_ as
the Druids regarded _three_--as something especially sacred.
They had much of the commerce of Southern Europe in their
hands, and, therefore, a certain power in controlling the
markets, which it would be a convenience to Jews to _prevent_
falling on the sabbath day. The circumstance that the lunar
month fitted in with four weeks of seven days no doubt made it
easier to effect the change from _nundinae_.
[End of Footnotes]

Shakespeare had been struck with the relationship of the
_nine_ day week, alluded to in the proverb, to the more modern
one of seven days, as is shown by his very clever juxtaposition
of the two in "As You Like It." In Act III., Scene 2, he
makes Celia say to Rosalind

"But didst thou hear _without wondering_ how thy name should
be hanged and carved upon these trees?"

And Rosalind replies

"I was _seven_ of the _nine days out of the wonder_ before
you came"--_etc._

Gloucester, down till the Norman time, and after, was the
great manufactory of the iron brought from the Forest of
Dean. The metal was brought up the Severn by barges, to
the quay which stood at the road running straight down from
Longsmith Street (in which Charles Hoar's house stands), and
buried under all this street we find the cinder and slag of
the Roman forges. In Domesday book (which was ordered to
be drawn up at a Parliament in Gloucester in 1083) it states
that the City had paid to the King (_i. e.,_ Edward the Confessor)
ten _dicres_ of iron yearly. This is very remarkable, for
a dicre was three dozen rods or bars; so that the whole tribute
was three hundred and sixty bars, or _one bar per day for
the Druid year of three hundred and sixty days._*

[Footnote]
* For more than a century after Julius Caesar had altered the
year to three hundred and sixty-five days, the Roman soldiers
were still paid at the ancient rate of three hundred and
sixty days only, losing the rest as _"terminalia,"_ or days
not counted as belonging to the year! The proof of this
is that in the time of Domitian a soldier's _year's_ pay divided
by three hundred and sixty gives an even number of _ases_.
[End of Footnote]

And now we come back to the Verderer's Court at the Speech
House with a clear reason for its being held _"every forty
days at twelve o'clock at noon."_

Forty days was the _ninth_ of the Druid year of three hundred
and sixty, and was a period of five weeks of eight days each,
but which according to the ancient metho