Hy Brasil

Hy Brasil, Hy Brazil, Hy Breasil, Hy Breasail, Hy Breasal, Hy Brasil [cf. OIr. Í, island; bres, beauty, worth; great, mighty]. Mysterious island, an earthly paradise, once thought to lie at the same latitude as Ireland but far out to sea. Although perhaps of Irish origin, the concept of Hy Brasil clearly owes much to the older European myth of the lost Atlantis. Some commentators speculate an Irish antecedent in Barc Bresail [OIr. barc, boat-shaped structure found on land], a wooden fortress built in Leinster by Bresal the ‘High King of the World’ and destroyed by Tuathal Techtmar. 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). Dalorto's spelling influenced the naming of the South American nation Brazil, although maps after Columbus's time still showed an island of approximately that name west of Ireland. Regardless of its origin, Hy Brasil is often cited in Irish tradition, sometimes being associated with the Aran Islands. The Tuatha Dé Danann were thought to have fled there after their defeat by the Milesians. In The Celtic Twilight (1893), W. B. Yeats reports speaking to fishermen who claimed to have sailed out as far as ‘Hy Brazil’; they describe an island without labour, care, or cynical laughter where one can enjoy the conversation of Cúchulainn and his heroes. See T. J. Westropp, ‘Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North Atlantic’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 30 (1912), 223–60; William Larminie's poem ‘The Finding of Hy Brasil’, in Glanus (London, 1889), 72; Eamon de Buitléar's film Hy Brasil (1972) suggests identification with the Azores. See also TÍR NA NÓG; EMAIN ABLACH.