Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 211 



bracteate money had an earlier origin, and a different birth-place from what 

 has been assigned to them by the German writers ; and as bracteates have been 

 found, coined by the first two propagators of Christianity in Denmark and Sweden, 

 namely, Harold, king of Denmark, who lived in the tenth century, and Biorno, 

 king of Sweden, who lived at the close of the eighth and commencement of the 

 ninth, he considers that the origin of this description of money should be as- 

 signed to Sweden, and that it thence passed into Denmark, and lastly into Ger- 

 many ; and he attributes the lightness and thinness of this description of money 

 to the scarcity of silver in the north at the period of its origin. In these con- 

 clusions of M. Schoepflin, the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles 

 Lettres appear to concur, as will be seen in the following extract from their 

 report on his paper, given in the twenty-third volume of the History of the 

 Academy, pp. 215-6 : 



" II resulte de cet expose, fait d'apres M. Schoepflin, que les monnoies bracteates sont originaire- 

 ment Suedoises, & que Pepoque en doit etre fixee a la fin du VIII e . siecle ; & qu'ainsi on se trom- 

 poit a la fois sur le lieu & sur le temps de leur origine, placee par les uns trop haut, & trop bas par 

 les autres." 



As the antiquity of this species of money on the continent seems thus clearly 

 traced to the eighth century, it now remains to determine, if possible, its anti- 

 quity in Ireland. 



The opinion relative to the origin of minted money in Ireland, which has 

 been hitherto, as I may say, universally adopted by numismatists, is, that it 

 originated with the Danes in the tenth, or possibly in the ninth century ; and 

 in this opinion, I confess, that I myself concurred, till my attention was more 

 particularly drawn to the subject, by the discovery of the pieces of bracteate 

 money in the Round Tower of Kildare. I now, however, see considerable rea- 

 son to doubt the correctness of this opinion, and to believe that the Danes, far 

 from being the introducers of minted money into this country, may, with greater 

 probability, have themselves derived the art from the Irish, and not from the 

 Anglo-Saxons, as generally supposed. In the first place, it should be borne in 

 mind that the type usually found on the Danish coins is a peculiar one, and that, 

 though it is also found on some of the coins of the Saxon king, Ethelred II., 

 A. D. 979, many of which appear to have been minted in Ireland, it does not 

 occur on earlier coins of the Saxon princes, and hence these coins of Ethel- 



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