Then St. Brendan asked if that land would ever be
revealed to men: and the youth answered, that
when the most high Creator should have put all nations
under his feet, then that land should be manifested
to all his elect.
After which St. Brendan, when the youth had blessed
him, took of the fruits and of the gems, and sailed
back through the darkness, and returned to his monastery;
whom when the brethren saw, they glorified God for
the miracles which he had heard and seen. After
which he ended his life in peace. Amen.
Here ends (says the French version) concerning St.
Brendan, and the marvels which he found in the sea
of Ireland.
Intermingled, fantastically and inconsistently, with
the story of St. Brendan, is that of St. Maclovius
or Machutus, who has given his name to the seaport
of St. Malo, in Brittany. His life, written by
Sigebert, a monk of Gembloux, about the year 1100,
tells us how he was a Breton, who sailed with St.
Brendan in search of the fairest of all islands, in
which the citizens of heaven were said to dwell.
With St. Brendan St. Malo celebrated Easter on the
whale’s back, and with St. Brendan he returned.
But another old hagiographer, Johannes a Bosco, tells
a different story, making St. Malo an Irishman brought
up by St. Brendan, and preserved by his prayers from
a wave of the sea. He gives, moreover, to the
Isle of Paradise the name of Inga, and says that St.
Brendan and his companions never reached it after
all, but came home after sailing round the Orkneys
and other Northern isles. The fact is, that the
same saints reappear so often on both sides of the
British and the Irish Channels, that we must take
the existence of many of them as mere legend, which
has been carried from land to land by monks in their
migrations, and taken root upon each fresh soil which
it has reached. One incident in St. Malo’s
voyage is so fantastic, and so grand likewise, that
it must not be omitted. The monks come to an
island whereon they find the barrow of some giant of
old time. St. Malo, seized with pity for the
lost soul of the heathen, opens the mound and raises
the dead to life. Then follows a strange conversation
between the giant and the saint. He was slain,
he says, by his kinsmen, and ever since has been tormented
in the other world. In that nether pit they
know (he says) of the Holy Trinity: but that
knowledge is rather harm than gain to them, because
they did not choose to know it when alive on earth.
Therefore he begs to be baptized, and so delivered
from his pain. He is therefore instructed, catechised,
and in due time baptized, and admitted to the Holy
Communion. For fifteen days more he remains alive:
and then, dying once more, is again placed in his
sepulchre, and left in peace.
