hy brasil
Hy Brasil (also known as Brasil, Brazil, Hi Brasil, Hy-Breasail, Hy Brazil, and Isle of Brazil) is another far-off island, this one circular, placed by knowing geographers in various parts of the Atlantic—sometimes attached to the Azores group in the North Atlantic, west of Portugal, where it was known as the Isle de Brazi (shown as such in the Venetian map of Andrea Bianco in 1436), at other times located hundreds of miles due west of Ireland. [1]
Although perhaps of Irish origin, the concept of Hy Brasil clearly owes much to the older European myth of the lost Atlantis. [2]
Brazil, also known as Hy-Brazil or several other variants, is a phantom island which features in many Irish myths. [3]
Hy Brasil was the brainchild of Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–79), Roman naturalist, encyclopedist, and writer. [1]
This story has a happy ending, because Dermot found his Hy Brasil. [4]
Sidony Redruth is a young English woman who, after fraudulently winning a writing competition, is sent by her editor to write the first-ever travel book on Hy Brasil, a near mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic whose very existence has been a matter of debate as late as the nineteenth century. [5]
Mysterious island, an earthly paradise, once thought to lie at the same latitude as Ireland but far out to sea. [2]
The names Brazil and Hy-Brazil are thought to come from the Irish U? Breasail (meaning “descendants (i.e., clan) of Breasal “), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland. [...] A Catalan map of about 1480 labels two islands “Illa de brasil”, one to the south west of Ireland (where the mythical place was supposed to be) and one south of “Illa verde” or Greenland. [3]
The island Hy Brasil appears, under many different names, on medieval maps, and was the subject of cartographer Angelinus Dalorto’s thesis L’Isola Brazil (Genoa, 1325). [2]
Dermot was such a soul, and, as we have said, he found Hy Brasil- but it took him thirty years to do it, and cost him a great deal in terms of sorrow and patience. [...] A little of her beauty is in these things, and a little of her majesty and her mystery, but only a little; for they cannot compare to Hy Brasil across the western sea, whose gardens and lemon groves are watered by sweet-scented fountains fed by softly singing streams, and whose many golden temples are lit by constant and curious flames that do not so much as flicker in the rough Atlantic winds. [...] And looking closer he saw that the priest was not waving at all, but beckoning; beckoning Dermot over the sea to Hy Brasil, where, as we have said, only dreams and lost ships may go. [4]
By signing into QuakerBooks using your TypeKey account, we can authorize you to post comments and have them appear immediately. [5]
When the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral (about 1467–1520) discovered a large “island” in the southwest Atlantic on April 22 in the year 1500, he named it Tierra da Vera Cruz but this was later changed to Brasil, no doubt because cartographers thought that he had discovered the elusive island of that name (and, in any event, “Brazil” had long become familiar as a geographical place-name). [1]
Sources:
[1] Unsolved Mysteries In The World: Hy Brasil
[2] Hy Brasil: Information from Answers.com
[3] Brazil (mythical island) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[4] Hy Brasil
[5] Hy Brasil (QuakerBooks)