Bryher Patch - 38

I love Bryher myself though it s a long time since I had the opportunity of going there though visiting Scilly several times. It s not always easy to get to Bryher during a day trip. Thanks for all these lovely pictures. By the way, gweal means meadow so it s easy to understand how the hill got its name!

Well - the boat is but £25 (at the moment), you get off at St Mary s and the Sea King is waiting for you, it departs at 1215; she collects you at 1600 in time to catch the return voyage at 1630. Gweal Hill gets its name from the island offshore called Gweal; many of these names come from a time when Scilly was one island. The original name of Bryher meant long hills, I think - I must check up on that.
By the way, Sea King also can get you to Tresco at that same time, as a change/alternative.

Thanks for the info. The £25 offer will probably be gone by the time I m in a position to go again but it s good to know it can be done on a day trip. I m sure you re right about the Bre (Bry-) element meaning hill, but Padel who is the foremost expert, suggests that perhaps bre was always the most prominent hill in a district but that the word bre is not attested in Cornish oddly enough and is also rare in Breton. That is to say that we have to rely on place names to find the element bre as in Bray Hill or Mulfra which is a corruption of Moel vre ( bald hill where the B of Bre is mutated to V after a preceding adjective). He also suggests that breyer may be the plural of bre as is seghyer the plural of sagh (bag, sack). Mind you, Bre hir would mean Long hill if the last bit were to be found in examples of other names that have been corrupted from hir to her .

It was named Breyer which included Samson then, retaining its name after others took Saints names. Professor Charles Thomas made considerable research into the prior states of the islands in reference to Anglo Saxon times and the Cornish language states that Breyer meant long hill. So that tallies.