Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. land, where, far above the Arctic Circle, in the frozen ocean to the northeast of Iceland, one finds in the small volcanic isle of Jan-Mayen, the very one which in thc belief' of Sylla Qin Plu- tarehj belonged to Saturn? The agitations and labored breath- ings of the god on awakening from his dreams, are a mythological expression of the rumblings of the earth beneath the crater of Hecla or under the intermittent volcano of the Jan-Mayen islc.2 This outcome, so contrary to the demands of his theory, evi- dently troubles M. Beauvois. He admits that he cannot ima- gine how the Kelts should have been led to locate their Paradise, their Fortunate Islands, their Elysium, in islands so frozen and sterile and hyperborean. But, like a good advocate, he draws from the admitted facts such comfort as he can, saying, that, inasmuch as it would never have occurred to more southerly peoples to do so strange a thing, the fact that, according to Pindar and Theopompos, the Greeks also placed their Elysium in the extreme North, must be taken as conclusive proof that the Greeks accepted of Keltie ideas on this subject at a very early period! A far more reasonable inference would have been, that the ancestors of each people once lived in a Pre- Glacial Arctic Eden of more than tropical luxuriance, and that 1 Il fSyllaJ croyait que c'etait au-dela de la mer Cronienne, par conse- quent dans 1' ile Jean Mayen fp. 2795 compare also p. 281 and 278D. 2 Nous croyons comprendre que 1'autre avec son rocher rutilant est simplement le cratere de l'I-lekla. Ce volt-an reste en repos pendant long- temps et semble sommeiller, mais tout a coup il se reveille et ses eruptions entreeoupees rappellent les penibles efforts de respiration et les convulsions titaniques de Saturne. Et meme, si l'on admet avec Sylla. que 1'antre est situe au-dela de la :ner Cronienne, il faudra. le chercher jusque dans 1'ile Jean-Mayen, dont le volcan est aussi intermittent Cp. 2817. B On le devinerait rien qu'en constatant que, pour rapprocher de leur pays le paradis des heros, ils l'ont place dans des iles froides et steriles, n'ayant aucun titre a Pepithete de fortunees 1 p. 282y. 4 Jarnais pareillenidee ne seralt venue aux meridionaux qui, en effet, cherchaieut leur Elysee dans une -z6ne plus temperee et plus favorisee de la. nature. Pour que Pindaro identiflat l'asile des Bienheureux, Paneien pays des Gorgones, avec les contrees iiyperbm-venues, pour que Thdg. pompe regardat les Hyperhoreens comme les heureux des mortels, il fallait que les conceptions celtiques se fussent de bonne heure imposees aux Grecs fp. 2821. The reader will notice the incidental concession of the correctness of the representation of Greek ideas given in Paradise Found, pp. 182-187.

