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Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic

T >> Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic




She told Thevet that after the first two months, the demons came to her
no more, until she was left wholly alone; then they renewed their visits,
but not continuously, and she felt less fear. Thevet also records of her
this touching confession, that when the time came for her to embark, in
the Breton ship, for home, there came over her a strong impulse to refuse
the embarkation, but rather to die in that solitary place, as her husband,
her child, and her servant had already died. This profound touch of human
nature does more than anything else to confirm the tale as substantially
true. Certain it is that the lonely island which appeared so long on the
old maps as the Isle of Demons (l'Isola de Demoni) appears differently in
later ones as the Lady's Island (l'Isle de la Demoiselle).

The Princess Marguerite of Navarre, who died in 1549, seems also to have
known her namesake at her retreat in Perigord, gives some variations from
Thevet's story, and describes her as having been put on shore with her
husband, because of frauds which he had practised on Roberval; nor does
she speak of the nurse or of the child. But she gives a similar
description of Marguerite's stay on the island, after his death, and says,
that although she lived what might seem a bestial life as to her body, it
was a life wholly angelic as regarded her soul (_aînsî vivant, quant au
corps, de vie bestiale, et quant à l'esprit, de vie angelîcque_). She
had, the princess also says, a mind cheerful and content, in a body
emaciated and half dead. She was afterwards received with great honor in
France, according to the princess, and was encouraged to establish a
school for little children, where she taught reading and writing to the
daughters of high-born families. "And by this honest industry," says the
princess, "she supported herself during the remainder of her life, having
no other wish than to exhort every one to love and confidence towards God,
offering them as an example, the great pity which he had shown for her."



XX

BIMINI AND THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH


When Juan Ponce de Leon set forth from Porto Rico, March 13, 1512, to
seek the island of Bimini and its Fountain of Youth, he was moved by the
love of adventure more than by that of juvenility, for he was then but
about fifty, a time when a cavalier of his day thought himself but in his
prime. He looked indeed with perpetual sorrow--as much of it as a Spaniard
of those days could feel--upon his kinsman Luis Ponce, once a renowned
warrior, but on whom age had already, at sixty-five, laid its hand in
earnest. There was little in this slowly moving veteran to recall one who
had shot through the lists at the tournament, and had advanced with his
short sword at the bull fight,--who had ruled his vassals, and won the
love of high-born women. It was a vain hope of restored youth which had
brought Don Luis from Spain to Porto Rico four years before; and, when
Ponce de Leon had subdued that island, his older kinsman was forever
beseeching him to carry his flag farther, and not stop till he had reached
Bimini, and sought the Fountain of Youth.

"For what end," he said, "should you stay here longer and lord it over
these miserable natives? Let us go where we can bathe in those enchanted
waters and be young once more. I need it, and you will need it ere long."

"How know we," said his kinsman, "that there is any such place?"

"All know it," said Luis. "Peter Martyr saith that there is in Bimini a
continual spring of running water of such marvellous virtue that the water
thereof, being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young." And
he adds that an Indian grievously oppressed with old age, moved with the
fame of that fountain, and allured through the love of longer life, went
to an island, near unto the country of Florida, to drink of the desired
fountain, ... and having well drunk and washed himself for many days with
the appointed remedies, by them who kept the bath, he is reported to have
brought home a manly strength, and to have used all manly exercises. "Let
us therefore go thither," he cried, "and be like him."

They set sail with three brigantines and found without difficulty the
island of Bimini among the Lucayos (or Bahamas) islands; but when they
searched for the Fountain of Youth they were pointed farther westward to
Florida, where there was said to be a river of the same magic powers,
called the Jordan. Touching at many a fair island green with trees, and
occupied by a gentle population till then undisturbed, it was not strange
if, nearing the coast of Florida, both Juan Ponce de Leon and his more
impatient cousin expected to find the Fountain of Youth.

They came at last to an inlet which led invitingly up among wooded banks
and flowery valleys, and here the older knight said, "Let us disembark
here and strike inland. My heart tells me that here at last will be found
the Fountain of Youth." "Nonsense," said Juan, "our way lies by water."

"Then leave me here with my men," said Luis. He had brought with him five
servants, mostly veterans, from his own estate in Spain.

A fierce discussion ended in Luis obtaining his wish, and being left for
a fortnight of exploration; his kinsman promising to come for him again at
the mouth of the river St. John. The men left on shore were themselves
past middle age, and the more eager for their quest. They climbed a hill
and watched the brigantines disappear in the distance; then set up a
cross, which they had brought with them, and prayed before it bareheaded.

