There is a blue eye which will look back to Ireland;
never more shall it see the men of Ireland, nor her women.

                                                                               Saint Columcille, A.D. 563

Here we turn the Quebecois historian, B. C. Payette. In his book "Old French Papers", (B.C. Payette, Gonzaga University, 1966), he outlines the progress of Irish missionaries, starting from Ireland in 725 AD, to the Feroe Islands, to the Orkneys, the Shetland Islands, then to Iceland by 770 AD, then Greenland, with the Vikings "on their heels" at each step. Perhaps they became lost in the fog so common in the north Atlantic, or perhaps they were simply exploring, but the next step was Labrador, Newfoundland, and then Iles-de-la-Madeleine, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

Jacques Cartier explored this region in 1534, and made some remarkable observations at Iles-de-la-Madeleine. His words are in a very old French, difficult to read today, but they seem to say he discovered the remains of European style farming (fields of wheat and flowering peas all growing wild but in such order as to suggest deliberate planting).

"Nous la trouvames plaine de beaulx arbres, prairies, champs de blé sauvaige, et de poys en fleurs, aussi espès et aussi beaulx, que je vis oncques en Bretaigne, queulx sembloist y avoir esté semé par laboureux."
("Les Isles-de-la-Madeleine et les Madelinots", Paul Hubert, Rimouski, 1926)

Later Payette has the monks moving on to Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia), where they were eventually neglected enough to become assimilated by the Micmacs. (This rings true. During the early development of French Canada, defections to the native culture became a problem, and the practice of posting a European "alone" with the natives, was abandoned.)

Jacques Cartier reported that the natives along this coast greeted him with the sign of the cross, which they made "with two fingers". Later, in 1607, Samuel de Champlain found an ancient cross "lost in the grass" at Chignectou. Champlain described it as "a cross of wood so old that it fell into powder at the first touch". (Our translation) We can be reasonably sure that this cross was not left by the Vikings, as they were non-Christian, and in fact, it was Viking attacks on their monasteries which drove the monks to flee westward.

Islantic sagas corroborate the writings of Irish monks, in their claim to have settled in the New World. Viking sagas from the early eleventh century (hundreds of years later), describe this region as well, and tell of finding the ruins of buildings.

A quotation from John Cabot's log book keeps turning up in footnotes. Cabot was employed by the British to discover new lands, and he is generally credited with the European discovery of Newfoundland in 1497. In the ships log, Cabot records sailing into a bay of Newfoundland, and there, finding eighty odd Irish fishing vessels riding at anchor. (History does not explain why it was Cabot, and not the Irish who discovered Newfoundland, not to mention the native peoples who were already resident there.)

There may be some competition from the Scots, possibly the MacIntyres, as well. In "The Hiram Key", by Knight and Lomas, the authors describe how the Knights Templar, having fled persecution in France, set up their base in Scotland, and from that base, explored the eastern seaboard of North America, before 1400 AD. Prince Henry Sinclair built a fleet of twelve ships, with Templar money, for the purpose of exploring the "New World." They sailed under the command of Antonio Zeno, and made landfall in Nova Scotia, whence they explored the east coast, south. According to the evidence of tomb carvings, Loch Awe of Mac Intyre fame, was at the centre of the Templar settlement.

In his book "The Discoverers", Daniel Boorstin tells of the "brave Irish monk, Saint Brendan (484 - 578 AD), who like many other explorers of his day, set out to find the Garden of Eden, which he believed to be across the Atlantic Ocean. Boorstin explains that monks in search of Eden had done much exploring, and had become popular heroes of their day. In fact, a genre of literature had arisen, which described their exploits and adventures. Saint Brendan doubtless had been inspired by the tales of Irish fishermen, and so he set out to see for himself and for the church, what these brave men had seen.

                                                                    Lawrence Durrell

Together, he and some Irish monks sailed across the Atlantic where they saw new lands "of unsurpassed fertility". There has been much speculation as to what new land he saw, and it has been variously placed from the Canaries to the West Indies. (Based upon what is known today of early Irish and Norse travels, the editor favours Prince Edward Island - a place of inspirational beauty, and of such fertility that it remains a world wide exporter of potatoes to this day.) His account (see the "Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis" or "Voyage of Brendan") of the new land, found its way into history as Saint Brendan's Island, which was supposed to be the original site of the Garden of Eden.

