of Colum Kill; the tribute due to him was seven score oxen,
but he selected, as a substitute for these, four hundred and twenty
ounces of pure silver." The price of an ox was, therefore, three ounces
of silver. The old-time barter, an echo of which still lingers in the
word "pecuniary" from the Latin name for "cattle," was evidently
yielding to the more convenient form of exchange through the medium of
the metals, which are easily carried and divided, and suffer no
detriment from the passage of time. With the wicker bridge and the
lime-kiln, this change from a tribute in cattle to a payment in silver
may remind us that we are on the threshold of the modern world.

In 1162 we find the king of Connacht in a new adventure: "An army was
led by Muirceartac Ua Lochlain, accompanied by the people of the north
of Ireland, the men of Meath, and a battalion of the Connacht men, to
At-Cliat, to lay siege to the Foreigners and the Irish; but Ua Lochlain
retired without battle or hostages after having plundered the Fair
Strangers. A peace was afterwards concluded between the Foreigners and
the Gaels; and six score ounces of gold were given by the Foreigners to
Ua Lochlain, and five score ounces of gold were paid by Diarmaid Ua
Maelseaclain to Ruaidri Ua Concobar for West Meath." Here again we see
the "countless cows" giving place to counted gold in the levying of
tribute. We note also, in the following year, that "a lime-kiln
measuring seventy feet every way was made by the successor of Colum Kill
and the clergy of Colum Kill in twenty days," in evident emulation of
the work of the Armagh see.

The synod already recorded as having been held in the little island of
Saint Patrick off the Dublin coast, gives us a general view of the
church at that time, the number of sees and parishes, and the spirit
animating them. We gain a like view of the civil state in the record of
a great assembly convened in 1167 by the energetic and enterprising
Connacht king: "A great meeting was called together by Ruaidri Ua
Concobar and the chiefs of Leat Cuin, both lay and ecclesiastic, and the
chiefs of At-boy,--the Yellow Ford across one of the streams of the
Boyne in Meath. To it came the successor of Patrick, the archbishop of
Connacht, the archbishop of Leinster, the lord of Breifne, the lord of
Oirgialla, the king of Ulster, the king of Tara, and Ragnall son of
Ragnall, lord of the Foreigners. The whole of their gathering and
assemblage was 19,000 h