Mystical systems
Hy-Brasil
Direct answer
Hy-Brasil is a phantom island that mapmakers placed in the Atlantic west of Ireland from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, and that Irish legend says appears once every seven years.
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At a glance
- Also called
- hy brasil, brasil island ireland, phantom island of brasil, hy brazil
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Avalon, Lyonesse, Atlantis, Hyperborea
Hy-Brasil is a phantom island that mapmakers placed in the Atlantic west of Ireland from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, and that Irish legend says appears once every seven years.
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Is Hy-Brasil a real island?
Hy-Brasil, also written Brasil or Hy-Breasail, was drawn on sea charts as a small circular island, often split by a channel, some way off the west coast of Ireland. No such island exists. It stayed on maps for more than five hundred years because chartmakers copied one another and because nobody could prove an empty stretch of ocean empty.
Irish folklore gave it a character: an island hidden in mist that shows itself one day in seven years and cannot be reached. That belongs with older Irish stories of blessed islands in the west. The name has nothing to do with the country Brazil, which is called after brazilwood, a red dye timber. The island's name is usually traced to Irish, perhaps from a clan name, though the derivation is uncertain.
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What sets Hy-Brasil apart
Hy-Brasil is a creature of the chart more than of the tale. Its shape was standardised early, a neat disc sometimes cut by a straight channel, which looks drawn with a compass and not surveyed. Its position crept: early charts put it close to Ireland, later ones pushed it out and shrank it to a rock as real voyages failed to find it. That slow retreat, from island to rock to nothing, is the usual way phantom islands leave the map, and it took this one until Victorian times.
- First chart: Angelino Dalorto, 1325; often identified with Angelino Dulcert
- Search voyages: from Bristol, 1480 and 1481
- Legend: visible one day in every seven years, and never reached
- Fictional landing: a pamphlet of 1675 by Richard Head
- Reported sighting: Thomas Westropp, paper to the Royal Irish Academy, 1912
Often mistaken for something else: Brazil the country takes its name from brazilwood; Hy-Brasil the island was on charts from 1325 and its name is probably Irish.
The story behind Hy-Brasil
The island first appears on a chart of 1325 signed Angelino Dalorto, a mapmaker often identified with Angelino Dulcert. Ships sailed from Bristol in 1480 and 1481 to look for the Isle of Brasil, some years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. A pamphlet of 1675 describing a landing there was a fiction by the writer Richard Head. Charts went on marking a Brasil Rock into the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1912 the antiquary Thomas Westropp told the Royal Irish Academy he had seen the island himself, an effect now put down to mirage.
Why Hy-Brasil matters
Hy-Brasil shows how long an error can survive in respected sources once it has been copied enough times.
How to read Hy-Brasil
Historians of cartography study through it how charts were compiled; storytellers keep it as the Irish island that cannot be reached.
Hy-Brasil in practice: an example
On many old sea charts a reader can find a small disc labelled Brasil west of Ireland, where soundings show only open water.
Where readings of Hy-Brasil go wrong
Modern tales tying it to Atlantis or to visitors from elsewhere add to the legend and have no early source.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- hy brasil, hy-brasil island, brasil island ireland, phantom island of brasil, hy brazil
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Is Hy-Brasil a real island?
No. Nothing lies at the positions the charts gave it. It was a mapmakers' error joined to an Irish legend, and it was removed from sea charts in the nineteenth century.
Is Hy-Brasil connected to Brazil?
No. Brazil the country is named after brazilwood. The island was on maps almost two centuries before Europeans reached South America, and its name most likely comes from Irish.
Why did people believe in Hy-Brasil?
Charts by respected makers showed it, sailors reported glimpses that were probably mirages or fog banks, and Irish tradition already told of enchanted islands in the western sea.
