Who’s on First?
Excerpt from my new book, "Color Me Green: Ways the Irish Influenced America."
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There is continual disagreement about the first white men who discovered the North American continent. Christopher Columbus got credit for it but Amerigo Vespucci got his name in there by hitching rides on sailing ships to the coasts of South America. A confused map maker scrawled the name “America” and the entire Western continents are called the Americas.
Then a Runestone with Scandinavian writings carved into it describing the fate of a group of Viking explorers, circa 1000 A.D., was discovered deep into the land which now is Alexandria, Minnesota.
Finally, the writings of St. Brendan, the Navigator, began to be taken seriously. Brendan wrote about having sailed in the 6th Century around 512–530 A.D. with a cluster of monks in a currach, a boat made of whalebone and leather, all around the north seas. They saw Iceland and Greenland and a land Brendan believed to be Tir na n’Og, the “Irish Heaven” or “Land of Youth.” Geography experts lately decided the land must have been Newfoundland based on ocean currents and event recorded.
Now “petroglyphs,” rocks with marks cut into them, have been found in Wyoming County, West Virginia. Investigators have gone from conclusions that they were worthless scratches to the belief that they were Indian signs to deciding they must be a Viking language.
At last Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University, an expert on petroglyphs, declared that they were Ogham stones, the kind that are found all over Ireland. The Ogham writing goes back to the time between 500 and 800 A.D., about the time of Brendan. The marks found in West Virginia are definitely Ogham and can be confidently read by scholars.
The words in Ogham lettering were written in Latin, the language of St. Patrick and all the monasteries following the Catholic faith. Surely then, the Irish monastic missionaries were in America at least 400 years before the Vikings and 900 years before Christopher Columbus!
It may never be proven conclusively who was first, but we know for sure that this curiosity will live on forever as one of the great mysteries of American lore.
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To read more stories like this one about the Irish influence to America, order my new book, "Color Me Green: Ways the Irish Influenced America" by Helen Walsh Folsom.
Over the next several weeks, I will be publishing, with the aid of my daughter, Bettse Folsom, a series of answer & questions & snippets about Ireland that many people have asked me during events where I have attended. If you have a question, please contact me by email and I will be happy to address it.
Thank you for reading my blog!
