(O'Flaherty's "Discourse on the History and Antiquities of the Southern
Islands of Aran, lying off the West Coast of Ireland," 1824, p. 139.)

The name appeared first (1351) on the chart called the Medicean
Portulana, applied to an island off the Azores. In Pizigani's map (1367)
there appear three islands of this name, two off the Azores and one off
Ireland. From this time the name appears constantly in maps, and in 1480 a
man named John Jay went out to discover the island on July 14, and
returned unsuccessful on September 18. He called it Barsyle or Brasylle;
and Pedro d'Ayalo, the Spanish Ambassador, says that such voyages were
made for seven years "according to the fancies of the Genoese, meaning
Sebastian Cabot." Humboldt thinks that the wood called Brazil-wood was
supposed to have come from it, as it was known before the South American
Brazil was discovered.

A manuscript history of Ireland, written about 1636, in the Library of
the Royal Irish Academy, says that Hy-Brasail was discovered by a Captain
Rich, who saw its harbor but could never reach it. It is mentioned by
Jeremy Taylor ("Dissuasives from Popery," 1667), and the present narrative
is founded partly on an imaginary one, printed in a pamphlet in London,
1675, and reprinted in Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy" (1831), II. p. 369.
The French Geographer Royal, M. Tassin, thinks that the island may have
been identical with Porcupine Bank, once above water. In Jeffrey's atlas
(1776) it appears as "the imaginary island of O'Brasil." "Brazil Rock"
appears on a chart of Purdy, 1834 (Humboldt's "Examen Critique," II. p.
163). Two rocks always associated with it, Mayda and Green Rock, appear on
an atlas issued in 1866. See bibliography in Winsor's "Narrative and
Critical History," I. p. 49, where there are a number of maps depicting it
(I. pp. 54-57). The name of the island is derived by Celtic scholars from
_breas_, large, and _i_, island; or, according to O'Brien's