Brasil (mythical island)

Nomenclature

The historian Walter Scaife (1890) noted that Brasil has been charted at various locations (cf. ) with an almost equally diverse variation on the toponymy (Scaife listed thirteen spellings for "Brasil").

Etymology

The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil is uncertain, but the Italian geographer (1937) was sure it was related to the wood dye brazil. Medieval Latin brasile was the term for a dye that enjoyed great popularity as a trading commodity in the twelfth century throughout Western Europe. It has been speculated that the widespread appearance of the name served as a locational marker for sources of the dye, primarily for sailors from the Republic of Genoa where most of the maps originate. The name of the country Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil) is also connected with the brazilwood dye. It has been argued that the Irish island cannot be connected with tropical brazilwood, which cannot grow so far north, but this argument can be countered by the fact that "brazil" dye itself can be obtained from other trees that do grow in Europe.

In Irish tradition it is said to come from the Irish Uí Breasail (meaning 'descendants/clan of Bresal'), a minor Gaelic clan of northeastern Ireland, or less frequently from the Old Irish í 'island' + bres 'beauty, worth; great, mighty'.

Appearance on maps

Brasil has been charted on different maps at various locations, such as "a great Antarctic continent, extending to the South Pole, or a small island near the Arctic Circle; or.. the southern part of South America or.. the vicinity of the coast of Ireland..."

Nautical charts identified an island called "Bracile" west of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean in a portolan chart by Angelino Dulcert circa 1325, the Rex Tholomeus portolan chart circa 1360 and the Catalan Atlas circa 1375.

Later it appeared as Insula de Brasil in the Venetian map of Andrea Bianco (1436), attached to one of the larger islands of a group of islands in the Atlantic. This was identified for a time with the modern island of Terceira in the Azores, where a volcanic mount at the bay of its main town, Angra do Heroismo, is still named Monte Brasil. A Catalan chart of about 1480 labels two islands "Illa de brasil", one to the south west of Ireland and one south of "Illa verde" or Greenland.

In 1526, Roger Barlow translated Martín Fernández de Enciso's Suma de Geographia into English and included the following description:

On maps the island was shown as being circular, often with a central strait or river running east–west across its diameter. Despite the failure of attempts to find it, this appeared regularly on maps lying south west of Galway Bay until 1865, by which time it was called "Brasil Rock".

Several shallow water geographical features have been suggested as the site of the legendary Brasil, such as Porcupine Bank, Yellow Ridge (), or Rockall.

Map gallery

File:El mar Mediterráneo en el Atlas catalán de Cresques Abraham.jpg|Catalan atlas from 1375 File:Piri Reis map of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.jpg|Piri Reis' map of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea from 1513 File:Europe map ca1570.jpg|Map of Europe from 1570 File:1595 Europa Mercator.jpg|Gerardus Mercator's map from 1595

Searches for the island

Expeditions left Bristol in 1480 and 1481 to search for the island; and a letter written by Pedro de Ayala, shortly after the return of John Cabot (from his expedition in 1497), reports that land found by Cabot had been "discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found Brasil".

In 1674, a Captain John Nisbet claimed to have seen the island when on a journey from France to Ireland, stating that the island was inhabited by large black rabbits and a magician who lived alone in a stone castle, yet the character and the story were a literary invention by Irish author Richard Head. Roderick O'Flaherty in A Chorographical Description of West or H-Iar Connaught (1684) tells us "There is now living, Morogh O'Ley (Murrough Ó Laoí), who imagines he was personally on O'Brasil for two days, and saw out of it the Aran Islands, Golamhead by [Lettermullen], Irrosbeghill, and other places of the west continent he was acquainted with."

Hy-Brasil has also been identified with Porcupine Bank, a shoal in the Atlantic Ocean about 200 km west of Ireland and discovered in 1862. As early as 1870, a paper was read to the Geological Society of Ireland suggesting this identification. The suggestion has since appeared more than once, e.g., in an 1883 edition of Notes and Queries.

In popular culture

Irish poet Gerald Griffin wrote about Hy-Brasil in the early nineteenth century.

Mary Burke's short story uses the myth as an allegory of the breach caused by the Northern Irish Troubles. Mary Burke, “Hy-Brasil” in The Faber Best New Irish Short Stories, 2004–5 Ed. David Marcus. London: Faber & Faber, 2005, 101–105.

In The Hollow Hills, part of Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, several characters believe (incorrectly) that the wizard Merlin has hidden the young Prince Arthur on Hy-Brasil.

In the 1989 film comedy film Erik the Viking, Hy-Brasil is the location of the Horn Resounding, said to allow mortals to enter Asgard and return home safely. In the film, it is said that if blood should ever be spilled on its shores the land would sink beneath the waves.

In the 2009 book Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, Graham Hancock attributed the appearance of Hy-Brasil on so many maps as evidence of a lost corpus of pre-Ptolemaic maps that showed evidence of substantial earth changes, including sunken islands.

In H. G. Parry's 2023 novel, The Magician's Daughter, Hy-Brasil features as an enchanted island hidden from the rest of the world.

Explanatory notes

References

References

1. Hy Brasil, Hy Breasil, Hy Breasail, Hy Breasal, Hy Brazil, I-Brasil
2. {{cite EB1911
3. Freitag, Barbara. (2013). "Hy Brasil: The Metamorphosis of an Island: From Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium". Rodopi.
4. McKillop, James. (1998). "A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology". [[Oxford University Press]].
5. Walter Scaife (1890) apud {{harvp. Freitag. 2013
6. (25 October 2023). "A $7.5-million find: Overlooked Getty estate sale map turns out to be 14th century treasure". [[Los Angeles Times]].
7. "The Oldest Portolan Chart in America and The Fourth-Oldest Surviving "Complete" Portolan Chart of Europe".
8. Lišèák, Vladimír: Mapa mondi (Catalan Atlas of 1375), Majorcan cartographic school, and 14th century Asia, Proc. Int. Cartogr. Assoc., pg 3, https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-proc-1-69-2018, 2018.
9. "Hy-Brasil: The Supernatural Island". Library of Congress.
10. Quadrant. Australia: Quadrant Magazine. Vol 32, p. 19, 1988. [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Quadrant/OjEdAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=monte%20brasi%20hy-brasil Google Books].
11. (19 May 2023). "Uncovering truth behind 'phantom Galway island' appearing on old maps that suddenly disappeared".
12. Seaver, K.A.. (1995). "The Frozen Echo". [[Stanford University Press]].
13. (2008). "Distribution, abundance, and growth of anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius) on the Porcupine Bank (west of Ireland)". ICES Journal of Marine Science.
14. Winsor, Justin. (1889). "Narrative and critical history of America". Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
15. Frazer, W.. (December 1883). "O'Brazile or Hy Brazile". [[Notes and Queries]].
16. Griffin, Gerald. (1846). "The Book of Irish Ballads". [[James Duffy (Irish publisher).
17. (27 May 2005). "Review: The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2004-5". [[The Guardian]].
18. (1980). "Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy". William Morrow and Company, Inc.
19. "''Erik the Viking'' (1989)".
20. Hancock, Graham. Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. United States: Crown, 2009.
21. (21 November 2022). "The Magician's Daughter".