Wonders in the Sky (93 page)

Aside from the issue of whether actual UFOs were seen during this period, which we discussed in Part I of this book, tales of ‘cloud ships' were retold and embroidered to support the argument that mysterious beings traversed the sky with the ease that humans travel over the sea in ships.

There was an almost universal belief that the world was composed of three levels or ‘decks': the earth, the heavens and the marine kingdoms under the sea, between which it was not impossible to travel in the right conditions or by following certain instructions. For this reason, surreal stories of celestial sailing vessels dropping anchors upon the earth or divers from above drowning in our air became believable urban myths in medieval times. Consider the following account from Bishop Patrick's
Hiberno-Latin Mirabilia
(1074-84 AD):

Other Irish documents, such as the
Book of Glendalough
, composed in 1130, repeated the same story of the airship and the fish in every detail. However, the
Book of Leinster
(ca.1170), while stating that it occurred at the royal fair of Tailtiu, speaks of
three
ships in the sky, and alleges that King Domhnall, son of Murchad, was among the witnesses. This is interesting: Domhnall was the 161st Monarch of Ireland, reigning between 738 and 758 AD, and a report that a flying ship was seen in the sky in that period does in fact exist. The
Annals of Ulster
, which covers the years 431 to 1588, states, albeit with no reference to the fair or to the king, that as early as the year 749, “Ships with their crews were seen in the air above Cluain Moccu Nóis.”

Another, much later work,
The Annals of the Four Masters
, a series of historical chronicles compiled between 1632 and 1636 by four friars of the Abbey of Donegal in Bundrowes, near Bundoran, states that, “Ships with their crews were seen in the air” in 743. As this book contains numerous errors we are more inclined to take the date of 749 as the correct one. Was Domhnall, as opposed to Congalach, the royal witness in the original version of the airship sighting?

We see these stories as interesting forerunners of the ufology era, with a series of episodes in which the pattern shows either aerial voyagers in trouble, or airship operators who adopt a posture conveying a message, such as an outstretched arm.

 

Source: Aubrey Gwynn, ed.,
The Writings of Bishop Patrick 1074-1084
(Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1955), cited in
Anchors in a three-decker world,
Miceal Ross, Folklore Annual 1998. Note that the term “Scots” here refers to the Irish.

1211, Britain: Death of a sky visitor
But where is the Alien body?

In later retellings of the above story the motive behind the sailor's descent is a trapped anchor, thus substituting the traditional spear for an object more suited to navigation.

Gervase of Tilbury collected a similar tale in his work,
Otia Imperialia
(1211 AD):

“As people were coming out of church in Britain, on a dark cloudy day, they saw a ship's anchor fastened in a heap of stones, with its cable reaching up from it into the clouds. Presently they saw the cable strained, as if the crew was trying to pull it up, but it still stuck fast. Voices were then heard above the clouds, apparently in clamorous debate, and a sailor came down the cable. As soon as he touched the ground the crowd gathered around him, and he died, like a man drowned at sea, suffocated by our damp thick atmosphere. An hour afterwards, his shipmates cut the cable and sailed away; and the anchor they left behind was made into fastenings and ornaments for the church door, in memory of this wondrous event.”

It is not reported whether the dead sailor's body is shipped home in the airship, or whether the deceased is given a Christian burial on earth. In either case, this would be the first account of an aerial navigator that dies in an accident on our planet, some seven centuries before Roswell.

1250, Cloena (Clonmacnoise)
A ship with occupants, captured anchor

Some forty years later, the story was repeated by the anonymous author of an influential book written in Old Norse. The
Kongs Skuggsjo
, better known by its Latin name, the
Speculum Regale
[“the king's mirror”], was written around 1250 AD. The event took place in Clonmacnoise.

“There happened something once in the borough called Cloena, which will also seem marvellous. In this town there is a church dedicated to the memory of a saint named Kiranus. One Sunday while the populace was at church hearing mass, it befell that an anchor was dropped from the sky as if thrown from a ship; for a rope was attached to it, and one of the flukes of the anchor got caught in the arch above the church door. The people all rushed out of the church and marvelled much as their eyes followed the ropeupward.

“They saw a ship with men on board floating before the anchor cable; and soon they saw a man leap overboard and dive down to the anchor as if to release it. The movements of his hands and feet and all his actions appeared like those of a man swimming in the water. When he came down to the anchor, he tried to loosen it, but the people immediately rushed up and attempted to seize him. In this church where the anchor was caught, there is a bishop's throne.

“The bishop was present when this occurred and forbade his people to hold the man; for, said he, it might prove fatal as when one is held under water. As soon as the man was released, he hurried back up to the ship; and when he was up the crew cut the rope and the ship sailed away out of sight. But the anchor has remained in the church since then as a testimony to this event.”

The strong Christian overtones are noticeable in this version. Here it is not a king but a bishop who is present during the event, and the action occurs in the air above a church. The fact that the diver is allowed to return to his ship unharmed is another moralistic touch.

According to folklorist John Carey, the move from spears to anchors was due in part to the popularity of another legend of the same period, in which the crew are aboard a ship actually sailing in the sea, not in the sky. In this version, the anchor gets stuck in an underwater monastery, to be freed by a blind boy who swims down and finds himself in a subaquatic world.

Return of the celestial diver seven centuries later…in a Texas hoax!

In April 1897, in the middle of a wave of mysterious airship sightings, some American newspapers published two British folktales from Gervase of Tilbury. One of these was none other than the legend of the anchor and the church that we have cited above.

This article, entitled “A Sea Above the Clouds: Extraordinary Superstition Once Prevalent in England,” published first in the
Boston Post
, must have impressed one reader at least, for a couple of weeks later an anonymous writer wove yet another airship yarn from it.

In this updated American version, railroad tracks replace the tombstone where the anchor gets caught, and the pilot – dressed, naturally enough, in a sailor's suit – returns to his craft safe and sound, but there can be no mistaking the origin of the tale.

1122, London, England
Another flying ship loses its anchor

Mr. Page, associate national correspondent of the French Antiquary Society, reports a story told by a 12th century monk from Limousin named Geoffroy de Vigeois.

Fig. 49: Bulletin des Antiquaires

The event concerns a flying ship “navis sursum in aëre,” which landed in the middle of London. The inhabitants rushed on the anchor of this ship, and the passengers were forced to cut the rope in order to take to the air again.