IN NORTHERN MISTS 



" Insula ornaya " (the Orkneys) ; farther south, " sialand " 

 (Shetland, " Insula scetiland " on the map of 1339, and 

 "silland," or " stillanda," on later maps). The resemblance 

 to "shasland," the name of an island in Edrisi (cf. above, 

 p. 207), is great, but it cannot be supposed that we have here 

 a corruption of Iceland. At the north-eastern comer of 

 Scotland is the round island, " Insula tille " (cf. p. 219). 



In the ocean to the west of Ireland we find for the first time 

 on this map an island called " Insula de montonis siue de 

 brazile." This island is met with again on later compass- 

 charts, under the name of "brazil," as late as the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries.^ It is evidently the Irish fortunate 

 isle, Hy Breasail, afterwards called O'Brazil, that has found 

 its way on to this map, or probably on to the unknown 

 older sources from which it is drawn. On this and the oldest 

 of the later maps the island has a strikingly round form, often 

 divided by a channel. 



The Irish myth of Hy Breasail, or Eresail,^ the island out in the Atlantic 

 (cf. Vol. I, p. 357), is evidently very ancient; the island is one of the many 

 happy lands like "Tir Tairngiri" (the promised land). In the opinion of 

 Moltke Moe and Alf Torp the name may come from the Irish " bress " (good 

 fortune, prosperity), and would thus be absolutely the same as the Insulae 

 Fortunatae. The Italians may easily have become acquainted with this myth 

 through the Irish monasteries in North Italy, unless, indeed, they had it 

 through their sailors, and in this way the island came upon the map. The form 

 " brazil " may have arisen through the cartographer connecting the name with 

 the valuable brazil-wood, used for dyeing. The channel dividing the island of 

 Brazil on the maps may be the river which in the legend of Brandan ran 

 through the island called " Terra Repromissionis," and which Brandan (in the 

 " Navigatio ") was not able to cross. It is probably the river of death (Styx), 

 and possibly the same that became the river at Hop in the Icelandic saga of 

 Wineland (see Vol. I, p. 359). We thus find here again a possible connection, 

 and this strengthens the probability that Brazil was the Promised Land of 

 the Irish, which, on the other hand, helped to form Wineland. 



1 As late as in Jeffrey's atlas, 1776, it is pointed out that this island is very 

 doubtful, but, according to Kretschmer [1892, p. 221], a rock 6 degrees west 

 of the southern point of Ireland still bears the name " Brazil Rock " on the 

 charts of the British Admiralty (?). 



2 Cf. Lageniensis, 1870, pp. 114 £.; Liebrecht, 1872, p. 201; Moltke Moe in 

 A. Helland, 1908, ii. p. 516. 



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