S40 



Proceedings of the Rot/al Irish Academy. 



au island, "H\atserk," between Iceland and Greenland, and in sight of both.' 

 As for Buss, the latest of the host of imaginary lands, Thomas Wiars says 

 that it lay E.S.E. and fifty leagues from the S.E. point of Frisland, in latitude 

 57°. It had two harbours four and seven leagues north from the southern 

 point and much ice round it ; they left it on September 12th, and reached 

 Galway on the 25th. Certainly, if cu'cumstantial assertion can prove the 

 reality of non-existent isles, Frislaud and Buss deserved their place on the 

 maps of nearly three centuries.^ 



5. -THE MYTHICAL ISLANDS IN EAELT IIAPS. 



Interest in the islands of the Atlantic hardly existed before the twelfth 

 century among the map-makers.' The " Life of St. Brendan " had been 

 spreading over the Continent for over a century before it began to affect the 



Maps without 



maps, as Edrisi had been affected nearly two centuries earlier. Apart from 

 his works, there is no certain trace in the other maps of the imaginary 

 isles (so far as I know) till the portolanos of Dulcert/ in 1325 to 1.339.^ These 



' Hakluyt's " Voyages " (1599 ed.), toI. iii, p. 44. 



- Their features are elaborately named, which has never occurred in the representations of 

 St. Brendan's Isle, Brasil, Daithuli, or Asmaidas. 



^In the very curious map of 1119, in the Liber Guidonis (Burguudian Library, Brussels), even 

 Britain, Ireland, and Thule are omitted. 



*The Dulceits, or Dalaortos, -were Genoese; see Konrad Kretseher, "Die Entdeckung 

 Amerikas," &c. (Berlin, 1892); also, Nansen, " In Northern Mists," vol. ii, p. 226. The maps 

 are dated 1325, 1329, and 1339. A map (closely similar, but drawn in Modena), of about 1350, gives 

 "Ilia de breziU." For Kretscher's note on Brazill, see loc. cit., p. 214. The mytliic island is 

 pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, unlike its continental equivalent. 



* See Pkte XX. The early Anglo-Saxon map gives an unnamed large island to S.W. of 

 Ireland. 



