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to Rome. Possibly the use of the coracle may have been required to satisfy asceticism.^[1]

But the Irish monks did not stop short at the Orkneys. Dicuil,^[2] an Irishman, who wrote in the ninth century, tells us, "There are many other islands in the northern British Ocean which can be approached from the north of Great Britain with full sail and fair wind in two days and nights. An upright monk told me that in a small boat he made his way to one of these. The islands are small ... and our anchorites sailed to them from Scottia and dwelt on them ... but they are now deserted, because of the Norse pirates." These islands are probably the Shetlands and Faroes, and in the latter still survives a tradition of holy men who dwelt there before the Norsemen.^[3] In the Shetlands the names Papa Stour, Papa Litla, and Papa Sund recall the Norse word for a priest—"Papa." The Norse settlers appeared in the Faroes about the middle of the ninth century, and this would place the voyages of the Irish about the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century.

So, too, if we may believe the 'Íslendíngabók,' at the coming of the Norsemen there were Irish priests or anchorites in Iceland.^[4] "There were there," says Ari, its compiler, "Christians of those whom the Norsemen call 'Papas'; but they straightway retired because they did not wish to abide there with Pagans. They left behind them Irish books and bells and crosses, whence one may gather that they were Irish." Ari is equally emphatic in another passage: "Before Iceland was settled by the Norsemen ... there were Christians there, and it is thought that they came from countries to the west, for Irish books, bells, and crosses have been found ... at Papey and Papýle in the west [of Iceland]." Finally Dicuil asserts that "monks have dwelt thirty years in the Isle of Thule between February and August."^[5] He speaks of the short-

1. Cf. Sax. Chron., year 891, and the poem quoted in Reeves' 'Adamnan,' 285:

   "Delightful to be on Benn-Edar
   After coming o'er the white-bosomed sea,
   To row one's little coracle
   Ochone! on the swift-waved shore.
   How rapid the speed of my coracle,
   And its stern turned upon Derry."

2. Dicuil, author of 'De Mensura Orbis,' circ. 825 A.D.
3. Beauvois, 'Compte Rendu: Congrès des Américanistes' (Nancy, 1875), p. 68.
4. The 'Íslendíngabók' was written about 1120, or a little later, by Ari Froði, vide Chapter 1.
5. 'De Mens. Orbis,' vii. 2.