Westkopp — Brasil and the Lecfendarij Islands of the N. Atlantic. 255 



whole western coast, is Brasil, Ui Breasail, or Hy Brazil.' We have seen how 

 conspicuous a place it took in the maps of Italy, Spain, France, and even 

 England and Germany. Its name is obscure ; some say it is from the Irish 

 Bres, noble, or, as Nansen says, " fortunate." It was certainly the " I del 

 berzel, anesto isola de hibernia, son dite fortunato " of Fra Mauro. Others 

 say that " Brazil " is Spanish, meaning a " red wood," suggesting the meaning 

 " Land of Wood," i.e. Markland, as " Ilha Verde " is Greenland,* but the 

 Markland equation seems very far-fetched. I only call attention to the name 

 of a mythical Irish monarch, " Bress." A more historical person, Bresal, or 

 Brecan, an early Christian missionary (a contemporary with Enda in Aran- 

 more about a.d. 480), might also (like St. Brendan, St. Ailbe, and St. Flannan) 

 have been chosen to give his name to an island which, at least from the 

 seventeenth century, was so firmly believed in among the people of Aran, the 

 very island which contains Breasal's grave. 



It was clearly brought about in prehistoric times by mirage and fog-bank. 

 The setting sun and the place of the dead helped its religious significance ; it 

 became Tir Tairngire and Magh Mell, the isle of the Living, the Isle of Truth, 

 the Isle of Joy, the Isle of Fair Women, the Isle of Apples, " an Eden, away, 

 far away." Christianity, trustee to dead Paganism, made it the Land of 

 Promise. Then the belief materialized before commerce, and it became (as 

 Sir David Wilson' writes) " an imaginary island of Brazil that flitted about 

 the maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with ever- varying site and 

 proportion, till it vanished." It was not a reef or a shoal, but a mist or mirage 

 " sprung from the sea without root " ; but it lield its place on the charts 

 from 1320 to 1865, and was said to have been seen at close quarters in 1791. 

 It seized on the Celtic fancy from the Imrama of the eighth or ninth century 

 to the poems a thousand years later. Mooie longed to tread the golden path 

 of rays to the " Isle of Eest " ; Griffin sang of the Aran fisherman lost in its 

 pursuit, and Hogan of " the charms of Hy Brazil, by spirit-hands painted, 

 'nud the waves' sunset glory." Far in the past the " GioUa an fhiuga " tells of 

 a traveller from Spain, to " Espain," to Erin, to " the well of the bald white 

 cow " (Inisbofin ?) to " the garden of the Hesperides, on the west side, down 

 from Aran, where the sun goes to its couch."^ Aran was strong in the faith 

 in Brasil. 



Apart from the map-name from 1327 and Mauro's note, I know nothing 

 definite written till the reign of Charles I. The MS. of 1636, already 



' I am not aware of any even moderately old authority for these last two forms. 

 2 E.g. Fischer, loc. cit., p. 94 and p. 99. ' << xhe Lost Atlantis" ^892;, p. 38. 



* "Irish Texts Society," vol. i, p. 21. 

 K.I.A. PROC, VOL. XXX., SECT. C. [35] 



