Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/49

 (probably female as well as male), to the libra or pound, the highest unit in the Roman system. Of course slaves of exceptional strength or beauty would always command a higher price. But the regulations for the value of cattle are especially of interest, as shewing the extraordinary minuteness with which pastoral peoples discriminate the values of animals of different ages, and estimate the milk of a cow in proportion to her actual value. The full-grown cow is worth exactly ten times the new-*born calf, an estimate which holds good just as much in 1890 as it did 1000 years ago, for it is not a mere convention but is based upon a natural law. At the present moment a calf is worth from 30 to 35 shillings, a cow from £15 to £17. 10s. The yearling calf was worth one-sixth of the full-grown cow, a relation which still holds good.

The Irish Kelts borrowed their silver system from Rome at a period probably before Constantine, as they seem never to have employed the libra and solidus, but simply the uncia (unga) and scripulus (screapall), adding thereto a subdivision called the pinginn or penny, borrowed doubtless from the Saxon invader at a later period. Thus 1 unga = 24 screapalls; 1 screapall = 3 pinginns. They equated the principal silver unit, the uncia, to the old chief barter-unit, the cow (bo). As elsewhere, however, the slave formed occasionally the highest unit, and was reckoned nominally at three cows. The slave woman (cumhal, ancilla in Latin writers) was in course of time used as a mere unit of account.

Slave woman (cumhal, ancilla)     = 3 ounces (unga) Full-grown cow (bo mor)             = 1 ounce   = 24 screapalls Heifer now in third year (samhaisc) = 1/2 ounce = 12 screapalls Heifer of second year (colpach)     = 6 screapalls Yearling (dairt)                    = 4 screapalls A cow's milk for summer and harvest   = 6 screapalls A sheep                               = 3 screapalls A goat's milk for summer and harvest  = 1-3/4 pinginn A sheep's fleece                      = 1-1/2 pinginn A sheep's milk                        = 1/2 pinginn A kid (meinnan)                  = 2/3 pinginn