^ 161 



King of Ireland, though he had a treasury full of wealth, (frequens 

 opibus,) was nevertheless so avaricious, &c.;"* and again, "the 

 Danes at the city of Dublin, ordered the royal riches to be carried 

 out of the treasury, and publicly distributed, on which occasion so 

 much money (pecunia) was found, that there was no doubt of a share 

 of the booty reaching all."-|' 



Of the dress worn at this period by the inhabitants of Ireland, no 

 illustration can be had from foreigners. Eumenius calls them half 

 naked, (" seminudi,") and Gildas in his spleen portrays them, as 

 "rather covering their faces with beards, than their bodies with 

 garments;":!: while on the other side, rich robes of purple are 

 frequently noticed in the Irish poems and romances as honorary gifts, 

 and linen as the ordinary dress of the humbler classes. Laughton, 

 it is worth observing, says, in his history of Egypt, (p. 59,) that 

 linen was the peculiar dress of the people of Egypt ; and Pliny§ gives 

 a very full account of the Egyptian linen. 



Of the amusements of the day, hunting was the first which necessarily 

 suggested itself; and, if some naturalists are correct in their conjecture, 

 the early inhabitants of Ireland must have had more noble game than 

 the country now presents. They suppose that its woods were once 

 the resort of moose-deer, and that, as the timber was cleared away, 

 these animals, finding no place to conceal their great bulk, were con- 

 sequently hunted down and eaten, as the race of red deer have been 

 in more recent times almost to their extinction. Great numbers of 



* " Rex Hibernise Hugletus, cum frequens opibus asrarium haberet, adeo tamen avaritia; 

 obnoxius extitit, &c."— Hist. Dan. lib. 6. 



f Dani apud urbem DufBinam regias opes asrario egestas publico raptu convelli jusse- 

 rint. Tanta; siquidem magnitudinis pecunia reperta fuerat, ut minor partitionis cura cunctis 

 existeret." — Hist. Dan. lib. 6. 



t Ante, p. 69. | N^t. Hist. lib. 19. c. 2. 



VOL. xvr. T 



