The Project Gutenberg EBook of Brendan's Fabulous Voyage
by John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute

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Title: Brendan's Fabulous Voyage

Author: John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute

Release Date: December 18, 2005 [EBook #17343]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ESSAYS

BY

JOHN, THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE.

BRENDAN'S FABULOUS VOYAGE.

[A LECTURE DELIVERED ON JANUARY 19, 1893, BEFORE THE SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF
LITERATURE AND ART.]

New Edition.

1911.

II.

It has been thought desirable to reprint the Essays and other short
Works of the late Marquess of Bute in an inexpensive form likely to be
useful to the general reader, and thereby to make them more widely
known. Should this, the second of the proposed series, prove acceptable,
it will be followed by others at short intervals.

BRENDAN'S FABULOUS VOYAGE.

[_A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society
of Literature and Art_.]

Brendan, the son of Finnlogh O' Alta, was born at Tralee in Kerry, in
the year 481 or 482.[1] He had a pedigree which connected him with the
rulers of Ireland, and thus perhaps secured for him a social prominence
which he would not otherwise have enjoyed. Nature seems to have endowed
him with an highly wrought and sensitive temperament. Putting aside
altogether the idealism which caused him, like so many others of his
time and race, to give himself to the Church, he displayed throughout
life a restlessness which led him to constant journeys, sometimes of the
nature of migrations, and the constant inception of projects to which he
did not continue long to adhere; and in the statements about him there
are elements from which I conjecture that he was probably of the class
of persons who furnish good subjects for hypnotic experiments. When he
was a year old he was handed over to the care of the nun Ita, when she
dwelt at the foot of Mount Luachra. With her he remained until he was
seven years old, when she sent him to Bishop Erc, by whom he had