222 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



amongst the Saxons must have been familiar to Cormac, it will be obvious that 

 he could hardly have explained the meaning of the word in this manner if he 

 did not intend to intimate that it was applied to a coin minted by the Irish 

 also ; nor would he have given such derivations for it, if he supposed it had its 

 origin amongst the Danes in Ireland. 



But though the custom of minting money may, on the preceding evidences, 

 be conceded to the Irish, it may still be argued that this custom was derived 

 from the Danes in the ninth century ; and to settle this question, the antiquity 

 of the pieces remaining to us must be tested by a comparison of the types on 

 them with those on the coins of other countries, whose ages have been deter- 

 mined. 



The opinions of those numismatists, who conclude that the Danes were the 

 introducers of coin into Ireland, is founded upon the supposition, which I be- 

 lieve to be wholly erroneous, that the Pagan Danes were vastly more advanced 

 in civilization than the Irish, a lettered and Christian people, whom they came 

 to plunder, and, if possible, to conquer. Hear Mr. Pinkerton on this point : 



" The Danes, a wise and industrious, as well as victorious people, being much more advanced 

 in society [than the Irish] when they settled in Ireland, were the founders of Dublin, Limeric, 

 and other cities ; the seats of little Danish kingdoms, where arts and industry were alone known. 

 Their frequent invasions of England, and neighbourhood to that opulent kingdom, made them ac- 

 quainted with coinage. And it is clear, from the form and fabric, that the old rude pennies, found 

 in Ireland, are struck by the Danes there. These pieces have no resemblance of the old Gaulic or 

 British ; or even of -the skeattas, or English pennies ; but are mere rude copies of those of the 

 eighth or ninth centuries, executed by artists who could neither form nor read letters, and there- 

 fore instead of them, put only strokes, 1 1 1 1 1 1." Essay on Medals, vol. ii. pp. 153, 154. 



This assumed superiority of the Danes is wholly gratuitous, as no remains of 

 that people have been discovered in Ireland, that would in any degree authorize 

 it. It cannot be said that Irish artists in the eighth or ninth century could not 

 form or read letters, for I have myself collected several hundred well-sculptured 

 Irish inscriptions of those very centuries, while, on the other hand, not a single 

 Danish inscription has been ever discovered in Ireland. And if the rude imi- 

 tations of the Saxon money, to which Pinkerton alludes, were made in Ireland 

 in the eighth or ninth century, they must have been made by the Irish, as they 

 always present Christian devices; and we have the authority of the Irish annals, 

 acquiesced in by Ware, that the Irish Danes were first converted to Christ- 



