For the oldest forms of the British traditions we must look to Nennius. According to him, the Britons were a colony of Trojans who came from Italy, and were the first inhabitants of the island. ‘Æneas the Trojan had by Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of Italy, besides his son from whom the Romans descended, a younger son, Brutus, who was expelled from Italy and came to the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea. From thence he went to Gaul and built the city of the “Turones,” called Turnis. At length he came to this island, named from him Britannia, dwelt there, and filled it with his descendants.’ His account of the colonies of Picts and Scots which followed has been noticed in the preceding chapter. He then says that he had learnt another account of these Britons from the ancient books of his ancestors. According to this form, ‘the first man who came to Europe of the race of Japhet was Alanus, with his three sons, Hessitio, Armenon, and Negue. Hessitio had four sons, Francus, Romanus, Britto, and Albanus. Armenon had five sons, Gothus, Ualagothus, Gebidus, Burgoandus, and Longobardus. Negue, however, had three sons, Wandalus, Saxo, and Boguarus. From Hessitio are sprung four nations, the Franci, the Latini, the Albani, and the Britti. From Armenon five, the Goths, Walagoths, Gebiddi, Burgunds, and Longobards; and from Neguius four, the Boguarii, Vandals, Saxons, and Turingi.’ This is a rude attempt to express in this form the ethnology of Europe. We have the Britons and the people of Albania or the north represented by two brothers, Brittus and Albanus; and we have the Saxons affiliated to another ancestor. There is no appearance either in this or the previous form of ethnologic tradition of these inhabitants of Britain having been preceded by the Iberi.[194] [Sidenote: Irish traditions.] The Irish ethnologic legends are found in a prose tract, termed the _Leabhar Gabhala_, or Book of Conquests.[195] The legends are supposed to have been preserved by Fintan, who was baptized by St. Patrick, and gave him an account of everything he remembered himself. It was reported that he had lived before the flood, and had been miraculously preserved in order that the memory of these events should not be lost. The tale is this:—Forty days before the Deluge, Ceasar landed in Eirin, at Dunnamarc, with Fintan, Bioth, and Ladhra, and fifty maidens, but they all died before the Deluge happened. The first peopling of Ireland after the Flood was by Partholon and his colony, who came from Migdonia in Greece, and took his way through the “Muir Torrian,” or Mediterranean, by Sicily, and, leaving Spain on the right, arrived in Ireland, where he landed, with his three sons, Rughraidhe, Slainge, and Laighline, and a thousand soldiers, at Inversceine, in the west of Munster, on the 14th of May, but after three hundred years this colony was entirely swept off by a plague at the Hill of Howth.