quite randomly to a book Northern Mists, by a well-known US academic
geographer, Carl Sauer. In fact, I was studying geography at the time at
the University of Texas. A student of Carl Sauer, professor Robin
Doughty,
http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/office/faculty/faculty.html#doughty
was present to help explain the book. Finding the book was odd, because
I picked it up at random from literally hundreds of thousands of books
in the PCL library at the University of Texas and open the book to
pages
on the Name. That led me to dig deeper. In the Harry Ransom center
of
the University, where they store such artifacts as a Guetenberg bible,
I
found a microfiche that described sailors having testified to finding
the island of Brasil to the Irish Congress around the 1640s. The claimed
they could not find their way back however. People they picked up from
this island, they call O'Brasil. That was in the testimony. This
microfiche can only be viewed on premises however and I do not have
access to these notes. However, I have access to the text I typed in
from this very informal geography book...
Coincidently, even though my name, Francisco comes from my mother's
side
of the family, which is Hispanic, there was a "Francisco Brazile",
last and first name spelled identicle to my name, registered in
Tuscalusca, Alabama in the 1860 census, if I do recall correctly.
Quite bizarre.
-F.
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Frank Brazile | Internet:
[email protected]
Researcher
| University of Zurich, Geography Institute
Generalization Group | Winterthurerstr. 190
number: 41 1 635 5255 | 8057 Zuerich, CH
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken from various chapters of Northern mists, by Sauer, C.
Double spaces represent separation of chapters in book.
Perhaps because Bristol had a privileged position with regard
to
sending two or more sips to go in search of Brasil, which
would
from Bristol to American shores? By the quantity of salt
taken
In medieval Christian tradition the lost Paradise
lay in the
The Atlantic Ocean of the Middle Ages was thought
strewn with
Other than the Fortunate Islands, which were the dimly remembered
Honorius of Autun in his De Imagine Mundi (ca.1130)
added the
These early map makers were wholly ignorant
of geographical
The most persistent of the legendary islands was that os Brasil,
The earilier locations of Brasil are in
the ocean west of
9. The island
existed in the mind of the British
Late in the fourteenth century map malers began
to place an
The preferable option seems to be that the Gaelic
name brasil
The legendary Gaelic isle of the blessed, Brasil, had nothing
to
The promised land of Irish tradition lay in the western
ocean,
However illegible the facts are in the Irish sea
legend, the
Seven Cities, both to be the object of search.
Thus men of
Ireland, the ancient Irish legend of the Isle of Brasil took root
there. Its quest from Bristol has been documented as far back
as
been driven back by storm without finding the island. On July
6,
isle of brasil. The ships belonged to a partnership of
Bristol
merchants. It is known by Bristol records that the ships
sialed
and returned but not what they found. The chief participant,
one
Thomas Croft, was given exemption of duty on
forty bushels of
salt loaded on each ship as not being merchandise but for
``the
intent to search and fynde the
Isle of Brasil.'' This might
satisfy the customs record, but why so much salt unless it was to
be used as Professor Quinn has surmised, for salting
fish at a
western fishing ground already known to Bristol?
If men of
Bristol had discovered the great fishery off NewFoundLand,
they
might not have advertised it in a public record...
place the beginnings of the search in 1491 or eariler...
west from Bristol in 4181,
the conjecture is that the
congregation of cod along the American shores was known then
and
that they were being taken there.
farthest East. In older classical lore the Fortunate Islands
or
blessed lands were in the western oceans. The Celtic Otherworld
also lay in to the west. Cardinal directions have deep reiligous
significance, differing by particular culture. The
premise is
offered the Irish pre-Christian mysticism looked to the
west as
the promised land or other world, and that this direction
held
into Christian time.
islands, some imagined as places of perfect nature and as abodes
of the blessed, either spirits or living persons. The legendary
islands acquired widely known names when cartographers
began to
transfer stories of the sea to their maps. From the
thirteenth
century on, island names appeared on maps in increasing
numbers
and in changing locations, to the distress of modern historians
of cartography.
reality of the Canary Islands, the oldest and
most persistent
island names on maps derive from Celtic sources. Insofar
as I
know the oldest of these is Yma, the isl of the blessed nameed in
the life of St. Machutus, which St. Brendan and St. Male set
out
to find. In various spellings the name appears
on maps of the
fourteenth century and through the fifteenth, by which
time it
had become one of the Antilles.
island Perdita: ``There lies in the Ocean
an island which is
called the Lost(Perdita); in charm and all kinds of fertility
it
far surpasses every other land, but is unknown to
men. Now and
again it may be found by chance; but if one seeks
for it, it
cannot be found and therefore is called 'the Lost.' Men say that
it was this island that Brandanus came to.'' The
Ebstorf Map
(1207?) entered an Insula perdita, with the Latin
inscription,
``This is the island found by Saint Brendan, and after he sailed
for it, never after has it been found by any man.'' BY
1300 the
Hereford Map stated that Fortunate Islands, six in number,
are
the islands of St. Brendan.'' This map
maker interpreted St.
