a comparatively early period that native form? The same argument may be urged in reference to the silver. The Irish form is _airgid_, according to some a loan-word, being simply the Latin _argentum_. We have already seen that it is not possible that the Kelts, in constant contact with the Iberians who were so rich in silver, could have remained in ignorance of that metal. The Gaulish form of the name for silver was plainly in Roman times almost the same as the Latin, as is shown by _Argentoratum_, the ancient name of Strasburg. It is plain then that before the Roman Conquest the Gauls had a town called by the name for _silver_, whilst the Irish form has no nasal, the Gaulish coincides completely with the Latin. Is it not possible, that in this case too a native Keltic name, a close cognate of Latin _argentum_, whose lineal descendant is seen in the Irish form, may have been assimilated to the Latin form? But there is plenty of evidence from other quarters to show that the mere existence of a foreign name for a particular object in any language is no proof that the object in question came into use for the first time along with the borrowing of the name. When the Franks conquered that portion of the Roman empire to which they gave their name, they must have had Teutonic words of their own for _silver_ and _gold_, closely related to our own forms of the words. Yet whilst many Teutonic words lingered and became absorbed into what became in process of time the French language, their names for the metals disappeared and the Latin derivatives remained in possession. Again, we get another instance of such borrowing in the case of our own _penny_, old English _pendinga_, _penning_, German _Pfennig_. The philologists seem agreed in recognizing this as a loan-word from the Latin _pecunia_. Yet money was familiar to the northern peoples long before they ever came into contact with even the advanced posts of the Empire. The use of rings and spirals of gold as a form of currency in Scandinavia is well known; our word _shilling_ seems to mean no more than portions of such a coil of gold or silver wire cut off, to be used as small change. But as the first coined money with which they became familiar was the currency of Rome, they seem to have taken the generic Roman name for money as their own expression for the Roman silver coins with which they became familiar, just as the Latin _aurum_ under the form of _aura_ (_eyrir_) became in old Norse the general term for coined money or treasure in money.