The next clause imposes for ordinary homicide seven years’ penance in bread and water.
Clauses 8 and 10 fix the ‘prætium animæ’ of a pregnant woman (including woman and child) at twelve ancillæ.
Ancilla of same value in silver as the Brehon cumhal.
Clause 9 fixes for us the silver value of the ancilla and seems to show that it was the same as the silver value of the cumhal in the Brehon Laws.
The clause is as follows:—
XII. Altilia[83] vel XIII. sicli (? XII.) prætium uniuscujusque ancillæ.
Ecclesiastical usage retained to some extent the use of Roman phraseology. The siclus or sicilicus, as we have already seen, was the didrachma of two Roman argentei or silver drachmæ. And as the drachma after Nero was one eighth of the Roman ounce, so the siclus was one quarter. The Altilia was the ‘fattened heifer’ possibly of Irish custom.[84] Twelve fattened heifers or sicli equalled therefore three Roman ounces—i.e. the exact silver value of the cumhal of the Brehon Laws. Here, therefore, in these so-called Irish Canons the ancilla seems to be reckoned at the Brehon silver value of the cumhal.
Having gained this point we proceed to examine the other clauses.
In title III., headed ‘Synodus Hibernensis decrevit,’ are the following:[85]—
Seven ancillæ the price of a man’s life.