Maildun

Maildun, the hero of an ancient Irish romance, first translated by Dr Joyce in his Ancient Celtic Romances (1879), and supposed by him to be the product of a rich and vivid imagination, working freely on a real voyage made in the beginning of the 8th century. The story forms one of the four extant Inrama or voluntary sea-expeditions, of which the most famous is the 6th-century voyage of St Brendan; and it has been made familiar to all readers in the splendid verse of Tennyson. Maildun was the son of Allil Ocar Aga, of the tribe of Owenacht of Ninus, in the north-west of County Clare, and before his birth his father was killed by a band of sea-robbers. He grew up handsome and accomplished, but had scarce reached manhood before he set sail in a triple-hide curragh with a crew of sixty men to find his father's murderer. For three years and seven months he voyaged on the western sea, seeing marvels such as no eyes had seen before. He visited islands of monstrous ants, of blood-thirsty quadrupeds, of red-hot animals, and of those which turn themselves round inside their skins, as well as the isles of the blest, of laughing, of weeping, of intoxicating wine-fruits, of the mystic lake, of the burning river, of the crystal bridge, and the four precious walls. Further wonders were the demon horse-race, the palace of solitude, the miller of hell, speaking birds, a water-arch in the air, and the silver pillar of the sea. At length Maildun found the murderer of his father, but forgave him his wrong because of the great mercy of God in having delivered himself from so many dangers.