to O'Maille's country. Some Bofin fishers used to tell of how they heard bleating of sheep and lambs and saw leaves of apples and oaks till the mist cleared and they only saw open sea and the porpoises rolling.
Skerd. In 1684 Roderic O'Flaherty tells of the apparition of a great city, full of flames and smoke, great ships and stacks or ricks, seen at the Skerd Rocks in Galway Bay. I heard no late legends of this. They are probably merged in those about Hy Brazil. But it closely resembles the towers I saw on the apparent island from Kilkee, Co. Clare, in 1872 and 1918.
Brasil. The most famous of all the phantom islands is Hy Brazil or Brasil. It appears on the early Portolan maps from 1320 and was not removed from all later maps till after 1865. It is called "Berzel Island, an Island of Ireland called the Fortunate," in the map of Fra Mauro. I heard of it in Aran in 1878. I attest it of my own knowledge, but several deny that it was known to these islands, probably not finding it in later years. I did not hear of it in the Mayo Islands, but was told that in Aran it appeared once in seven years. Mention of it abounds, and I have collected what I could find in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy; so will not repeat the matter here any further.[1]
Inishbofin is said to have been once a spectral island. It was approached in a mist by certain fishermen who dropped a burning coal on it and disenchanted it. Giraldus Cambrensis tells a similar story, save that the western island "Phantastica" was pursued by fisherfolk in a boat and a red-hot arrow shot at it. The island then became stationary and habitable, for "fire is hostile to everything phantasmal." It used to appear as a heap of clouds. Since I wrote this paper, I saw again on June 18th, 1918, the dark hills, the southern falling steeply to the sea, and three towers against the setting sun from Kilkee, Co. Clare. It was certainly a bank of cloud and lay on the sea, as in 1878, when it was nearer than the horizon, and the
- ↑ For this section I refer to "Brasil and the Legendary Islands," Proc. R.I. Acad., vol. xxx. p. 223; O'Flaherty's H Iar Connaught (ed. Hardiman), pp. 68, 69, 72; Rev. Caesar Otway's Erris and Tyrawly, pp. 247. 400.
