Westropp — Early Italian Maps of Ireland from 1300-1600. 389 



Siena. — Marsilins of Siena was a " moneyer " in Ireland with his other 

 associates in 1297. The firm of Bonsignori Bernadini, and Jacobi of Siena 

 had also dealings in Ireland.' 



Spain. — There is little evidence for Spanish settlers in Ireland known to 

 me in records of the thirteenth and early fonrteenth centuries. The " Black 

 Book of Archbishop Alan " (p. 66) mentions William of Spain holding lands 

 at Okonagh, on the borders of Counties Limerick and Tipperary, in the 

 time of William de Marisco, circa 1230 to 1240. Aderic in Youghal at the 

 close of the century also has the epithet " de Spain." 



Venice. — I have so far found no direct communication between "Venice 

 and Ireland. Indirect communication at Bruges, London, Southampton, and 

 in Provence must have been common.' 



Having examined the evidence for frequent communication between so 

 many parts of Ireland and the Continent, it becomes evident that the masters 

 of foreign trading vessels visiting and settling in Ireland must have had 

 abundant means for getting information. The constant influx of new-comers 

 also must have rendered detailed maps of Ireland more and more sought 

 after. Unfortunately none of the ea»ly maps seem to have been preserved in 

 the British Isles. The compass, too, was coming into use' and was well known 

 to the learned by 1220 ; but the superstition of the sailors long refused to 

 allow it on board ship as containing " an infernal spirit." By the dawn of 

 the fourteenth century we find networks of compass-bearings on the maps, 

 and soon prejudice against the use of the compass changed to blind faith in 

 its infallible trustworthiness, only shaken by its variation on the first voyage 

 of Columbus. Kaymund Lull, about 1300, mentions charts with a compass, 

 point, and star, " habent chartam, compassum, acum et stellam maris." Soon 

 the cartographers, who had made no allowance for the rotundity of the Earth, 

 found that the distances did not " close in," and adopted a crude sort of 

 projection, somewhat like Mercator's, and (as cross-sea voyages got more 

 frequent and daring) errors were detected and removed. It was long, however, 

 before the influence of the early editions of Ptolemy ceased to misplace 

 Ireland with regard to Great Britain, and the prejudice that Ireland lay 

 towards Spain left a quaint trace down to the eighteenth-century tradition 

 that a place at the Shannon's mouth was described as " Oarrigaholt next 

 Spain." How this belief arose from the " later classic " writers is easily seen 



' Mr. Herbert Wood in reading over this seetion kindly gave me this last record. 



- See Calendar of Venetian Papers, pp. 3-7, 1319 to 1333. 



' Proc. R.I. A., vol. XXX (C), p. 241. For details and authorities see Periplus, pp. 48-51, p. 85 ; 

 Lull," Arbor Scientiae " (ed. Lyons, 1515, f.cxci) ; and " Coupd'oeil historique sur la projection des 

 cartes " (Paris, 1863), p. 38. The diagrams and circular calendars of Franciacus Fiziganiis in 1373 

 ar« very curious (Feriplus, p, 55). 



