Ill 



for purposes of trade;* and that trade is explained to have con- 

 sisted in metals furnished by Ireland. There cannot exist a ques- 

 tion that mines were worked, and to a great extent, in this island 

 in the earliest times, because not only ancient shafts and galle- 

 ries have been traced, but tools of the most antique fashion, of 

 stone, and of the mixed metal of which the weapons called celts 

 are made, have been found, together with candles with linen wicks. 



The probability is, that these exports were repaid by commo- 

 dities from the East;-!* and this probability is curiously corrobo- 

 rated by the Hervarrar Saga, a book in old Icelandic, which 

 relating the combat of Hialmar and Odder, with Argantys and his 

 eleven brothers, mentions that Odder had procured from Ireland a 

 silk garment impenetrable to any weapon : this battle took place, 

 according to the historian Suhm, A, D. 4 10. J Now unless Ireland 

 traded with or kept up an intercourse with the east, whence could 

 she have obtained articles of silken manufacture to dispose of at a 

 time when it was one of the most expensive rarities on the 

 continent ? 



This luxury, it is evident, was one indulged in by the Irish, and 

 continued to be so until 1537, when silk embroidered vests and 



• Ibid. 103 No pilots' aid the Phenician vessels need ; 



Themselves instinct with sense securely speed ; 

 To fertile realms and distant climates go, 

 And where each realm and city lies they know. 



Odyss. lib. viii. 

 f The poem of Magnus the Great speaks of " precious stones from the country of the east." 

 Brooke's Irish Reliques, p. 83. 

 The Irish poets speak of silken standards ; and the Gall-greina, or standard of the Feinian 



heroes, was a blazing sun, radiant with the gems of the east Ibid. p. 63 and 83. 



Gal-battle — Gal-greina, possibly the sun of battle— as Gal-trumpa, the trumpet of battle 



Galla is brightness; Gal-greina, the brightness of the sun. 

 X Herbert on Icelandic Poetry, I. pp. 74., 93. 



