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SCANDINAVIAN ANTIQUITIES OP DUBLIN. 115
is not alluded to in any modern Irish history, we find BOOK n.
recorded in one of the " Three Fragments of Annals" Cu tL IV
preserved in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, 1
SSS^
and it appears to be corroborated by various state- Annal9"
mento of Scandinavian, French, and Spanish writers.
The words of the Annals are that
"
Not long before
this time "
(A.D. 869) * " the two younger sons of
Albdan (Halfdan), King of Lochlann, expelled the
eldest son, Raghnall, son of Albdan, because they
feared that he would take the kingdom of Lochlann
after their father ;
and Raghnall came with his three
sous tolnnsi Ore (Orkney), and Raghnall tarried there
with his youngest son. But his elder sons, with a
great host, which they collected from every quarter,
. . . . rowed forward across the Cantabrian Sea,
i.e., the sea which is between Erin and Spain, until
they reached Spain, and they inflicted many evils in
Spain, both by killing and plundering. They afterwards
crossed the Gaditanian Straits, 3
i.e., where the
Mediterranean Sea goes into the external ocean, and
they arrived in Africa, and there they fought a battle
with the Mauritani, in which a great slaughter of the
"
Mauritani was made." After this the Lochlanns
passed over the country, and they plundered and
burned the whole country ; and they carried off a
great host of them [the Mauritani] as captives to
The Moorish
. . prisoners the
is the same as black men, and Mauritania is the same blue men of
Krio*
as blackness." And " long indeed were these blue
men in Erin."
Erin, and these are the blue men [of Erinl, for Mauri
1 Three Fragments, p. 159, Irish ?.The Straits of Gades in the
Archaelogical Society, 1860. south of Spain. The modern Cadiz
8 This time "the capture of York preserves the name,
by the Danes," A.D. 869.
I 2