inserting whatever additional notices of the saint I could glean from other sources. Instead of the early chapters of this Latin Life, I have given the portion of the Irish Life from the Book of Lismore, from which those chapters had been evidently borrowed; and as I have accompanied this Irish text—a genuine specimen of ancient Gaelic—with a literal English translation, it will, I trust, prove interesting and useful to those readers, who, though not Gaelic scholars, may desire to form some acquaintance with the venerable language of the Gaodhal.
In this portion of the Irish Life of St. Brendan, and in the copious notes which I have appended to it, will be found some accounts of the topography and of the earliest ecclesiastical history of ancient Kerry, that ought to interest in a special manner my Kerry readers. In other parts of the volume also I have noticed some old associations and early traditions connected with St. Brendan, of which I could find any traces in Kerry; but which are, alas! very few and faint, and fast disappearing from amongst us. The historical sketch of the rise and ruin of the holy places of Ardfert-Brendan, which I have prefixed to the volume, will. I hope, be interesting to others besides local readers.
Those who may expect to find in those pages a complete

Preface.
history of St. Brendan, and a finished portraiture of his holy life and character, will, I fear, he much disappointed. The materials for a history of the saint that have come down to us through the waste and wreck of ages are mere fragments, the disjecta membra of a great personality, often disguised or distorted by a parasitical growth of extravagant legend, which twined round the name and fame of St. Brendan in singular luxuriance. Those sparse fragments I have endeavoured to bind together, and to mould, as best I could, into life-like form ; but I know well that my best efforts could only result in a poor and incomplete counterfeit of the grand original. I have made no attempt to pourtray the virtues of his holy life, and on that head I will only borrow,, the words of an ancient panegyrist of the saint, from a "Fragment " preserved in the Codex Salmanticensis : "who can describe the virtues of St. Brendan—his humility and meekness; his charity and tender compassion; his patience and gentleness; his fasting and abstinence ; his constant assiduity in prayer? Because he had perfectly fulfilled all the Commandments of Christ, and had faithfully practised all those virtues and many others of a like nature, the Blessed Brendan, in a good old age, among choirs of angels, with great joy and triumph, amid gleaming lights and choral psalmody, departed unto the Lord, to whom be all honour and glory for ever and ever !   Amen."
Denis O'Donoghue, P.P,
St. Brendan's, ardfert,
Feast; of St. Brendan, 1893.

PEBFACE   TO   THE   SECOND   EDITION.
N publishing a Second Edition of my Book on St. Brendan, I wish to express my grateful appreciation of the very kindly and favourable manner in which the First Edition was received, as far as I have observed, by its readers, and of the many notices of it that have appeared in the Press, both in Ireland and America, which were uniformly kind and encouraging. Indeed, with respect to the criticism of my little volume, I may well say :—Funcs ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris—"The lines have fallen unto me in goodly places."
I beg to thank Mr. W. A. Cad bury, of Birmingham for copies of two ancient Maps he kindly sent to me, which show the Isle of St. Brendan and the Isle of Hy-Brazil. in the Western Ocean. I have had copies made on a reduced scale of one of these Maps, which was drawn in a.d. 1581, by the famous geographer, Abraham Ortelius, of Antwerp, and they will be found at page 304, where they may serve to illustrate the interesting Legends of the Isle of St. Brendan and of Hy-Brazil, which precede that page.
Denis O'Donoghue, P.P., M.R.I.A.
St. Brendan's, ARDFERT, May, 1895.

Since the publication of this volume the author has received, among many other complimentary letters and favourable notices of the Press, the following very kind and highly-valued letters : —
Archbishop’s House,
Dublin Au8gust,  1893.
Very  Rev. Dear Sip.,
I beg to return thanks for the copy of Brendaniana, which you have been pleased to forward. I have already read a considerable portion of your notes and illustrations, and I congratulate you most sincerely on the light which you have thrown on the life of your great patron, St. Brendan. It would be a great blessing for the Church of Ireland if a similar light were thrown on the life of each one of our Diocesan Patrons.
Now that you have completed this work, perhaps you would sketch the lives of St. Brendan's successors in the See of Kerry. As far as I have been able to judge, some of those lives would form a very interesting page of our ecclesiastical history.
Believe me to remain,
Very faithfully yours,
* PATRICK F. CARDINAL MORAN.

Rev. D. O'Donoghue, P.P.,
St. Brendan's, Ardfert.
Trinity College,
Dublin, 9th August, 1893. Dear Father  O'Donoghue,
I received your Brendaniana, and read it with much interest, and I congratulate you on your publication.
It is clear to me from the " Icebergs," that St. Brendan had landed in America, for the icebergs hug the Labrador, Newfoundland, and the Canadian coasts, keeping near the shore by the rotation of the earth, I venture to think that the "great river E. and W." is the St. Lawrence and not the Ohio.
The story of Judas Iscariot, in the Old English Version, is very powerful.
Yours sincerely,
SAMUEL HAUGHTON.
Rev. Denis O'Donoghue, P.P.