Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/544

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away towards the north, and the people inhabiting this great land regard the old world as a small island. This is an observation made also by Theopompus, in his geographical myth of Meropis[1].

The ancient theories of Atlantis shall detain us no longer, as they have been carefully and exhaustively treated by Humboldt in the already quoted work on the geography of the New World. We shall therefore pass to the Kelts, and learn the position occupied by America in their mythology.

Brittia, says Procopius, lies 200 stadia from the coast between Britannia and Thule, opposite the mouth of the Rhine, and is inhabited by Angles, Frisians, and Britons[2]. By Britannia he means the present Brittany, and Brittia is England. Tzetze relates that on the ocean coast, opposite Britannia, live fishermen subject to the Franks, but freed from paying tribute, on account of their occupation, which consists in rowing souls across to the opposite coast[3]. Procopius tells the same story, and Sir Walter Scott gives it from him in his “Count Robert of Paris.” “I have read,” says Agelastes, “in that brilliant mirror which reflects the times of our fathers, the

  1. Ælian, Var. Hist. iii. 18.
  2. De Bello Gothico, lib. iv. 20.
  3. Ad Lycophr. v. 1200.