The sixth-century voyage of St Brendan from Ireland to America, is one of the most fascinating of all sea legends. Could the myth of the Irish monk and his crew sailing the Atlantic in a boat made of leather, nearly a thousand years before Columbus, have been reality? In 1976, Tim Severin and a crew of four men, set out to recreate the Brendan legend. Using the exact same methods in constructing their sailing vessel, they set out on their hazardous voyage, making it one of the most inspiring expeditions in the history of exploration.
St Brendan the Navigator was born in Fenit, County Kerry, in 484. In fact and in legend he was one of the greatest saints in an era that gave us some of our most outstanding educators and missionaries - Finnian, Corngall, Kieran, Canice, Kevin, Columba, Carthagem Cormas, Jarlath, and Enda. All but Columba have been ignored, by and large. This short book seeks to set the record straight. It tells the remarkable story of Brendan from the best historical perspective and from available manuscript sources. It also shows why so many of our great saints and educators have been ignored. Included are translations of two manuscripts, the Irish Life (written first about 750) and the Navigatio (or voyage) of Brendan (written about 850). Included also are some extracts from the Latin Life of Brendan.
"Children will be astonished to learn that Ireland's Saint Brendan may have sailed to North America almost a thousand years before Columbus, in just a small open boat with a handful of brave monks -- a trip that's been duplicated and proved possible in modern times."--
In an extraordinary attempt to recreate St Brendan's journey to America, Tim Severin and his crew embarked on an epic voyage across the vast North Atlantic. Brilliantly written, this is their story.
In The Voyage of St Brendan, A.B. Jackson tells the tale of the legendary seafaring Irish abbot. After burning a book of fantastical stories, Brendan is compelled to sail the ocean with a crew of six monks in a leather-skinned currach; his task, to prove the existence of wonders in the world and create a new book of marvels. Discoveries include Jasconius the island-whale, a troop of Arctic ghosts, a hellmouth of tortured souls, a rock-bound Judas, and the magical castle of the boar-headed Walserands.Although the roots of this legend lie in early Irish immrama and the Latin Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis of the ninth century, Jackson has taken the fourteenth-century Middle Dutch version of Brendan's voyage as the template for this engaging and spirited interpretation, making it recommended reading for scholars of medieval literature and lovers of fantasy adventure alike. The book includes a series of black and white linocuts by the American artist Kathleen Neeley.
This detailed account of Irish archaeological and archival evidence is presented in a clear and consise manner. There are chapters on cult objects, shrines, round towers, relics, Ogham stones, sundials, bullauns, cursing stones, and holed stones.
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In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition.
