Sir, - Eileen Battersby's well researched and interesting article Resting Place of an Ancient Voyager (July 7th), mentioned the account of St Brendan's travels as described in the medieval text Navigationis Brendani.
One of the more interesting "myths" in this famous text is that St Brendan named a land called Hy Brazil. This "mythical" land where "bells tolled over the old sea and the island seemed to vanish in the horizon every time the sailors tried to reach it" appeared on charts as early as 1325. It was also shown on Toscanelli's chart of 1457, which is said to have been used by Christopher Columbus.So strong was the myth of a fabulous land among Portuguese map-makers that they used the name Hy Brazil to describe the land discovered by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, in preference to the name given by the pope, "The Land of the Holy Cross". The sighting of a mythical Hy Brazil continued to grip the imagination of sailors for many years and even British Admiralty charts continued to use the name until 1865.
One of the many "legacies" of St Brendan, who rests in the quiet country backwater of Clonfert, is that a South American sub-continent of over 170million people, with two of the world's most populous cities, carries the name he gave to this land. - Yours, etc.,
Bernard O`Grady, Santana-Sao Paulo, Brazil.