These two anglicized forms of the Irish surname Ó Breasail are now about equal in number: they are found mainly in Waterford and Offaly, but are not confined to those counties. A century ago they , were located also in Counties Tipperary, Kilkenny, Limerick and Kerry, but more recent statistics indicate that the name has become rather rare outside of Co. Waterford. The name O'Brasill occurs there as early as 1308; the old name of Lysaghtstown in Co. Cork near the Co. Waterford border was Baile uí Bhreasail and O Bressyl occurs in Co. Cork in 1285. Sixteenth and seventeenth century records are rich in references to the name. The prefix O, now quite obsolete with Brazil, is retained in the Tudor Fiants, but even as early as 1537, when Brassell occurs among the commoners of Kilkenny, and in 1551, when Mahowne Brassill, a kern, was convicted at Clonmel of having stolen cattle,.it is omitted. In the “census” of 1659-60 Brassell is returned as a principal Irish name in the Co. Waterford barony of Upperthird: as such it occurs ten times in the Tipperary hearth money rolls of 1665-67 in various spellings also without the O. Other seventeenth century men of interest were John Brassell of Ballycargin, Co.

Wexford, who was High Constable of the barony of Gorey in 1608, and Denis Brazill, of Ballyduff in the same county, attainted as a Jacobite after the failure of that cause. One was among the transplanted Papists in 1656 but he, Madden Brassell, did not live in any of those parts of the country usually associated with the name, but was of Galtore, Co. Galway: he was allotted 147 acres, but to what part of Connacht he was removed is not recorded. East Galway, of course, is adjacent to west Offaly, one of the homelands of the Brazils. However he was probably a MacBrassill, a name which occurs in the Elizabethan Fiants in Co. Galway and is that of a small but distinct sept almost if not quite extinct.

It should be added that the sept of Ó) Breasail has no connexion with the Clann Bhreasail, which was the tribe name of the Uí Bhreasail of Oriel.

Ó Breasail Mainly a Co. Waterford name. SIF 22