Sending the youngest of his men up to the top of a tree, Luis learned
from him that they were on an island, after all, and this cheered him
much, as making it more likely that they should find the Fountain of
Youth. He saw that the ground was pawed up, as if in a cattle-range and
that there was a path leading to huts. Taking this path, they met fifty
Indian bowmen, who, whether large or not, seemed to them like giants. The
Spaniards gave them beads and hawk-bells, and each received in return an
arrow, as a token of friendship. The Indians promised them food in the
morning, and brought fish, roots, and pure water; and finding them chilly
from the coldness of the night, carried them in their arms to their homes,
first making four or five large fires on the way. At the houses there were
many fires, and the Spaniards would have been wholly comfortable, had they
not thought it just possible that they were to be offered as a sacrifice.
Still fearing this, they left their Indian friends after a few days and
traversed the country, stopping at every spring or fountain to test its
quality. Alas! they all grew older and more worn in look, as time went on,
and farther from the Fountain of Youth.

After a time they came upon new tribes of Indians, and as they went
farther from the coast these people seemed more and more friendly. They
treated the white men as if come from heaven,--brought them food, made
them houses, carried every burden for them. Some had bows, and went upon
the hills for deer, and brought half a dozen every night for their guests;
others killed hares and rabbits by arranging themselves in a circle and
striking down the game with billets of wood as it ran from one to another
through the woods. All this game was brought to the visitors to be
breathed upon and blessed, and when this had to be done for several
hundred people it became troublesome. The women also brought wild fruit,
and would eat nothing till the guests had seen and touched it. If the
visitors seemed offended, the natives were terrified, and apparently
thought that they should die unless they had the favor of these wise and
good men. Farther on, people did not come out into the paths to gather
round them, as the first had done, but stayed meekly in their houses,
sitting with their faces turned to the wall, and with their property
heaped in the middle of the room. From these people the travellers
received many valuable skins, and other gifts. Wherever there was a
fountain, the natives readily showed it, but apparently knew nothing of
any miraculous gift; yet they themselves were in such fine physical
condition, and seemed so young and so active, that it was as if they had
already bathed in some magic spring. They had wonderful endurance of heat
and cold, and such health that, when their bodies were pierced through and
through by arrows, they would recover rapidly from their wounds. These
things convinced the Spaniards that, even if the Indians would not
disclose the source of all their bodily freshness, it must, at any rate,
lie somewhere in the neighborhood. Yet a little while, no doubt, and their
visitors would reach it.

It was a strange journey for these gray and careworn men as they passed
up the defiles and valleys along the St. John's River, beyond the spot
where now spreads the city of Jacksonville, and even up to the woods and
springs about Magnolia and Green Cove. Yellow jasmines trailed their
festoons above their heads; wild roses grew at their feet; the air was
filled with the aromatic odors of pine or sweet bay; the long gray moss
hung from the live-oak branches; birds and butterflies of wonderful hues
fluttered around them; and strange lizards crossed their paths, or looked
with dull and blinking eyes from the branches. They came, at last, to one
spring which widened into a natural basin, and which was so deliciously
aromatic that Luis Ponce said, on emerging: "It is enough. I have bathed
in the Fountain of Youth, and henceforth I am young." His companions tried
it, and said the same: "The Fountain of Youth is found."

No time must now be lost in proclaiming the great discovery. They
obtained a boat from the natives, who wept at parting with the white
strangers whom they had so loved. In this boat they proposed to reach the
mouth of the St. John, meet Juan Ponce de Leon, and carry back the news to
Spain. But one native, whose wife and children they had cured, and who had
grown angry at their refusal to stay longer, went down to the water's edge
and, sending an arrow from his bow, transfixed Don Luis, so that even his
foretaste of the Fountain could not save him, and he died ere reaching the
mouth of the river. If Don Luis ever reached what he sought, it was in
another world. But those who have ever bathed in Green Cove Spring, near
Magnolia, on the St. John's River, will be ready to testify that, had he
but stayed there longer, he would have found something to recall his
visions of the Fountain of Youth.




NOTES



PREFACE



A Full account of the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 will be found
in Major's "Life of Prince Henry of Portugal" (London, 1868), p. 138. For
the statement as to the lingering belief in the Jacquet Island, see
Winsor's "Columbus," p. 111. The extract from Cowley is given by Herman
Melville in his picturesque paper on "The Encantadas" (_Putnam's
Magazine_, III. 319). In Harris's "Voyages" (1702) there is a map
giving "Cowley's Inchanted Isl." (I. 78), but there is no explanation of
the name. The passage quoted by Melville is not to be found in Cowley's
"Voyage to Magellanica and Polynesia," given by Harris in the same volume,
and must be taken from Cowley's "Voyage round the Globe," which I have not
found in any library.