Brendan's alleged discovery as identical with
the Fortunate
Islands of antiquity, the Canaries.
position. The tale of voyaging of St. Brendan first passed
into
chronicle and map in western Europe and later was taken
up by
Italian and Catalan cartographers. Celtic
legends provided a
major part of the concept of the western oceans
until Prince
Henry introduced recorded exploration. As late
as 1492 Martin
Behaim placed St. Brendan's Isle on his globe in midocean
near
the the equator with the inscription ``in the year
565 A.D. S.
Brandon came in his ship to this island. He saw
many marvels
there and after seven years left again for
his own country.''
Benhaim is remembered mainly for the terrestrial globe
he made
before the discovery of Columbus, the only such that has survived
from that century; his knowledge was a good deal less than
that
of his time.
which had a separate and migratory existence on maps
and later
became confused with a name of different origin and meaning. E.T.
Hamy showed in 1887 that Brasil was from
the Gaelic term for
fortunate or blessed (breas-ail, hy-breasail, o'brasil, etc.) The
vernacular Irish name for the isle of the blessed is first shown
cartographically on the Italian Dalorto map of 1325, as lying
to
the west of Ireland. Thereafter it appears on many maps,
Itialn
and Catalan, continuing well into the fifteenth century. On
the
Pizigani map (1367) it was places far west in the Atlantic in the
latitude of Brittany. On the Phillipps Chart (1424) it is
shown
as a large disk to the west of Ireland and in the
same form on
the Pareto map (1455), the latter having also an island
of Mam
(Yma?) to the south, in the form of a
crescent. -See Armondo
Cortesao for refer.
Ireland. this tradition seems to derive from the voyages
of St.
Brendan and St. MAlo and was kept alive in folk memory. In
1480
Bristol, as previously noted, sent out one Thloyde (Lloyd),
the
most `knowledgable seamen of the whole of
England'' to the
``Island of Brasylle'' to the west of Ireland. A
Welsh mariner
who had the knowledge to sail west to the Island
of Brasil?
Another expedition was sent out the following year
to find the
``isle of Brasil,'' and apparently succeeded, as related
under
the Bristol voyages. Brasil of the Celtic tradition
became in
fact the new found land, which neither proves nor disproves
how
far the voyages attributed to St. Brendan got. The tradition
was
so strong that many centuried later voyages from
bristol set
their course west across the Atlantic
toward its supposed
location. -9
Admiralty into the latter
nineteenth century (1873?). An
of Useful Knowledge,''
has a``Brazil Rock High'' in the
deep ocean about 250
miles west of Tralee.
island Brasil i a different location, guessed at as representing
the Azores and even the Canaries. The maps
were Italian and
Cataln, made in remote reception of
Atlantic knowledge and
surmise and still ignorant of geographic position.
Speculation
as to the identity of this island has proposed a derivation from
a rootword ``bras,'' flame-colored, as
in brazilwood. This
dyewood was an item of medieval trade from the Far East but it is
not native to islands of the Eastern Atlantic. It was therefore
suggested that the inferred dyewood-island name was
applied to
islands providing a less vivid dye from
lichens. This dye,
however, has a name that was familiar at the time, archil in
its
English form, orseille in French, orchilla in Spanish, and so on.
The substitution of brasil for its unlikely, aside from the doubt
that the Azores or Madeira were then known. One might speculate
that a place had been discovered thus
early where brazilwood
grew. This would have been in the West Indies or South
America,
which is about improbable as the lichen attribution.
wandered south in the Atlantic by misinformation of Mediterranean
map makers, perhaps by misinterpretation of the Navigation of St.
Brendan or of another Gaelic seafarer such as St. Malo.
do with the naming of the South American country, which was known
as Santa Cruz until 1507, when it was given
the name Brazil
because of its wealth of that dyewood. What facts
of discovery
may be contained in the legendary voyages of St. Brendan
remain
unknown.
and passed into Christian mythology with
St. Brendan as the
legendary seafarer. The Irish were indeed the first nation of the
Middle Ages to go out onto the high Atlantic. Shortly the
mists
of legend gave way to historical fact.
Irish looked to the sea for adventure and discovery in praise
of
God, not in fear of mishap and danger nor for gain. A persistent
theme is that the land of the blessed, called the Isle of Brasil,
lay in the ocean to the west. St. Brendan whose legend tells
of
years of romantic sailing, was a real abbot of known
parts who
did go to the sea...
Bristol found the prime cod fishing grounds on Canadian
shores
and perhaps learned to appreciate the fine pelts
the Indians
prepared...
Thanks Frank the
Contribution is appreciated
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