Saint Brendan himself may or may not have believed he had found Eden; it is clear others did. No one knew where it was, but map makers always included his "island" somewhere in the uncharted seas, when they made their maps - a tradition that lasted over a thousand years. The saint's story comes down to us in Latin, French, English, Saxon, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Breton, and Flemish.

We have come across historic Roman or Greek references to sea people thought to have been the Irish, because of their location and their use of skin boats. The writers, including Julius Caesar, who had encountered these people at sea, were impressed by the unusual speed and agility of their light, skin boats. Such stories were discounted until recently, when Tim Severin, a student of ancient exploration, decided to reenact the Saint Brendan expedition. A replica of a skin-covered boat was built, based on similar boats which had been found by archaeologists. The boat was of the kind thought to have been in common use in the time of Saint Brendan, and it proved itself up to the task. Severin's book, "The Brendan Voyage", is not only exciting reading, but a storehouse of information on ancient navigation. As they sail toward their final landfall in Newfoundland, Severin sets down all the crew's experiences beside those of the "Navigatio", including their encounter with a "sea monster". Perhaps it was the extent to which Severin's experiences, time after time, paralleled those of Saint Brendan that most convince us that the "Navigatio" was no work of fiction.

Thus, you will surely agree, the evidence seems to indicate that the Irish were not only capable of sea-faring, but that they were sailors as capable as any in the world.

Certainly the North Atlantic was well explored by a number of ancient peoples, long before the "official" discovery of America, by Columbus, in 1492 AD. The Islantic people were great seafarers, and it was a man from Iceland who eventually joined Saint Brendan's crew, and guided them to the new world.

Another great seafaring people were the Basques, who live near the Atlantic coast, in the south of France, and in the north of Spain. These fearless and resilient sailors have been a presence off the coast of Newfoundland as far back as anyone can remember, and they are still there today. Unfortunately, they have not left us a written record of their adventures.

Patricia Sutherland, an archaeologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, is presently (January, 2003) investigating the possibility that some of the artefacts and remains found along with those of the Dorset people, can be traced to Europe. The Dorset people lived along the north coast of Quebec and on some of the islands of what is now Nunavut Territory, from about 700 BC up until about 1300 AD. They predate the Inuit (Eskimos), and they had vanished completely before the time of Jacques Cartier and Cabot. Yarn found at Dorset sites looks suspiciously European, and is spun from the fur of the Arctic Hare, mixed with goat hair. Objects made from European woods, with square, iron-stained nail holes were also found. Square iron nails were used by the Vikings, who are now known to have had at least two settlements in Canada.

Archaeologists find two distinct skull types in Dorset settlements. One kind is short and round, and the other is long and thin, and resembles a European skull. An ancient Dorset carving was recently found which shows two faces "chin-to-chin". One of the faces looks aboriginal, and the other has a long, heavily bearded face, which could easily be Norse (beards are scarce among aboriginal Canadians). DNA studies are about to be attempted on a tooth from one of the more European looking skulls. If it is proven that the Dorset people were trading with the Europeans, and in fact, playing host to them, we will have to rethink a lot of established history.

Now, on the strength of the evidence presented, it would be quite unwarranted to announce that the McAteers discovered America, about the time of Christ. Our people certainly knew of the New World by the time of Saint Brendon, but for how long they had known, and indeed when they first crossed the Atlantic, is a matter of speculation. We simply do not know, and neither does anyone else!

But how, you might ask, could a primitive people, as the ancient Irish are all too often portrayed, achieve such things? In his "History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell sheds some light on this subject. Russell points out that the invasion of Europe by various barbarians, had caused "all the learned men" to flee, and most sought sanctuary in Ireland, a remote and peaceful place already renowned for the scholarship of its clerics. The effect was to convert Ireland into a great centre of learning, which in turn brought about a golden age of scholarship and achievement, in the "Emerald Isle". Russell credits the Irish with having preserved much of Greek and Roman learning, during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries.

The great British historian, Arnold Toynbee, goes further. Toynbee feels that Ireland led the Western World intellectually, from the founding of Clonmacnoise Monastery in 548 AD (by St. Ciaran Mhac an t'Saoir, to be sure!), until after the founding of the Irish monastery of St. James at Ratisbon, in AD 1090, and he refers to this time quite unequivocally as the "period of Irish cultural superiority". Toynbee describes a run-off for power between Rome and Ireland, the result of which would determine whether the civilization of Western Europe derived from "an Irish or from a Roman embryo".

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