I. ATLANTIS

For the original narrative of Socrates, see Plato's "Timaeus" and
"Critias," in each of which it is given. For further information see the
chapter on the Geographical Knowledge of the Ancients by W. H.
Tillinghast, in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," I.
15. He mentions (I. 19, note) a map printed at Amsterdam in 1678 by
Kircher, which shows Atlantis as a large island midway between Spain and
America. Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World" (N. Y.
1882), maintains that the evidence for the former existence of such an
island is irresistible, and his work has been very widely read, although
it is not highly esteemed by scholars.


II. TALIESSIN

The Taliessin legend in its late form cannot be traced back beyond the
end of the sixteenth century, but the account of the transformation is to
be found in the "Book of Taliessin," a manuscript of the thirteenth
century, preserved in the Hengwt Collection at Peniarth. The Welsh bard
himself is supposed to have flourished in the sixth century. See Alfred
Nutt in "The Voyage of Bram" (London, 1897), II. 86. The traditions may be
found in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," 2d ed.,
London, 1877, p. 471. The poems may be found in the original Welsh in
Skene's "Four Ancient Books of Wales," 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1868; and he
also gives a facsimile of the manuscript.


III. CHILDREN OF LIR

The lovely legend of the children of Lir or Lear forms one of those three
tales of the old Irish Bards which are known traditionally in Ireland as
"The Three Sorrows of Story Telling." It has been told in verse by Aubrey
de Vere ("The Foray of Queen Meave, and Other Legends," London, 1882), by
John Todhunter ("Three Irish Bardic Tales," London, 1896); and also in
prose by various writers, among whom are Professor Eugene O'Curry, whose
version with the Gaelic original was published in "Atlantis," Nos. vii.
and viii.; Gerald Griffin in "The Tales of a Jury Room"; and Dr. Patrick
Weston Joyce in "Ancient Celtic Romances" (London, 1879). The oldest
manuscript copy of the tale in Gaelic is one in the British Museum, made
in 1718; but there are more modern ones in different English and Irish
libraries, and the legend itself is of much older origin. Professor
O'Curry, the highest authority, places its date before the year 1000.
("Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Irish History," p. 319.)


IV. USHEEN

In the original legend, Oisin or Usheen is supposed to have told his tale
to St. Patrick on his arrival in Ireland; but as the ancient Feni were
idolaters, the hero bears but little goodwill to the saint. The Celtic
text of a late form of the legend (1749) with a version by Brian O'Looney
will be found in the transactions of the Ossianic Society for 1856 (Vol.
IV. p. 227); and still more modern and less literal renderings in P. W.
Joyce's "Ancient Celtic Romances" (London, 1879), p. 385, and in W. B.
Yeats's "Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems" (London, 1889), p. 1. The
last is in verse and is much the best. St. Patrick, who takes part in it,
regards Niam as "a demon thing." See also the essays entitled "L'Elysée
Transatlantique," by Eugene Beauvois, in the "Revue de L'Histoire des
Religions," VII. 273 (Paris, 1885), and "L'Eden Occidental" (same, VII.
673). As to Oisin or Usheen's identity with Ossian, see O'Curry's
"Lectures on the Manuscript Materials for Ancient Irish History" (Dublin,
1861), pp. 209, 300; John Rhys's "Hibbert Lectures" (London, 1888), p.
551. The latter thinks the hero identical with Taliessin, as well as with
Ossian, and says that the word Ossin means "a little fawn," from "os,"
"cervus." (See also O'Curry, p. 304.) O'Looney represents that it was a
stone which Usheen threw to show his strength, and Joyce follows this
view; but another writer in the same volume of the Ossianic Society
transactions (p. 233) makes it a bag of sand, and Yeats follows this
version. It is also to be added that the latter in later editions changes
the spelling of his hero's name from Oisin to Usheen.


