‘Great Crime again, I said, i.e. Ailbine.30 There was a famous king here in Erinn, viz,: Ruad, son of Rigdond, of Munster. He had an appointment of meeting with foreigners.31 He went to the meeting with the foreigners round the south of Alba 32 with three ships. Thirty were in each ship. The fleet was arrested from below in the midst of the sea. Throwing jewels and precious things into the sea did not get them off. Lots where cast among them for who should go into the sea and find out what it was that held them fast. The lot fell upon the king himself. Then the king Ruad, son of Rigdond, leapt into the sea. The sea at once closed over him. He lighted upon a large plain on which nine beautiful women met him. They confessed to him that it had been they that had arrested the ships, in order that he should come to them. And they gave him nine vessels of gold to sleep with them for nine nights, one night with each of them. He did so. Meanwhile his men were not able to proceed quickly through the power of the women. Said one woman of them it was her time of conceiving, and she would bear a son, and he would come to them to fetch his son on his return from the east. Then he joined his men, and they went on their voyage. They stayed with their friends to the end of seven years, and then went back a different way and did not go near the same spot. And they landed in the bay of Ailbine. There the women came up to them. The men heard their music in their brazen ship. While they were stowing their fleet, the women came ashore and put the boy out of their ship on the land where the men were. The harbour was stony and rocky. Then the boy
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one of the stones, so that he died of it. The women saw it and cried all together: Ollbine, Ollbine! i.e. 'great crime'. Hence it is called Ailbine.’