ses through the gap in the ring. The pin is then rotated around the ring by 90 degrees or so, so that as long as the pin is held down by slight pressure it cannot escape over the terminals, and the fastening is secure. With pseudo-penannular brooches, things are not so simple and the manner in which they were used is still debated; the method was probably not the same for all brooches. One method may have been to pull folds of the cloth through the ring until they could be pierced by the pin, and then pull the cloth back until the pin rested on the ring. This would work best with brooches with a pin not much longer than the diameter of the ring, which some have, but others do not. The second method might have been simply to pin the cloth vertically, leaving the ring hanging unattached to the cloth; this does not seem very secure. The third method relied on a length of chain or cord attached to the ring near the "terminals" (which i
n pseudo-penannular brooches do not actually terminate), which was used to secure the pin by tying it down, perhaps with a small pin at the end, which was also put through the cloth. The Tara Brooch was probably fastened in this way. In some cases the pin was fitted with a bolt or rivet to make it removable. A further complication is that in some pseudo-penannular brooches the pin is fixed to lie in front of the ring, as in the Londesborough Brooch (below), but in others it crosses through the ring, starting with the head end in front of the ring, but the middle of the pin behind the ring by the point where it crosses at the other side; the Tara Brooch has been displayed set up in both ways. The latter arrangement seems more common in later brooches, of the 9th century. It is fair to say that scholars remain slightly puzzled that the effective and simple penannular brooch developed in this direction, though it is presumed that the reuniting of the terminals of pseudo-penannular broo
ches was partly to strengthen the brooch. In many penannular brooches, the gap between the terminals is now too narrow for the pin to pass throu