V. BRAN

The story of Bran and his sister Branwen may be found most fully given in
Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," ed. 1877, pp. 369,
384. She considers Harlech, whence Bran came, to be a locality on the
Welsh seacoast still known by that name and called also Branwen's Tower.
But Rhys, a much higher authority, thinks that Bran came really from the
region of Hades, and therefore from a distant island ("Arthurian Legend,"
p. 250, "Hibbert Lectures," pp. 94, 269). The name of "the Blessed" came
from the legend of Bran's having introduced Christianity into Ireland, as
stated in one of the Welsh Triads. He was the father of Caractacus,
celebrated for his resistance to the Roman conquest, and carried a
prisoner to Rome. Another triad speaks of King Arthur as having dug up
Bran's head, for the reason that he wished to hold England by his own
strength; whence followed many disasters (Guest, p. 387).

There were many Welsh legends in regard to Branwen or Bronwen (White
Bosom), and what is supposed to be her grave, with an urn containing her
ashes, may still be seen at a place called "Ynys Bronwen," or "the islet
of Bronwen," in Anglesea. It was discovered and visited in 1813 (Guest, p.
389).

The White Mount in which Bran's head was deposited is supposed to have
been the Tower of London, described by a Welsh poet of the twelfth century
as "The White Eminence of London, a place of splendid fame" (Guest, p.
392).


VI. THE CASTLE OF THE ACTIVE DOOR

This legend is mainly taken from different parts of Lady Charlotte
Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion," with some additions and
modifications from Rhys's "Hibbert Lectures" and "The Arthurian Legend."


VIII. MERLIN

In later years Merlin was known mainly by a series of remarkable
prophecies which were attributed to him and were often said to be
fulfilled by actual events in history. Thus one of the many places where
Merlin's grave was said to be was Drummelzion in Tweeddale, Scotland. On
the east side of the churchyard a brook called the Pansayl falls into the
Tweed, and there was this prophecy as to their union:--

"When Tweed and Pansayl join at Merlin's grave,
Scotland and England shall one monarch have."

Sir Walter Scott tells us, in his "Border Minstrelsy," that on the day of
the coronation of James VI. of Scotland the Tweed accordingly overflowed
and joined the Pansayl at the prophet's grave. It was also claimed by one
of the witnesses at the trial of Jeanne d'Arc, that there was a prediction
by Merlin that France would be saved by a peasant girl from Lorraine.
These prophesies have been often reprinted, and have been translated into
different languages, and there was published in London, in 1641, "The Life
of Merlin, surnamed Ambrosius, His Prophesies and Predictions interpreted,
and their Truth made Good by our English Annals." Another book was also
published in London, in 1683, called "Merlin revived in a Discourse of
Prophesies, Predictions, and their Remarkable Accomplishments."


VIII. LANCELOT

The main sources of information concerning Lancelot are the "Morte
d'Arthur," Newell's "King Arthur and the Table Round," and the
publications of the Early English Text Society. See also Rhys's "Arthurian
Legend," pp. 127, 147, etc.


IX. THE HALF-MAN

The symbolical legend on which this tale is founded will be found in Lady
Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion" (London, 1877), II. p.
344. It is an almost unique instance, in the imaginative literature of
that period, of a direct and avowed allegory. There is often allegory, but
it is usually contributed by modern interpreters, and would sometimes
greatly astound the original fabulists.


X. ARTHUR

The earliest mention of the island of Avalon, or Avilion, in connection
with the death of Arthur, is a slight one by the old English chronicler,
Geoffrey of Monmouth (Book XI. c. 2), and the event is attributed by him
to the year 542. Wace's French romance was an enlargement of Geoffrey; and
the narrative of Layamon (at the close of the twelfth century) an
explanation of that of Wace. Layamon's account of the actual death of
Arthur, as quoted in the text, is to be found in the translation, a very
literal one, by Madden (Madden's "Layamon's Brut," III. pp. 140-146).

The earliest description of the island itself is by an anonymous author
known as "Pseudo-Gildas," supposed to be a thirteenth-century Breton
writer (Meyer's "Voyage of Bram," I. p. 237), and quoted by Archbishop
Usher in his "British Ecclesiastical Antiquities" (1637), p. 273, who thus
describes it in Latin hexameters:--

"Cingitur oceano memorabilis insula nullis
Desolata bonis: non fur, nec praedo, nec hostis
Insidiatur ibi: nec vis, nec bruma nec aestas,
Immoderata furit. Pax et concordia, pubes
Ver manent aeternum. Nec flos, nec lilia desunt,
Nec rosa, nec violae: flores et poma sub unâ
Fronde gerit pomus. Habitant sine labe cruoris
Semper ibi juvenes cum virgine: nulla senectus,
Nulla vis morbi, nullus dolor; omnia plena
Laetitiae; nihil hic proprium, communia quaeque.

