Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 213 



, ci jeapna &pea, 7 DO ben oa do 065 bo puapcclaio app, 7 peace pichic each m-6peir- 

 neac, 7 rpi pichec umje o'op, 7 cloioearii Caplup, 7 uiccipe 5 aiea l' eiccip 6aijnib 7 Cee 

 Cumo, 7 cpi picic uinje o'aipgec gil ina unja geimleac, 7 ceicpe picic bo pocail 7 imploe, 

 7 ceicpe h-aiccipe o'O'Riajam pern ppi pfch, 7 Ian loj bpajacc an cpep aiccipe;" 



" A. D. 1029. Amlaff, son of Sitric, lord of the Danes, was captured by Mahon O'Eiagain, 

 lord of Bregia, who exacted twelve hundred cows as his ransom, together with seven score British 

 horses, and three score ounces of gold, and the sword of Carlus, and the Irish hostages both of the 

 Lagenians and Leth Cuinn, and sixty ounces of white silver (or money) as his fetter-ounce, and 

 eighty cows for word and supplication, and four hostages to O'Eiagain himself as a security for 

 peace, and the full value of the life of the third hostage." 



It also appears from innumerable passages in our ancient authorities that 

 the precious metals thus valued by weight, and used as a circulating medium, 

 were, as I have already said, sometimes in the form of ingots, but perhaps more 

 frequently manufactured into rings for the neck, called muntorcs, and for the 

 arms and legs, called failg he ; and hence the epithet of " exactors of rings," 

 so frequently applied by their poets to the northern warriors, who infested Ire- 

 land in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. 



This custom is very interestingly illustrated in the following passage ex- 

 plaining the name Righ, which was anciently applied to the river Boyne in an 

 ancient manuscript of the Brehon Laws, preserved in the Library of Trinity 

 College, Dublin : 



" Rij mna Nuaoac, .1. ponaipc, .1. cumoach DO pailjiB oip no bio ima lairii oia o-cionacal 

 DO pile6aiB."_H. 3, 18, p. 545. 



" The/% of the wife of Nuada, i. e. great, i. e. she was used to have her hand (or arm) covered 

 with rings of gold for bestowing them on poets." 



This woman was the wife of Nuada Neacht, a poet, and king of Leinster in the 

 first century; and she is said to have given her name, Boann, to the river Boyne. 

 So also, from various passages found in the Irish annals, we find that these 

 rings were of fixed weights ; as at the year 1150, when the monarch Muircher- 

 tach O'Loughlin, among other things, presented the abbot of Derry with a gold 

 ring, which weighed five ungas or ounces ; and at the following year, when the 

 same abbot received from Cu-Uladh O'Flynn, chief of Sil-Cathasaigh, a gold 

 ring weighing two ounces ; and gold and silver rings, as well as tores and ingots 

 of the precious metals of fixed weights, are found in abundance in the country 

 at the present day. 



