unknown earthly country over-seas and a vision of the Paradise of his theology. "The love of the Lord grew exceedingly in his heart, and he desired to leave his land and country, his parents and his fatherland, and he urgently besought the Lord to give him a land secret, hidden, secure, delightful, separate from men. Now, after he had slept that night he heard the voice of an angel, who said to him, 'Arise, O Brenainn, for God hath given thee what thou soughtest, even the Land of Promise.'"[1] Yet it was not till fourteen years or more were past, and at the close of his second voyage, that he at length reached that hidden land, although it was during his first voyage that he had his grotesquely horrible glimpse into Hell.
It is evident that these later voyages which we have been considering have united in their structure two ideas: that of the early voyage of pure adventure and that of the trial by ordeal, in which, as a test of crime and also as its punishment, a suspected man was cast adrift on the ocean without oars or rudder, often without food or drink, to drift whithersoever the winds or waves might carry him.[2]
But it soon became apparent to the mediaeval preacher that he had in these stories a unique opportunity of impressing the minds and imaginations of his people with his favourite theme "the pains and punishments of hell and the bane of doomsday." All that was necessary was slightly to change the object of the voyage and to add a new island wherein the horrors of hell were revealed, or, if he were more pitiful and imaginative, of two islands where hell and heaven could
- ↑ Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. by Whitley Stokes, 355-4, p. 252.
- ↑ Cf. Life of St. Patrick, by Muirchu Maccu Mactheni, in Tripartite Life, ed. Whitley Stokes, vol. ii. p. 288; English Chronicle, 891 a.d.; Voyage of Maelduin, Rev. Celt. ix.; Voyage of the Sons of O'Corra.