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 THULE. 27 Of prehistoric Keltic navigators with America. This Western World of ours was their sacred isle of Avalon, their Tir na n-Og QLand of perpetual Youthj, Tir na m-Beo QLand of the Living Onesj , Mag Mell QField of Delightsj, Flaith Innis Qlsle of' Heroesj, Tir Tairngire fLand of Promisej. And from all accounts of the beauty and fertility of these Paradisaic regions he feels compelled to conclude that those prehistoric voyagers not only reached America, but also explored it far down into the inter-tropical regions, seeing with their own eyes the gor- geous flowers and spontaneous fruits which gave such marvellous color and exuberance to their descriptions of the country, as these lived on in later legends. The tirst embarrassment experienced by our author in ex- pounding this general theory is met at the very threshold, where the attempt is made to identify Hesiod's and Plutarch's Sacred Isle of Saturn with Mag Mell. Somehow the due West loca- tion of' America will not fit the classic description at all. This uncompromisingly fixes the Saturnian isle in the North, high in the Oronian Sea? Moreover, according to all accounts, it was not a land of ordinary days and nights, such as we have here in America, but, on the contrary, a region of almost continuous light, -a land which, as he himself' says, corresponds to Pliny's and Mela's Ultima Thule, where at the time of the summer sol- stice there were for six months no nights at 1111.8 What can be done? There seems to M. Beauvois to be no relief from difficulty in interpreting these and other references to Saturn and his isle, until one goes more than a thousand miles due North from Ire- 1 1 Pages 720-727. 2 Son ile, qui dans cette categorie de legendes est aussi celle des Bien- heureux, devait Gtre dans la mer de Saturne, le Mare Cranium, partie sep- tentrionale de 1'0c6an Atlantique. C'est ce qui ressort clairement d'un passage de Plutarque dans son dialogue sur la Figure qui se voit dans la Lune fp. 2782. 3 Un trait qu'elle n. de commun avec Pultima Thule, en voici uvn gun-9 caraeteristiqueg le soleil n'y disparait sous Phorizon qu'une heure ou molns pendant trente jours fp. 2785. For Pliny's words, see motto to this paper. Elsewhere, speaking of the lengthening day as the sun goes north, he writes as follows: Ubi :estate luoldm noctes llaud dubie promittunt id, quod cogit ratio credi, solstitl diebus accedente sole propius verticem muudi, angusto lucis amhitu, suhjeuta teme continues dies lrubere senis mensihns, noctisque e dlverso ad brumam remoto. Quod iieri in insula flhule Pytheas Massiliensis scrlbet Cllist. Nat. ii. 1871.

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 TIIULE. 29 each people, like all other ancient nations, had preserved in their traditions indistinct but unmistakable reminiscences of that earlier and happier abode. In no part of his exposition is M. Beauvois any more success- ful in establishing his view. Granting all that he claims as to the long voyages ot' Keltic navigators in thehmiddle agesg granting their discovery and colonization of America, before Columbus was born 5 1 granting that his citations from Irish, Gaelic, Kym- ric, and other Keltic sources, are all correct representations of Keltic ideas, - after every concession, there is not tl1e slightest proof given, or attempted to be given, that these tribes either originally came from America, or that they had even visited America before they formed their Iirst ideas ol' an Earthly Para- dise. On the other hand, a believer in the polar origin of man- kind ean ask no better reading than these elaborate papers present. Everywhere shimmering through the fanciful but transparent adornments of the traditions, he sees the unmistak- able landmarks of that primitive polar Paradise. In page after page he meets the ever-recurring ideas that this enchanting land is at H the extremity of the earth, that it is the navel ot' the seag that there 4' one day is a year or an ageg that it is the land in which is the world-tree, around which the sun- bird circles 3 that it is the region where stands the H colossal Silver Pillar, whose head is lost in the clouds, and which is noth- ing less than that great axis ot' the world which Plato calls the H Spindle of Necessity, 4' brighter than the rainbow, and which Scyrnnos ot' Chios, long before thc Christian era, said was called the ' Bom-:AL Cor.UMN,' and was located at the extremity ot' the country of the Kelts. 2 Evidently all these indices point, not to our American Atlantic coast, but to Plato's Arctic kingdom of Atlas, in the centre of Atlas's Sea, where 1 La decozwerte du. Nouveau-Monde par les Irlandais et les premieres traces du Cltristianismc en Amdrique avant Fan 1,000. Par E. Beauvois. Nancy, 1875. Also Les colonies Em'upe'ennes du Murklund et de l'E.-:cociland Cllomina-i tion Canadiennel au :tive sierle, et les vestiges qui en. subsisterentjusqu am: Mia ct xviiv stecles. Par E. Beauvois. Nancy, 1877. Both may be found in the Compte-rendu du. fhmgres international des Amc'1'ic'anistes. 2Pe1-iegesis, verses 188 E. in Geographt Groeci Mtnores. Ed. Miiller. Paris, 1855. Vol. 1. p. 202. 8 See Paradise Found, pp. 1-15, 182-187, 191-278, 350-358. '