248 



SECTION VI. 



Commerce, Customs, General Habits, ^'c. 



The mention of Dublin as " clarissimum portum,"* and of the 

 resort of merchants (mercatores) to Armagh, -f continues the evidence 

 of Ireland's commercial celebrity, while the trade during this interval 

 seems to have been principally maintained with Gaul. Jonas, speak- 

 ing of Columbanus, says, he and his companions departed from the 

 city of Nantz (" Nammetensi oppido,") for Ireland, in a ship that 

 was appropriated to trading with the Irish, and that he brought over 

 with him numerous casks of wine, fruit, and other miscellaneous arti- 

 cles ;% while Mabillon furnishes testimony, that the vessels so used in 

 this trade were at least sometimes Irish, when he mentions Columba- 

 nus's departure from France in an Irish ship,("parata naviScotica coep- 

 ta navigatio.") The frequent use of the above articles is reiterated by 

 the Irish annals &nd poems; wine is particularly alluded to by Adam- 

 nan, (lib. 2. c. 1,) and Tigernach, at A. D. 534, mentions the drown- 

 ing of a king in wine. The subject matter, however, of this com- 

 mercial intercourse can be better collected from what has been said on 

 this head in the preceding period, and the nature of the duty stated 

 to have been laid on certain articles of trade in favour of Saint 

 Patrick,^ as well as from the section on commerce in the following 



* Ante, p. 184. + Ante, p. 220. 



X " Centum modia vini ducentaque frumenti, sed et bracis centum modia ac promiscue 

 alia centum modia, ***** repertdque navi quae Scotorum commercia vexerat, om- 

 nem supellectilem comitesque suscepit." — Vita Columban, cs. 21 and 22 in Messingbam's 

 florileg. 



§ See ante, p. 160. 



