142 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
a river, leading to comparisons with Atlantis.” She goes on to relate that “a red-
hot arrow was fired” into Hy-Breasail before it was dragged to the bottom of the
ocean by the sea-god, Manannan. This variation of the legend suggests the comet
or meteor fall that brought about the final Atlantean destruction, an implication
reemphasized by Manannan, the Celtic counterpart of Poseidon. Hy-Breasail may
be related to the Norse Yggdrasil that grew at the center of the world, itself remi-
niscent of the Tree of Life at the center of the Garden of the Hesperides, a Greek
variation on the Atlantis theme.
Brazil was named by Portuguese sailors familiar with the story of Hy-Breasail.
Their suspicions concerning some connection between the lost island and South
America were abundantly confirmed by numerous native folk traditions of a sunken
realm from which other white-skinned visitors preceded the modern Europeans
in antiquity.
(See Garden of the Hesperides, Maia, Tuatha da Danann)The Hydrophoria
An annual festival held in Athens to commemorate the near extinction of
mankind during the Great Flood, from which only Deucalion (a nephew of Atlas)
and his wife, Pyrrha, survived. The Hydrophoria was intended to propitiate the spirits
of the dead who perished in the cataclysm by pouring libations of water, signifying
the Deluge, into a hole in the ground. A virtually identical commemoration was
conducted in Syria, at Hierapolis, by the Phoenicians, but the name of their flood
hero is no longer known.
The Hydrophoria did not memorialize the final destruction of Atlantis, but a
previous period of serious geologic upheaval that caused the migration of many
Atlanteans throughout the world, as personified in Deucalion and Pyrrha. While
some Atlantologists believe this previous “deluge” was an early or mid-third
millenniumB.C. partial evacuation of the island nation, others assign it to a period
immediately anterior to the sudden flourishing of civilization in many parts of
the world, including the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Troad, Crete, the Indus
Valley, Yucatan, and so on, around 3100 B.C.
(See Haucaypata)Hyne, Cutcliffe J.
Author of The Lost Continent (1900), one of the better fictional portrayals of
Atlantis that continues to stand the test of time. Even the professional debunker,
L. Sprague De Camp, believed Hyne’s “novel is a competent piece of story-
telling: fast, well-constructed, colorful, with the leading characters well-drawn and
occasional flashes of grim humor.” The Lost Continent imaginatively describes
Atlantis though the adventures of Deucalion, the Greek flood hero.
(See Deucalion)