Bran mac Febail- Celtic HeroHero

The Silver Branch

Bran was walking alone near his fort when he heard music behind him. No matter which way he turned, the music was always at his back. It lulled him to sleep, and when he woke he found a silver branch bearing white blossoms lying beside him. He carried it back to the royal house, and there a woman appeared whom no one had seen enter. She sang fifty quatrains describing Emain Ablach, the Land of Women, an island beyond the western sea where there was no grief, no sickness, no death — only music, feasting, and delight without aging. When she finished, the branch leapt from Bran's hand into hers and she vanished (Immram Brain, §1-32).

The next day, Bran gathered twenty-seven companions and set sail westward. On the open sea they encountered Manannán mac Lir driving his chariot across the waves, who sang to them that what they saw as ocean was in truth a flowered plain, and the fish beneath the hull were lambs and calves in the fields of the sea-god's country. Manannán prophesied that Bran would reach the Land of Women before sunset (Immram Brain, §33-45).

The Land of Women

They found the island as promised. The chief woman drew Bran ashore by throwing a ball of thread that stuck to his palm, and the company was led to a great house where each man found a bed and a woman waiting, and food and drink that renewed themselves without end. Time passed in pleasure without measure — what seemed like a year was in truth many centuries.

Eventually one of Bran's companions, Nechtan son of Collbran, grew homesick and begged to return to Ireland. The women warned them not to set foot on Irish soil. They sailed back and found the shore unchanged in appearance, but when they called out to the people on the beach, the Irish answered that they knew of no Bran mac Febail except as a name in ancient stories. Nechtan leapt from the boat onto the sand and instantly crumbled to ash, as though the centuries he had not lived caught him all at once.

Bran, seeing this, told his story to those on the shore, wrote it in ogham, and sailed away again. The text says nothing of where he went. The last image the tale offers is the boat pulling back from the land of the living, carrying a man who can never come home (Immram Brain, §46-68).