QUOTE : Cattle and metal treasure were the main forms of wealth in ancient Ireland—metal because it was rare, and cattle because they were useful. Cattle provided milk to drink and to make into cheese, and hide and meat after they were dead. If a king demanded tribute from his subjects, it would probably be in the form of cattle—in fact, a wealthy farmer was called a bóiare, or “lord of cows.” In the famous poem Táin Bó Cuailnge, a major war starts because Queen Mebd discovers that her husband has one more bull than she does. Celtic chieftains spent quite a bit of their energy stealing cattle from one another. They even had a special word for this activity, táin. (Cattle raiding wasn’t just an amusement for the ancient Irish; modern Irish people were stealing one another’s cattle well into the twentieth century.)