The legend of the father of their race carries us back to the times of our own AElfred, when the Danes were ravaging along Loire as they ravaged along Thames.

In the heart of the Breton border, in the debateable land between France and Britanny, dwelt Tortulf the Forester, half-brigand, half-hunter as the gloomy days went, living in free outlaw-fashion in the woods about Rennes.

Tortulf had learned in his rough forest school "how to strike the foe, to sleep on the bare ground, to bear hunger and toil, summer's heat and winter's frost, how to fear nothing save ill-fame." Following King Charles the Bald in his struggle with the Danes, the woodman won broad lands along Loire, and his son Ingelger, who had swept the northmen from Touraine and the land to the west, which they had burned and wasted into a vast solitude, became the first Count of Anjou.

But the tale of Tortulf and Ingelger is a mere creation of some twelfth century jongleur.

The earliest Count whom history recognizes is Fulk the Red.