Races, 117). In these MSS. Brandon is described as a native of Kerry, in the southwestern corner of Ireland. Inspired with a holy zeal for the propagation of the Gospel in unexplored and forgotten regions, but unwilling to hazard unnecessarily the lives of his followers, he first went to see and consult the venerable St. Edua of Aran. Proceeding along the coast of Mayo, he inquired for and collected all the traditions he could find concerning this supposed western continent, and on his return to Brandon Bay, he immediately set out to sea. Directing the course of his bark, which was provisioned for a long voyage, across the Atlantic to the southwest, with a few faithful companions, he came, after some rough and dangerous navigation, to a calm sea, where without sail or oar, he was carried along for several weeks between and among numerous islands, and finally reached the shores of a vast continent, and afterwards, the mouth of a great river, which he entered. Proceeding inward he came to another great river running east and west. There he landed, and in a vast and beautiful country spent seven years. Finally setting sail, he returned to Ireland by a more northern route, and died at Erraghdune, on the 15th day of May, 577, at the age of ninety-three years. The life and adventures of St. Brandon, are also preserved in the Cottonian Library at Westminster, (McG. History of Ireland, 169,) and may also be found in the Toltec records of Mexico and Central America, (5 Nat. Am. Antiq. 268). The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg in a note to his translation of the Popol Vuh or Sacred Book of the Central Americans, says, "There is an abundance of legends and traditions, concerning the passage of the Irish into America, and their habitual communication with that country-in the records of Mexico and Central America-centuries before the time of Columbus." The Abbe de Bourbourg is thus spoken of by H. H. Bancroft: "I know of no man better qualified than Brasseur de Bourbourg to penetrate the obscurity of American Primitive. History. His familiarity with the Nahua and Central American languages, his indefatigable industry and great erudition, render him eminently fit for such a task, and every word written by such a man is entitled to respectful consideration." (Atlantis Ib. 419; 5 Bancr-Native, R. 127). The French abbe McGeoghegan, relates (Histy. Ireland, 203), that an Irish priest named Virgilius being accused before Pope Zachary of teaching heresy on the subject of the Antipodes, stoutly maintained that the earth was a globe, and there were people on the other side, who came originally from Europe. At first he did write to Pope Zachary, but afterwards he went to Rome in person, and satisfied Pope Gregory that there were indeed such other lands and people, and that the Irish were ac- The illustrious Humboldt, review- tiquaries of Copenhagen, by whom the Sagas and narratives of the voyages of the Northmen to Helluland, (Newfoundland), to Markland, the mouth of the St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia, and to Vineland, (Mass.), have been separately printed. The tract named by Leif, Vinland et goda, comprehends the coast line between Boston and New York, and consequently parts of the present States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut." (Ibid. 231). 66 These documents are of the highest authenticity, although their genuineness have been," says Bancroft (5 N. R. 103) "the subject of much discussion, it is now certain that Iceland was settled by the Northmen from Norway from a very early date." According to Professor Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin, there is a copy of these Sagas in the library of that institution, and the Erbyggia Sagas, chapter 64, contains the following record, (1. Andersen Historical Sketches 13): "A Norse navigator by the name of Gudlief Gudlangen, undertook a voyage to Dublin; on leaving Ireland he intended to sail to Iceland, but he met with northeast winds and was driven far to the west and the southwest of the Atlantic, in a sea where no land was to be seen. It was already late in the summer, and Gudlief and his party made many prayers that they might escape; and it came to pass that one day they saw land in this same south western ocean, but they knew not what land it was. Then they resolved to sail to the land, for they were weary of contending longer with the violence of the sea, and they found a good harbor, and when they had been a short time on shore, there came some people to them. They knew none of this people, and they were of strange aspect, but it rather appeared to them, that they spoke Irish." "This portion of America," continues Professor Andersen, "is in the Sagas of Thorfin Karlseful, called Ireland edh Miklah, that is to say Great Ireland, and it is claimed, that the name arose from the fact, that the country had been colonized long before their visit by the Irish. Coming from their own green isle to a vast continent, possessing many of the fertile qualities of their native soil, the appellation was a natural one, and there is nothing improbable in the conclusion. The Irish visited and inhabited Iceland, toward the close of the eighth century. To accomplish this voyage, they had to traverse a stormy ocean to the extent of eight hundred miles. As early as 725 they were found upon the Faroes Islands. Voyages between Ireland and Iceland in the tenth century were of ordinary occurrence, and, being a people familiar with the sea, they were certainly not incapable of such a voyage." The Irish monk Diciul, in a great work entitled De Mensura orbisterrae, which Humboldt (2 Cos. 235) says, was composed in the year 825, states, according to Letronne, that the Irish clerici or priests were driven from the Faroe Islands in 795, and then began to visit Iceland (Recherches Geographique et Critique, 129–146). Certain it is that, when Ingolf reached and settled in Iceland, he found there certain Irish mass books, bells and objects of a similar character, which had been left there by the Irish. And if as his testimony would leave us to conclude, "these objects had belonged (says Humboldt, 2 Cosmos. 