Here's a small coin measuring 20 mm in diameter and weighing 2.83 g in bronze that our member pier2 has been wondering about. Here he shares with you the information he found on this nice little coin!
What is a Feiorling?
“Feoirling” or farthing, means a quarter in Old English. It’s the name given to an Irish coin whose value shown on its reverse is ¼ d. Why?
The Feoirling is worth ¼ of a penny. The term Penny is derived from the Germanic word Pfennig and the corresponding Latin term was denarius. It was for this reason that the penny was abbreviated with a “d”. So the value of the farthing, a quarter of a penny, is just indicated by the symbol “¼ d”.
The reverse of this coin features “a woodcock in flight“. Despite its small size, the woodcock was both an important game bird in the country and an occasional addition to the farm labourer’s table. Until the arrival of the Euro, the entire Irish coin collection featured animals important to Ireland’s largely agricultural economy (the sow with her piglets, the hen with her chicks, the hare, the greyhound, the bull, the salmon, the horse and the stag).
The obverse features a 16-string harp, a symbol common to all Irish coins, including the €uro. This instrument is a copy of Brian Boru’s 14th-century harp, on display at Trinity College Dublin. It is one of only three surviving Gaelic harps. On our 1928 coin, the harp is surrounded by the legend in Latin (Gaelic): “Saorstat Eireann” translated as “Irish Free State”. This patriotic legend disappeared in 1939.
