MAELDUIN (or MAELDUNE)

This article appears in Volume V17, Page 298 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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MAELDUIN (or MAELDUNE) ,VOYAGE OF (Imram Maeleduin), an early Irish romance. The text exists in an 11th-century redaction, by a certain Aed the

Fair

FAIR

, described as the "

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

sage of Ireland," but it may be gathered from internal evidence that the tale itself

dates

DATES

back to the 8th century. It belongs to the group of Irish romance, the Navigations (Imrama), the common type of which was probably imitated from the classical tales of the wanderings of Jason, of Ulysses and of Aeneas. Maelduin, the foster-son of an Irish queen, learnt on reaching manhood that he was the son of a nun, and that his father, Ailill of the edge of battle, had been slain by a marauder from Leix. He set sail to seek his father's murderer, taking with him, in accordance with the instructions of a sorcerer, seventeen men. His three foster-

brothers

BROTHERS, RICHARD (1757-1824)

swam after him, and were taken on board. This increase of the fateful number caused Maelduin 's vengeance to be deferred for three years and seven months, until the last of the intruders had perished. The travellers visited many strange islands, and met with a long

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of adventures, some of which are

familiar

FAMILIAR (through the Fr. familier, from Lat. familiaris, of or belonging to the familia, family)

from other sources. The Voyage of St Brendan (q.v.) has very close similarities with the Maelduin, of which it is possibly a clerical imitation, with the important addition of the whale-

island

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

episode, which it has in common with " Sindbad the Sailor."
Imram Curaig Mailduin is preserved, in each case imperfectly, in the Lebor na h Uidre, a MS. in the Royal Irish

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, Dublin; and in the Yellow Book of Lecan, MS. H. 216 in the Trinity College Library, Dublin; fragments are in Harleian MS. 528o and Egerton MS. 1782 in the British Museum. There are translations by

Patrick

PATRICK, SIMON (1626–1707)
PATRICK, ST

Joyce, Old Celtic Romances (1879), by Whitley Stokes (a more

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

version, printed together with the text) in Revue celtique, vols. ix. and x. (1888-1889). See H. Zimmer, ` Brendan's Meerfahrt " in Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum, vol. xxxiii. (1889). Tennyson's Voyage of Maeldune, suggested by the Irish romance, borrows little more than its framework.

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