cumhal

cumhal

Irish

Noun

cumhal f (genitive singular ?, nominative plural cumhala)

1. A female slave.
   • 1892, William Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards, p. 33:

     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.

2. A bondmaid.
3. A unit of account equivalent to the theoretical value of a female slave.
   • 1922, R.A. Stewart Macalister, "The Valuation and Tenure of Property" in Ireland, p. 102:

     For yet higher sums the cumhal (pron. cūwal, the u being nasalised) or bondsmaid was the unit, and here again we meet with a considerable range of values. The normal value of the cumhal... seems to have been 10 sets, the set being further defined as of the second class... But in some passages we read of a cumhal worth 3 sets, and even only one; so that there is a wide range of uncertainty as to valuation in the absence of knowledge that was imparted traditionally.

   • 2013, Laurence Ginnell, The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook, p. 80:

     The measures by which the actual quantities in each case were ascertained were the cumhal (pronounced cooal) and the sed (pronounced shed)... Cumhal means, literally, a bond-maid or female slave; but in the laws it is never used in any other sense than as a measure of quantity, or rather of value, perhaps what was originally supposed to equal the value of such a slave. As applied to land (tircumhat), it meant the usufruct for one year of about twenty acres, less or more, according as the land was good or bad... As applied to things other than land, cumhal meant the value of three cows.