Page:Legendaryislands00babcuoft.djvu/66

52 up from two Gaelic syllables "breas" and "ail," each highly commendatory in implication and carrying that note of admiration alike to man or island. Quite in consonance therewith the fifteenth-century map of Fra Mauro in I459 not only delineated and named this Atlantic Berzil but appended the inscription "Queste isole de Hibernia son dite fortunate," ranking it as one of the "Fortunate Islands."

On the whole, this seems the more likely channel of derivation of the name; or, if there were two such channels, then the more important one. For there is another suggested derivation, of which much has rightly been made and which we must by no means neglect. Red dyewood bore the name "brazil" in the early Middle Ages, a word derived, Humboldt believed, by translation from the Arabic bakkam of like meaning, on record in the ninth century. He notes that Brazir, one form of the name, as we have seen, recalls the French braise, the Portuguese braza and braseiro, the Spanish brasero, the Italian braciere, all having to do with fire, which is normally more or less red like the dye. He does not know any tongue of medieval Asia which could supply brasilli or the like for dyewood. He suggests also the possibility of the word's being a borrowed place name, like indigo or jalap, commemorating the region of origin, but cannot identify any such place. His treatment of the topic leaves a feeling of uncertainty, with a preference for some sort of transformation from "bakkam" which would yield "brazil" probably by a figure of speech.

The earliest distinctly recognizable mention of brazil as a commodity occurs in a commercial treaty of 1193 between the