However, there is a recorded Arabic association of this particular island under another name. It had been generally called Mam or Man, and occasionally other names, for more than a century before it was called Mayda. Perhaps the oldest name of all is Brazir, by which it appears on the map of 1367 of the Pizigani brothers (Fig. 2),[141] a form evidently modified from Brazil and shared with the round island of that name then already more than forty years old on the charts. The Brazil which we specially have to do with bears roughly and approximately the crescent form, which later became usually more neat and conventionalized under the name Man or Mayda. It appears south (or rather a little west of south) of the circular Brazil, which is, as usual, west of southern Ireland and a little south of west of Limerick. The crescent island is also almost exactly in the latitude of southern Brittany, taking a point a little below the Isle de Sein, which still bears that name. In this position there may be indications of relation with both Brittany and Ireland. The former relation is pictorially attested by three Breton ships. One of them is shown returning to the mouth of the Loire. A second has barely escaped from the neighborhood of the fateful island. A third is being drawn down stern foremost by a very aggressive decapod, which drags overboard one of the crew; perhaps she has already shattered herself on the rocks, offering the opportunity of such capture in her disabled state. A dragon flies by with another seaman, apparently snatched from the submerging deck. Blurred and confused inscriptions in strange transitional Latin seem to warn us of the special dangers of navigation in this quarter; the staving of holes in ships, the tawny monsters, known to the Arabs, which rise from the depths, the dragons that come flying to devour. The words “Arabe” and “Arabour” are readily decipherable; so is “dragones.” Perhaps there is no statement that Arabs have been to that island, for their peculiar experience may belong to some other quarter of the globe; but the verbal association is surely significant. The name Bentusla (Bentufla?) applied to this crescent island by Bianco in his map of 1448[142] has sometimes been thought to have an Arabic origin; but one would not feel safe in citing this as absolute corroboration. The Breton character of the ships, however, may be gathered (as well as from their direction and behavior) from the barred ensigns which they carry, recalling the barred standard set up at Nantes of Brittany, in Dulcert’s map of 1339,[143] just as the _fleur-de-lis_ is planted by him at Paris. MAYDA AND THE ISLE OF MAN