IV. THE CURRENCY IN WHICH THE BREHON FINES WERE PAID.

Before leaving the Irish coirp-dire and honour-price, allusion must be made to the currency in which they were paid.

Payment in cumhals or female slaves.

The most significant point was the payment in cumhals or female slaves. The cumhal was equated with three cows, but the payment was reckoned and stated in cumhals. The female slave was the prominent customary unit of payment, and doubtless a common object of commerce and trade.

Cumhal = three cows or ounces of silver.

The equation of the cumhal and the cow with silver was also remarkable. The cow was equated with the Roman ounce, and the cumhal with three ounces.

From a passage in the Senchus Mor (i. p. 247) and the Book of Aicill (pp. 371-377), the following table of values is evolved:—

8wheat-grains= pinginn of silver
24”(3 pinginns)= screpall
72”(3 screpalls)= sheep (B. of A. p. 377)
96”(4 screpalls)= dairt heifer
576”(6 dairts)= bo, or cow, or unga
1728”(3 bo)= cumhal or female slave

These silver values as compared with those of the Cymric Codes seem at first sight to be singularly low. The Welsh cow, as we have seen, was valued in silver at three Saxon ounces, and the male and female slave each at a pound of twelve ounces. The Welsh value of the cow was roughly three times, and that of the slave three and one third times, the Irish silver value.

This Irish equation between cattle and silver must surely have been made at a time when silver was of quite exceptional value in Ireland. But there is some reason to believe that an earlier equation had been made with gold of a very different character.

An older equation with gold.

Professor Ridgeway has called attention to an interesting story from the life of St. Finian in the Book of Lismore (fol. 24, b.c.), in which an ounce of gold was required for the liberation of a captive, and a ring of gold weighing an ounce was accordingly given.

Now, if the ounce of gold is put in the place of the cumhal or female slave, the gold values of the Brehon monetary reckonings would be:—

Cumhal=576wheat-grains=ounce
Bo or cow=192”=stater or ox unit
Dairt heifer=32”=tremissis

These gold values, if established, would take their place at once as following the gold system of Constantine, and probably might belong therefore to a period in which the Continental ratio of gold to silver would be 1:12, and the silver values fairly consistent with those of the Welsh and other tribes. The cumhal or female slave would then equal twelve ounces or one pound of silver as in Wales. This, however, must not be taken as proved. It is with the silver values of the Brehon Laws that we are here concerned. And we should be tempted to refer this silver value to the period of Charlemagne’s attempted introduction of the ratio of 1:4 were it not that, as we shall see, it seems to date back to a period some centuries earlier.

There is another point of interest in connection with the early Irish monetary reckoning.

The reckoning in scores of Roman ounces, i.e. the ‘Mina Italica.’

We have seen that in the Brehon Laws the smallest silver unit was the screapall or scripulum. And it has already been mentioned that the scripulum was also known as the denarius Gallicus, of which 24 went to the Roman ounce of 576 wheat-grains, as in the Brehon Laws, and that a score of ounces made the mina Italica of twice 5760 wheat-grains. It is curious to find in a passage quoted by Petrie[77] from the Fodla Feibe in the Book of Ballymote,[78] a full and exact appreciation of the number of wheat-grains in the scripulum and the Roman ounce. The wheat-grains, according to this passage, are to be taken from wheat grown on typically rich soil which produces ‘the three roots,’ and 24 wheat-grains are the weight of the ‘screapall’ of silver, and 576 the weight of the ‘uinge’ or ounce. Further it is stated that the full weight which the Tinde or weighing bar is to weigh is—not a pound: there is no mention of the pound—but seven score ounces.[79] Now this reckoning, not in pounds, but in scores of ounces, has already been alluded to as, consciously or unconsciously, a reckoning in so many of the mina Italica. Petrie quotes a passage from the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’ in which this payment in scores is illustrated.[80]

A.D. 1029. Amlaff, son of Sitric, lord of the Danes, was captured by Mahon O’Riagain, lord of Bregia, who exacted 1,200 cows as his ransom, together with seven score British horses and three score ounces of gold and the sword of Carlus … and three score ounces of white silver as his fetter ounces, and four score cows for word and supplication, and four hostages to O’Riagain himself as a security for peace and the full value of the life of the third hostage.

Apart, however, from the monetary system of the Brehon Laws, the fact remains that the real currency of early Irish custom seems to have been in cumhals or female slaves. The coirp-dire and the honour-price of the Brehon tracts were reckoned in cumhals, and we shall find that there appears to be good evidence that both payment in female slaves and the equation of the female slave with three Roman ounces of silver go back to a very early period.