There were certainly 32 crosochs in the ounce of the Brehon Laws, but if we can show in another system of north-western Europe a weight exactly the same as the crosoch, with an ounce which is its thirty-fold, we may hesitate to lay down that the full Roman ounce with its 432 grs. Troy (576 grs. wheat) was the earliest form of Irish unga.
There is no mention of screapalls in the weight of Medbh’s brooch. It is quite possible that under ecclesiastical influences the full Roman ounce and its division into screapalls may have been introduced at a comparatively late period. The contact between Kelts and Scandinavians in early times has of late excited much interest.
2. Let us now turn to the old Norse system. It is as follows:
| 1 pening | = | 13·5 grs. Troy |
| 10 penings | = | 1 örtug = 136·7 grs. |
| 3 örtugs | = | 1 öre = 410 grs. |
| 8 öres | = | 1 mark = 3280 grs. |
Let us deal first with the mark. As its name signifies, it in all probability was originally not a weight, but a measure. The use of mark as a land measure is well known in the Teutonic languages. It is also used as a measure of length. Thus a mark of cloth consists of 448 alen or ells. After what we have learned about the history of the Roman as ([p. 354]) we need not be surprised if a term originally used as a measure of some article which was not as yet sold by weight, came in similar fashion to be incorporated at a later period into the weight system as a higher unit. If the mark was originally a given measure of bronze or iron, we can readily see how it came later on to be used as a weight, and ultimately to be the chief unit of account among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, until it was at last driven out by the pound.
That silver was cast into bars which weighed a mark is rendered highly probable by the fact that three of the silver bars found at Cuerdale weigh respectively 3960, 3954, and 3950 grs. Troy; that is, just the weight of 160 pennies of the reign of Alfred. 160 pennies are two-thirds of a pound of 240 pennies, or in other words a mark.
The practice of running silver into ingots of such a weight may well have arisen from an earlier practice of employing bronze or iron bars of such a weight. It is at all events certain that the mark is native Teutonic and is not borrowed from Rome. That the Kelts at least used bars of iron as money is made not unlikely by a famous passage of Caesar which I shall quote later on. A various reading states that the Britons used iron rods as money (ferreis taleis). Even without this we may reasonably infer from what we have learned of the practice of primitive peoples in dealing with iron or copper, that the Teutons and Kelts must have used these by measure. It is well known that the Swedes used ingots of copper as currency down to comparatively recent times. It is then most likely that the öre or ounce of 410 grs. was the highest original weight unit, just as the unga is in the ancient Irish system. The weight of this öre is of great interest. If we found the Roman pound of 12 ounces in Scandinavia, we should at once say that the öre of 410 grs. was the reduced Roman ounce (432 grs.). But as the native mark evidently got its position before the influence of Rome was felt in the North, we may well consider the öre to be pre-Roman. The reader will remember that I identified the ancient Roman uncia with the small talent of Sicily and Macedonia. The latter weighed 3 ox-units or about 405 grs. I also suggested that it originally represented the value of a slave, and was thus the original highest unit used for gold or silver. I showed on an earlier page ([141]) that the Norse örtug, the one-third of the öre, was the price of a cow. If three cows were the price of a slave in Scandinavia as they were in Ireland, and probably in Homeric Greece, an öre of gold was the price of a slave. The passage from the life of St Finnian given at once shows that an ounce of gold was the regular price of a slave in early Ireland, and probably a good Scandinavian scholar could soon find similar evidence for the value of the old Norse slave.
The meaning and derivation of the term örtug have been much discussed. It occurs in the forms örtog, örtug, ertog, œrtug. Cleasby’s Lexicon makes nothing out of the first part of the word, but takes the second part (-tog -tug = tugr = 20), because örtug had the value of 20 penningar, though tugr means 10. But as a matter of fact there were, as we saw above, 240 penningar in the mark, and therefore there were 10 penningar in the örtug. Holmboe[457] goes more deeply into the origin of örtug. He says, “As á, pl. œr, signifies a ewe, and tug-r as a derivative of ten both by itself and in compounds signifies ten, ertug seems originally to have signified 10 ewes, just as the weight ertug betokens the weight of 10 peningar, and peningr itself also means a sheep. It may be regarded as questionable to assume the plural œr to form the first part of the compound, yet œr must at an early period have been used in the formation of compounds, since both the folkspeech of Norway has the form œr-saud-ewe, sheep, technically a ewe-with-lamb, and the folkspeech of Denmark has œr lam in the sense of ewe-lamb[458].” Another suggestion is that örtug comes from arta = a pea-formed knob, so that örtug = örtu-vog, the weight of a pea.
The objection to this would be that the pea would weigh 13·5 grs. Troy, which seems far too much.