On the Ring Money of the Celte. 9 
found frequently, if not generally, in a pure state in the soil washed down by the 
mountain streams. 
Cesar tells us, that the Gauls “ use for money, gold and iron rings, by certain 
weight.” The latter have perished by oxidation, but the two former are found, in 
great abundance, in the fields and bogs in every part of Ireland. These curious re- 
mains are so perfectly anolagous to the accounts given of the Britons and Gauls, by 
Greek and Roman writers, that they of themselves afford the most powerful testimony 
of the identity of the origin of the ancient Irish and that people. To gold and iron, 
may be added silver and brass rings of a graduated weight. 
There are also great quantities of rings of jet, coal, or ebony, found in our bogs, 
which may possibly have passed as a circulating medium : but there is not, as far as J 
have discovered, any authority beyond conjecture that they were so used ; althougl 
it is well known that such substances have, in other countries, been used as a circu- 
lating medium. 
It has often been objected against the Irish pretensions to early civilization, that 
no very ancient coins, or medals, of the early Irish monarchs have been found ; and, 
certainly, the absence of any indication of a metallic circulating medium, would sup- 
ply a fair inference of a low state of commercial intercourse ; but, on the other hand, 
the appearance of a well-regulated, convenient, and graduated circulating medium of 
the precious metals, demonstrates an advanced progress in civilization. There 
have, however, been found in Ireland many specimens of very ancient silver coins, 
the legends on which have never been deciphered, or appropriated to any monarchs 
or people, and yet remain unexplained. 
These were, certainly, very early attempts at coinage ; and as exactly similar coins 
are often found in Britain, it is a fair conclusion, that they were the production of 
the ancient Celtic inhabitants of each country. 
But it is not necessary to rest the pretensions of the Celtz, to the possession of a 
metallic circulating medium, on these rude specimens of early coinage; the period of 
their fabrication is recent, when compared with the circulating medium which, we have 
now irrefragible testimony, existed for ages previous to our era, in all parts of Celtica. 
It is very remarkable, that rings of gold and iron being used as money among the 
Britons, appears to have been an idea new to Cesar ; there is no remark that any such 
medium was known at the time to have existed among any nation with whom he was 
acquainted. 
The kings of Lydia, we are told by Herodotus, were the first who coined metallic 
money, about 600 years A.C. and the practice soon after obtained universally among 
the nations with whom they had intercourse. The discontinuance, and a lapse of 560 
years, in Casar’s day, had obliterated the recollection that the ancient currency of 
rings had ever existed. Recent investigations have exhibited evidence, that the most an- 
cient of nations used rings of gold and silyer for money, or a metallic circulating medium. 
VOL, XVII. oe 