235), to Irish monks, the question arises naturally why these monks should be termed in the native Sagas, Westernmen who had come from the west across the sea. (Kommir til vestan um haf"?) In the oldest Sagas, the historical narratives of Thorfinn Karlscfue and the Landnama Buk, mention is made of a country to the west, six days sail south from Vinland, which is expressly called Ireland edh Mikla or Great Ireland which was inhabited by the Irish, and was a Christian country. The omission of its name and all reference to it by Diciul, in connection with. the relics found there, is easily accounted for by the fact that the voyage of Ernulpus and Buo to Ireland ed Mikla, took place in 827, two years after Diciul's book was published. (See McGoeghagan History, Ireland, 203). Their names, "Ernulphus," "Irelandum hominum " and "Buo juve ays, tes. ish the an ap in d r ງ. h d 1 written in the French language, and entitled Geographique des peuples Islamique, and the letter of Mehrens accompanying it. Mr. Mahrens stated as the result of some researches he had prosecuted that there was an extensive country some five or six days' sail south of Vinland, called by the Scandinavians, Ireland edh Mikla or Great Ireland, and this was the same territory now occupied by the American States of North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Situated west of Iceland, and settled by the Irish many centuries before the discovery of Iceland, he concluded that this was the west Ireland from which the Westmen and Irish, mentioned in the Sagas, came. One of the evidences upon which Mr. Mehrens said he had come to this conclusion, was that the great Arabic geographer Edrisi, cited by Bryant (U. S. History, 66), as good authority, describes the situation of this country and its inhabitants expressly calling it Ireland el Kabirah, locating it upon the spot or place described by the Sagas and Skralinger in Humboldt. nem ejusdem provinciam," a youth This account was interpreted At the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, held at Copenhagen, on the 11th of June, 1858, Professor Rafn called the attention of that society to a remarkable paper presented by Mr. A. F. Mehrens, Now Mr. Short, (N. A. A., 159) who was probably unacquainted with all this mass of testimony, but who has nevertheless the courage to speak of the learned and eminent Agassiz, as a scholar who commits himself to a theory without first submitting it to a crucial test," and who cannot therefore justly complain if I should charge him with a similar delinquency in his own treatment of the question, says, "The claim which credits the Irish with the colonization of the Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to Florida, is no doubt imaginary. The obscure and unsatisfactory chronicle which forms the basis of this claim, destroys its own authority by the statement, that Whitemans' land is six days' sail from Ireland." The learned and cultivated will be surprised to learn that the Landnama Buk makes no such statement, and Mr. Short has been misled by a mistake of one word in the translation, or his own misconstruction of the Latin idiom. The passage as translated from the Sagas is as follows, viz.: "dilatus est ad Hitramannalandium, Terram alborum hominum, quam nomueli Irlandiam Magnam appellant, qui in oceano occidentali jacot, prope Vinlandiam Bouam, sexdierum navigatione versus occidentem.” The Ireland spoken of is "Irlandiam Magnam," and that country is just six days' sail from the Vinlandiam mentioned. ETHNOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. The intelligent author of Bradford's Am. Antiq. (p. 240), asserts as follows, viz.: "It appears to be settled, that as far as the Indian dialects are concerned, there exists no evidence of the descent of any of their tribes from the Welsh or Irish colonists. But Catlin (2 N. A. Indians 259–265), professes to have discovered this very evidence in favor of the Welsh emigration, not on any "accidental similarity of sounds," but in a coinci dence of "grammatical forms and structures" between the languages of several tribes of the Mississippi and the Welsh language, and even undertakes therefrom to trace the colony of Prince Madoc from its landing at Balize through his subsequent wanderings. Now the Welsh and the Irish are dialects of the Keltic or British languages, once universal in Great Britain and Ireland, and, so late as 1660, the Rev. Morgan Jones, who was a native of Basatig, in that country, in a private letter to Dr. Thomas Lloyd, of Pennsylvania, another Welshman, dated 10th of March 1685, which the doctor sent to his brother in Wales, and was published in the Gentleman's Magazine, March 1, 1740, fifty-five years aferwards, speaking of an adventure of his, twenty-five years before the date of his letter, or eighty years before the time of this publication, says in his letter to Mr. Lloyd, that having, with five others been captured by the Tuskeroras of North Carolina, he saved his own life and that of his company, by addressing them in the British language, and that he was also thereby enabled, after a stay of four months with them, to converse with them familiarly, and to preach to them three times a week. Mr. Bryant has collected in addition to this remarkable letter, which certainly corroborates and sustains the proofs of an occupation and settlement of the territory of North Carolina by the Irish at some remote |
