The Voyage of Bran

Some people went to Manannan’s country beyond the sea and came back to tell of it.

One day Bran, son of Febal, was out alone near his fort when he heard music behind him. Wherever he went it followed him, and in the end the sound was so sweet that he fell asleep. When he woke, there beside him lay a silver branch covered in white blossoms, and the silver was as white as the flowers.

He carried the branch into his royal house. When all his people were gathered there, they saw a woman in strange clothes standing among them. She began to sing to Bran, and everyone watched and listened.

She sang that she had brought a branch of the apple tree from Emhain, a far-off island ringed by the shining horses of the Son of Lir. There, she said, boats raced against chariots on the White Silver Plain, and the land stood on feet of white bronze. An old tree grew there in blossom, with birds calling from its branches. Every colour shone, and music was everywhere. Nobody there knew grief or sorrow, sickness or weakness or death, and there was no weeping and no treachery, nothing harsh or rough. There were treasures of every colour, golden and silver chariots on the Plain of the Sea, gold-yellow and crimson horses on the shore, and others with sky-blue wool on their backs. The weather was always fair, and silver dropped on the land.

She sang that a fair man would come at sunrise, riding over the wave-beaten plain, and that an army would come rowing over the clear sea to a stone from which a hundred kinds of music rang. There were three times fifty islands in the ocean to the west, she said, and each was two or three times bigger than Ireland.

“I am not speaking to all of you,” she sang, “though I have told you all these wonders. Let Bran listen. Do not lie down idle. Set out over the clear sea, and you may come to the Land of Women.”

Then the woman left them, and no one knew where she went. She took her branch with her, for it leapt out of Bran’s hand into hers, and he had not the strength to hold it.

The next day Bran set out on the sea with three companies of nine men, and over each company he put one of his foster-brothers. When they had rowed for two days and two nights, they saw a man driving a chariot towards them across the sea. He told them he was Manannan, son of Lir, and he sang to Bran.

“Bran thinks he is rowing his little boat over a wonderful clear sea,” he sang, “but to me, in my chariot, it is a plain full of flowers. Where Bran sees waves breaking, I see red flowers without a flaw. Under your boat there is a wood of lovely acorns, a wood of blossom and fruit that smells of wine, that never withers, with leaves the colour of gold. Row on steadily, Bran. The Land of Women is not far. You will reach Emhain before the sun sets.”

Bran rowed on, and soon he saw an island. He rowed round it, and there was a crowd of people on it, staring at Bran and his men and roaring with laughter. They would not stop to talk, but only gaped and laughed. Bran put one of his men ashore, but straight away the man joined the islanders and stared and laughed just as they did. Bran kept rowing round the island, and every time they passed their friend his comrades called to him, but he would not answer. He only stared and marvelled at them. So they sailed off and left him on that island, which is called the Island of Joy.

Not long afterwards they came to the Land of Women. The chief of the women stood at the landing place. “Come ashore, Bran, son of Febal,” she called. “You are welcome here.”

But Bran did not dare to land. So the woman threw a ball of thread straight at him. He caught it, and it stuck fast to his palm, and holding the other end she pulled the boat in to the landing place. Then they went into a fine house with three times nine beds. The food on every dish never ran out, and they had every kind of food and drink they could wish for.

It seemed to them that they had been there only a year when one of them, Nechtan, son of Collbrain, began to long for home. His friends begged Bran to go back to Ireland with him. The woman warned them they would be sorry if they left, but in the end they set out all the same. She told them not to set foot on the land when they reached Ireland, and to call at the Island of Joy and take back the man they had left there.

So they sailed towards Ireland until they came to a place called Srub Bruin. People on the shore called out, asking who was coming over the sea.

“I am Bran, son of Febal,” he answered.

“We know of no such man,” they said, “though the voyage of Bran is in our oldest stories.”

Then Nechtan leapt out of the boat. The moment he touched the shore of Ireland, he turned into a heap of ashes, as if he had lain in the earth for hundreds of years.

Then Bran gave the people on the shore an account of all his wanderings, from first to last. After that he said farewell to them, and where he wandered after that, nobody knows.

Where this tale comes from

Lady Gregory tells this tale as “His Call to Bran,” one of the stories of Manannan in Gods and Fighting Men, her book of the old Irish tales of the Tuatha De Danann and the Fianna. In her list of sources at the back she names Professor Kuno Meyer’s translation in Alfred Nutt’s Voyage of Bran, along with works by S. Hayes O’Grady and de Jubainville.

In her own note at the back of the book, Lady Gregory says she worked from the Irish texts where they were printed, fused different versions together, condensed many passages and left out others, and chose to tell the stories in the manner of the thatched houses where she had heard so many legends.

The two long songs, sung by the woman from Emhain and by Manannan, are given here in shortened prose. A line in the woman’s song warning Bran against drunkenness is left out, and the house in the Land of Women is described simply.

Read the original: Lady Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men (Project Gutenberg #14465, His Call to Bran)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes a companion becoming unable to leave an island and Nechtan turning to ashes. Time passes differently in the otherworld.

Joy can also take something away

The laughing island seems pleasant until a companion cannot answer his friends. The Land of Women offers abundance, but Bran’s landing is compelled by a thread stuck to his hand. These details complicate the invitation’s promise of a world without sorrow or treachery.

Manannan’s flowered plain and Bran’s sea show different perceptions of one place. The return adds a difference in time: what felt like a year to the travellers belongs to ancient memory at home.

Compare the two shores

Describe the return first from Bran’s boat and then from the listeners on land. Use the same arrival and name in both accounts. Explain how Nechtan’s ashes resolve the disagreement about time, while leaving Bran’s later destination unknown.

Think about it

• Why do you think Manannan saw flowers where Bran saw waves?
• What happened to the man Bran left on the Island of Joy, and why might the island be dangerous?
• Why did Nechtan turn to ashes when he touched Ireland? What does this tell you about time in the Land of Women?

You may also like

• The Children of Lir — another Irish tale linked to Lir and his family
• The Salmon of Knowledge — another tale from old Irish tradition
• The House in the Lake — another Irish tale of a magical world beyond our own