Immram Brain
Immram Brain [ 'imrav branʴ ] (" Bran's Seafaring") is the title of a travel story ( immram ) from the beginning of the 8th century. It is the oldest extant of this literary genre. In the lost Lebor Dromma Snechta ("The Book of Druim Snechta"), this story was recorded for the first time, according to references in more recent manuscripts. The work is written partly in prose, partly in verse, in it Christian and pre-Christian ideas are combined.
content
Bran mac Febail [ bran mak 'fʴevilʴ ] (“Bran, Febal's son”) receives a visit from a mystical woman from the Other World at his castle , who plays wonderful music with a silver branch. She says that this branch comes from the apple tree in the land of Emain Ablach , the paradise island in the ocean. After her disappearance, Bran equips a boat and sets out to search for the island with three times nine companions (number mysticism ). On the third day they meet Manannan mac Lír , who tells Bran about the birth of his son ( Compert Mongáin ) and directs them to a world of everlasting happiness. There, however, Bran cannot find out anything about his further travel route, since all the residents only laugh and a messenger he sent ultimately remains on the island, laughing. Later they land on the shore of an island that is only inhabited by women and on which they live happily for many years - but this time seems like a single year to them.
However, Bran's companion Nechtan mac Collbran becomes insatiable homesick and persuades him to return home. The island queen warns them not to set foot on Ireland's earth again. But Nechtan's longing for home is so great that he forgets the prohibition and immediately jumps out of the boat on land after arriving, where it immediately turns to dust. Bran and his other companions stay in the boat, Bran tells the Irish gathered on the beach about his adventures and they go out to sea again.
Text structure
The text consists of a mixture of prose and lyrical passages. The largest part of the text is made up of two long poems, each of which reproduces the literal speech of an otherworldly figure in detail, while the prose passages describe the progress of the plot in a very brief way. In the first of these two poems an otherworldly woman describes the otherworld in the far west across the sea; Christian elements and motifs with roots in the mythology of pre-Christian Ireland are fused together. In the second poem Manannán mac Lír describes the sea as a plain of flowers and the way to the "island of women" and explains the salvation-historical status of otherworldly beings: The beings of the otherworldly (the "elves") are explained as descendants of Adam who were born before the fall of man and thus its consequences have escaped. In this way, the author of Immram Brain succeeds in integrating the beings of the Otherworld, despite their roots in pre-Christian mythology of Ireland, into the worldview of the meanwhile Christian Ireland: the paradisiacal Otherworld becomes a mirror of the paradise before the Fall.
See also
- Myths and legends from Ireland
- List of Celtic gods and legendary figures
- Celtic mythology
- Immram Curaig Maíle Dúin
- Navigatio Sancti Brendani
literature
- Helmut Birkhan : Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. 2nd, corrected and enlarged edition. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 .
- Matthias Egeler: Avalon, 66 ° North. On early history and the reception of a myth. (= Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 95), Berlin - Boston: de Gruyter 2015.
- Matthias Egeler: From the land of women and Celtic heroes. Irish tales from the islands of immortality: 'Bran's Sea Voyage', 'Connle's Voyage to the Other World' and 'Cú Chulainn's Sick Camp'. (= Praesens TextBibliothek 11), Vienna: Praesens 2016.
- Séamus Mac Mathúna: Immram Brain. Bran's Journey to the Land of the Women. (= Book series of the magazine for celtic philology, volume 2), Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1985. (standard edition.)
- Bernhard Maier : Lexicon of Celtic Religion and Culture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 466). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-46601-5 .
- Wolfgang Meid : The Celts (= Reclams Universal Library 17053). Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-017053-3 .