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Anthony Murphy looks at the fascinating story of the phantom island of Hy-Brasil in the Atlantic, which is said to become visible to mainlanders once every seven years, retold by author and antiquarian W.G. Wood-Martin. In Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch (1902), W.G. Wood-Martin has a section d

The Phantom Island of Hy-Brasil in Irish Myth & Fable Anthony Murphy looks at the fascinating story of the phantom island of Hy-Brasil in the Atlantic, which is said to become visible to mainlanders once every seven years, retold by author and antiquarian W.G. Wood-Martin. In Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch (1902), W.G. Wood-Martin has a section dealing with 'Phantom Lands'. One of those phantom lands is the fabled island of Hy-Brasil, said to be located in the Atlantic Ocean west or southwest of Ireland. It was once marked on medieval maps, but no such island exists today. Wood-Martin tells us that in the 17th century, Roderick O'Flaherty said that the phantom island of Hy-Brasil – marked on many old charts near the west coast of Ireland – was, in his time, "often visible". The subject has inspired several poets with beautiful fancies which have been woven into pathetic ballads. Gerald Griffin describes it thus: On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwellA shadowy land has appeared, as they tell:Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,And they called it Hy-Brasil, the isle of the Blest.From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim,The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim:The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,And it looked like an Eden away, far away! Many attempts were made to discover this fabled island. Leslie, of Glaslough, described as a "wise man and a great scholar", was so imbued with belief in its real existence that he solicited a grand of the isle from Charles I. Edmond Ludlow, the celebrated republican, escaped to the Continent in a vessel chartered at Limerick, to sail in search of Hy-Brasil; and so form then was belief in the actual existence of this enchanted island, that the captain of the ship was allowed to depart unquestioned. A rare work entitled La Naviation l'Inde Orientale, printed at Amsterdam in the year 1609, contains a map on which two islands, styled Brasil and Brandon, are marked as actually existing off the Irish coast. Fig. 67 is a reproduction of that portion of the place above referred to. Fig. 68 is a chart by the French Geographer Royal made in the year 1634, on which the island of Hy Brasil is also distinctly marked. Fig. 69 shows the approximate position of the Porcupine and Rockall Banks with regard to Ireland. Rockall is still, in part, above the waters, and the rocky pinnacle it presents is a great danger to navigation. It is probably the last fragment of the island of Brandon, and the Porcupine Bank may represent the site of the now phantom land of Hy-Brasil. On the 2nd March, 1674 (it is well to be very particular as to the exact date), a Captain Nesbett discovered, disenchanted, and actually landed on Hy-Brasil, which he also partially explored. The disenchantment was effected by lighting a fire upon it. "Since then," says the writer, "several godly ministers and others are gone to visit and discover them" (i.e., the inhabitants), but as the author had heard no news of their return, he says he awaits with becoming patience further particulars. We are left in ignorance as to whether these were ever given, but from a silence of upwards of two centuries the probability is, that the disenchantment wrought by the lighting of the fire was but temporary; that the "godly ministers and others" have met with the fate of Ossian of old, but doubtless when the day of their release arrives we shall hear of strange discoveries. The pamphlet, purporting to give an account of the discovery of Hy-Brasil, obtained a good circulation in London in 1675. The existence of a land which would restore the aged to the full vigour of youth was of world-wide belief, but all attempts to discover this land necessarily ended in disappointment; nevertheless, the strange spirit of adventure thus engendered, laid open to view countries which might otherwise have remained for centuries unknown. A country of indefinite magnitude, called Brasil, is marked on maps made before or about the time of Columbus. It is represented south of another island which, it is thought, represents the supposed position of the Scandinavian settlements of Vineland; for, although we designate the American continent the "New World", it was apparently known to those ancient rovers of the sea. O'Flaherty mentions the appearance, in 1161, of "fantastical ships" in the harbour of Galway sailing against the wind; and Hardiman, editor of the above work, remembered having seen a well-defined aerial phenomenon of the same kind from a hill near Croaghpatrick in Mayo, on a serene evening in the autumn of 1798. Hundreds who also witnessed the scene looked upon it as supernatural, but soon afterwards it was ascertained that the illusion had been produced by the reflection of the fleet of Admiral Warren which was then in pursuit of a French squadron off the west coast of Ireland. In like manner may not the optical illusion noted in the Irish annals as occurring in the year 1161, in the ha...