293), by D'Avezac. Professor O'Curry places the date of thealleged voyage or voyages at about the year 560 ("Lectures on theManuscript Materials for Irish History," p. 289). Good accounts of thelife in the great monasteries of Brandan's period may be found in Digby's"Mores Catholici" or "Ages of Faith"; in Montalembert's "Monks of theWest" (translation); in Villemarque's "La Legende Celtique et la Poesiedes Cloistres en Irlande, en Cambrie et en Bretagne" (Paris, 1864). Thepoem on St. Brandan, stanzas from which are quoted in the text, is byDenis Florence McCarthy, and may be found in the _Dublin UniversityMagazine_ (XXXI. p. 89); and there is another poem on the subject--avery foolish burlesque--in the same magazine (LXXXIX. p. 471). MatthewArnold's poem with the same title appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_(LXII. p. 133), and may be found in the author's collected works in theform quoted below.The legends of St. Brandan, it will be observed, resemble so much thetales of Sindbad the Sailor and others in the "Arabian Nights"--which havealso the island-whale, the singing birds, and other features--that it isimpossible to doubt that some features of tradition were held in commonwith the Arabs of Spain.In later years (the twelfth century), a geographer named Honore d'Autundeclared, in his "Image of the World," that there was in the ocean acertain island agreeable and fertile beyond all others, now unknown tomen, once discovered by chance and then lost again, and that this islandwas the one which Brandan had visited.
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