The recent visit of President Donald Trump to Ireland passed off quite well, given the often uncertain nature of the president’s reactions to people and events.
This was especially so of his courtesy call on President Connolly at Áras an Uachtaráin. But this call was marked by the presentation of various gifts to the visitor of a carefully calculated character, which he may not have fully appreciated, but those around him both in Dublin and Washington will have fathomed by now.
Gift
The gifts were largely of a peculiarly literary kind. One was a volume of poetry by Michael Longley, evoking, of course, the matter of Ulster, a St Brigid’s Cross as a symbol of Ireland’s long history and religious traditions.
But more surprisingly they also included a literary item of a rather recherché nature, fresh off the presses from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS).
Along with the traditions surrounding St Patrick’s Purgatory, the voyages of St Brendan were given shape in this Latin work”
This was a copy of the new edition of the Navigatio Sanci Brendani, prepared by three Italian scholars, but issued by DIAS in their publishing programme of works of Celtic scholarship. The Navigatio was one of the most widely circulated compositions of the Middle Ages connected with Ireland. Along with the traditions surrounding St Patrick’s Purgatory, the voyages of St Brendan were given shape in this Latin work and inspired Europe with their images of the great western ocean, the scattered with the sheep and birds, the fire belching mountains, the floating towers of crystalline ice.
Reality
The Navigatio is not a work of history, but of literature, but one with a basis in historical reality which has interested me since my school days when I made it the subject of a class presentation (largely drawn from Dr George Little’s work Brendan the Navigator, I have to confess). There were earlier Irish lives of the saint and his life was a familiar one in Irish tradition.
The legend was associated with the Azores which seemed to provide a suitable sunny climate for those seemingly tropical scenes in the legend”
The first serious discussion of the Viking Voyages across the North Atlantic by Carl Christian Rafn in 1837, also brought the earlier tales of St Brendan into focus for Irish scholars and writers. Their ideas were summarised in Breandaniana: St Brendan the Voyager by the Rev. Denis O’Donoghue of Ardfert (Dublin 1893).
Later writers on this theme were Dr Little and Geoffrey Ashe. The so-called Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin was more an adventure than a serious examination of the legend and its historical sources.
The legend was associated with the Azores which seemed to provide a suitable sunny climate for those seemingly tropical scenes in the legend; though Dr Little preferred to see them as echoing some early Irish knowledge of Florida, now President Trump’s adopted state.
What with the Island of Sheep, the Island of Birds, a clear call at what can only have been Rockall, and the vivid images of the volcanoes of Iceland and the crystal columns of floating icebergs, which are only to be found in the Dorset Strait between Greenland and Canada, the tale is, as I say, redolent of the wonders of the northern seas.
America
But then there is also the matter of “Greater Ireland”, a territory beyond Iceland certainly which was seen by many critics as an echo of some direct experience of North America. This was so well discussed in the day that it even makes an appearance in the works of Idrisi, the first Arab geographer to write about Europe.
Was Kerry born St Brendan then the first “Irish American”? This is, of course, debatable. But what a brilliant stroke it was on the part of our president’s staff to select this volume as a gift to President Trump as it recalls Ireland’s long connection with the New World before there was ever a thought of such an entity as the United States.
I doubt if President Trump will find the time or energy to read it, however; he seems not to be a man who cares much for books of any kind. That is not the point of these presentations. It will serve as a reminder that ours is perhaps the oldest European connection with the Americas, and that that long tradition, whatever its basis in fact, is one still dear to imaginations of the Irish people.
The new edition of the Navigatio will be reviewed in a later issue.
