Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil and several other variants,[2] is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean[3] west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it becomes visible but still cannot be reached.
Etymology
The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil is unknown. Despite the similarity, the name of the country Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil) has no connection to the mythical islands. The historian Walter Scaife remarked in 1890 that the toponym had something of a will-o'-the-wisp character, "for on various maps it may be seen designating a great Antarctic continent, extending to the South Pole, or a small island near the Arctic Circle; or it may be as far west as the southern part of South America or as far east as the vicinity of the coast of Ireland..." The form of the name being "almost as various as the positions in which it is found..." and listing thirteen different variations thereof.[4]
It is synonymous with the Medieval Latinbrasile, 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.[4]
In Irish tradition it is said to come from the IrishUí Breasail (meaning 'descendants/clan of Bresail'), a minor Gaelic clan of northeastern Ireland, or less frequently from the Old Irishí 'island' + bres 'beauty, worth; great, mighty'.[1]
Appearance on maps
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[5][6] and the Catalan Atlas circa 1375.[7]
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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]
Weste of yreland is an ylonde called the ilande of brasyll which stondeth in 51 degrees. Hit is almost rounde, of longitude it hath 12 leges and of latitude 9. ffrom Yreland to this yle of brasyll is 70 legis.[4]
On maps the island was shown as being circular, often with a central strait or river running east–west across its diameter.[11] 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."[10]
Today Porcupine Bank appears on maps at roughly the same location.[4]
Map gallery
Catalan atlas from 1375
Piri Reis' map of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea from 1513
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".[12]
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.[13]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 kilometres (120 mi) west of Ireland[14] and discovered in 1862. As early as 1870, a paper was read to the Geological Society of Ireland suggesting this identification.[15] The suggestion has since appeared more than once, e.g., in an 1883 edition of Notes and Queries.[16]
In popular culture
Irish poet Gerald Griffin wrote about Hy-Brasail in the early nineteenth century.[17]
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, 101–05.[18]
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.[20]
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.[21]
^ abcdFreitag, Barbara. Hy Brasil: The Metamorphosis of an Island: From Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium, p. 4, 13-17. Netherlands: Editions Rodopi, 2013.
^Freitag, Barbara: Hy Brasil: The Metamorphosis of an Island: From Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium, Netherlands: Editions Rodopi (2013), pg 10, Google Books