Regit virgo locis et rebus praesidet istis,
Virginibus stipata suis, pulcherrima pulchris;
Nympha decens vultu, generosis patribus orta,
Consilio pollens, medicinas nobilis arte.
At simul Arthurus regni diadema reliquit,
Substitutique sibi regem, se transtulit illic;
Anno quingeno quadragenoque secundo
Post incarnatum sine patris semine natum.
Immodicè laesus, Arthurus tendit ad aulam
Regis Avallonis; ubi virgo regia vulnus
Illius tractans, sanati membra reservat
Ipsa sibi: vivuntque simul; si credere fas est."

A translation of this passage into rhyming English follows; both of these
being taken from Way's "Fabliaux" (London, 1815), II. pp. 233-235.

"By the main ocean's wave encompass'd, stands
A memorable isle, fill'd with all good:
No thief, no spoiler there, no wily foe
With stratagem of wasteful war; no rage
Of heat intemperate, or of winter's cold;
But spring, full blown, with peace and concord reigns:
Prime bliss of heart and season, fitliest join'd!
Flowers fail not there: the lily and the rose,
With many a knot of fragrant violets bound;
And, loftier, clustering down the bended boughs,
Blossom with fruit combin'd, rich apples hang.

"Beneath such mantling shades for ever dwell
In virgin innocence and honour pure,
Damsels and youths, from age and sickness free,
And ignorant of woe, and fraught with joy,
In choice community of all things best.

O'er these, and o'er the welfare of this land,
Girt with her maidens, fairest among fair,
Reigns a bright virgin sprung from generous sires,
In counsel strong, and skill'd in med'cine's lore.
Of her (Britannia's diadem consign'd
To other brow), for his deep wound and wide
Great Arthur sought relief: hither he sped
(Nigh two and forty and five hundred years
Since came the incarnate Son to save mankind),
And in Avallon's princely hall repos'd.
His wound the royal damsel search'd; she heal'd;
And in this isle still holds him to herself
In sweet society,--so fame say true!"


XI. MAELDUIN

This narrative is taken partly from Nutt's "Voyage of Bram" (I. 162) and
partly from Joyce's "Ancient Celtic Romances." The latter, however, allows
Maelduin sixty comrades instead of seventeen, which is Nutt's version.
There are copies of the original narrative in the Erse language at the
British Museum, and in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The voyage,
which may have had some reality at its foundation, is supposed to have
taken place about the year 700 A.D. It belongs to the class known as
Imrama, or sea-expeditions. Another of these is the voyage of St. Brandan,
and another is that of "the sons of O'Corra." A poetical translation of
this last has been made by T. D. Sullivan of Dublin, and published in his
volume of poems. (Joyce, p. xiii.) All these voyages illustrated the wider
and wider space assigned on the Atlantic ocean to the enchanted islands
until they were finally identified, in some cases, with the continent
which Columbus found.


XII. ST. BRANDAN

THE legend of St. Brandan, which was very well known in the Middle Ages,
was probably first written in Latin prose near the end of the eleventh
century, and is preserved in manuscript in many English libraries. An
English metrical version, written probably about the beginning of the
fourteenth century, is printed under the editorship of Thomas Wright in
the publications of the Percy Society, London, 1844 (XIV.), and it is
followed in the same volume by an English prose version of 1527. A partial
narrative in Latin prose, with an English version, may be found in W. J.
Rees's "Lives of the Cambro-British Saints" (Llandovery, 1853), pp. 251,
575. The account of Brandan in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists may
be found under May 16, the work being arranged under saints' days. This
account excludes the more legendary elements. The best sketch of the
supposed island appears in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ for
1845 (p. 293), by D'Avezac. Professor O'Curry places the date of the
alleged voyage or voyages at about the year 560 ("Lectures on the
Manuscript Materials for Irish History," p. 289). Good accounts of the
life in the great monasteries of Brandan's period may be found in Digby's
"Mores Catholici" or "Ages of Faith"; in Montalembert's "Monks of the
West" (translation); in Villemarqué's "La Legende Celtique et la Poésie
des Cloistres en Irlande, en Cambrie et en Bretagne" (Paris, 1864). The
poem on St. Brandan, stanzas from which are quoted in the text, is by
Denis Florence McCarthy, and may be found in the _Dublin University
Magazine_ (XXXI. p. 89); and there is another poem on the subject--a
very foolish burlesque--in the same magazine (LXXXIX. p. 471). Matthew
Arnold's poem with the same title appeared in _Fraser's Magazine_
(LXII. p. 133), and may be found in the author's collected works in the
form quoted below.

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