"
Even as late as the year 891, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
"Three Scots came to King Alfred, in a boat without any oars, from
Ireland, whence they had stolen away, because for the love of God
they desired to be on pilgrimage, they recked not where. The boat
in which they came was made of two hides and a half; and they took
with them provisions for seven days; and about the seventh day they
came on shore in Cornwall, and soon after went to King Alfred. Thus
they were named, Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmun."
Out of such wild feats as these; out of dim reports of fairy islands
in the west; of the Canaries and Azores; of that Vinland, with its
wild corn and wild grapes which Leif, the son of Eirek Rauda, had
found beyond the ocean a thousand years and one after the birth of
Christ; of icebergs and floes sailing in the far northern sea, upon
the edge of the six-months' night; out of Edda stories of the
Midgard snake, which is coiled round the world; out of reports, it
may be, of Indian fakirs and Buddhist shamans; out of scraps of
Greek and Arab myth, from the Odyssey or the Arabian Nights, brought
home by "Jorsala Farar," vikings who had been for pilgrimage and
plunder up the Straits of Gibraltar into the far East;--out of all
these materials were made up, as years rolled on, the famous legend
of St. Brendan and his seven years' voyage in search of the "land
promised to the saints."
This tale was so popular in the middle age, that it appears, in
different shapes, in almost every early European language.
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