nearly a century after Columbus' voyage, a. nd more than four

centuries after 5Iadoc's presumed disappearance. It obtained its gat currency chiefly through fraud and misrepresentation. It was supported by what can only he charactcrised as impudent and manifest falsehoods; for the narratives of those who caiue upon Welsh-speaking Iudians rc, from interual evidcnce, nothing else.

How then did the story originate? There are traces of Madoc traditionsthough not such tradition s we find in Powel- in Meredydd. Coupling these with the statement that Madoc went aclgss the broad sea, or "5Iorwerydd," it becomes highly probahle that Madoc's voyage was only t, Ireland. In early hVelsh, "5Ior- wervdd" regularly means the Irish Sea, and not the Atlantic. In the l;rut y Tywysoon. we are told that Owain Gwynedd lnarried an Irish lady. Another early Welsh writer couples iryd, Madoc's brother, with Irish estates, and Riryd is found iu the stories sailing with Madoc to America. The truth, perhaps, is then that Madoc retired from his native land and settled down for good in Irelaud. If he made a. journey hack to Wales to persuade more Welshmen to follow him there is nothing very improhable; kom his absence would easily arise the stories of his disappearance. The legend horrowed many details froin Cohunhus. loth Madoc and Columbus sail west, discover a new country, leave a small force, return home, go hack to find the garrison mostly dead, and make speeches to persuade settlers to follow them. It is to be feared that Powel derived more from Columbian sources thau from his hypothetical manuscripts.

Nor are the ftcts of the narrative in themselves probable. It is, to say the least, extremely unlikely that the Welsh should have succeeded in crossing the Atlantic in the twelfth century, before the invention of the compass, and before the art of navigation had been

The eolnpass, according to 'l'ortpns. was usel by the N'orsemen al,tntt the middle f the fiirteenth centUlV (' l list. ilev. Not'vcit'arum' [Hafil, 1711], iv. 4, 1'- ::45), in al,l,roximately the modern manner. Raymond Lully I'!272] wa.s well acquainted with it; fiauthier d'Espinois (middle thirteenth century) relbrs to its polarity; [h'tutct[o I.:ttini [121;o] mentions it in his Ent.yclopa'dia. It apl,ears I, have heen kn.wn

S...tland at the beginning of the fimrteenth century, as Bari,our, xxriling in 1:, says lhat Kin l}:tvid, when crossing in 1;Jill; tom AlTair to ':trrick. "ha ne, lil had na sl:ue." Uhaucer, in 13D1, alludes t, the thirty-two pSints. Ih'obahly it was intn,- ,hwed by the Aral,s and the {'rusaders, as Jacques ,lc Vitry, Bishop of Aeon in Palestine [121s], speaks of the maetic nee, lie as "most necessary fiw seafin'ers," and lhc 'rusader De Bcauvais also alludes to it. A still earlier alhtsi, m is fimnd in Neckam, D, I't,,,silib,,s [twellih century]. Encycl,qa.d. B:'it., t',l. ,