IV. WINGED CELTS AND PALSTAVES
TO any one who has examined an extensive collection of the bronze instruments found in this country it will at once be apparent that in the class of celts designed to be fixed in some sort of haft, and not themselves socketed for the reception of a handle, there is a wide range of form. Any attempt, however, to divide them into well-marked classes is soon seen to be futile, as there is found to be a gradual transition from what at first sight appears to be a well-marked form into some other which presents different characteristics. If, for instance, we take the side flanges as a criterion, we find them ranging from a mere thickening on the margins of the flat celts to well-developed flanges, extending along nearly the whole blade; we then find them confined to the upper part of the instrument, and in some cases of great lateral extent, so as to be capable of being hammered over to form a kind of semicircular socket on each side of the blade. In other cases we find that the flanges have some part of their apparent projection due to a diminution in the thickness of the portion of the blade which lies between them. If we take as a criterion the stop-ridge, as it has been termed, a projecting ridge for the purpose of preventing the blade being driven too far into its wooden handle, we find the ridge in a rudimentary form in the blades which taper both ways; next as a slightly raised ridge or bead running across the blade; then as a better-defined ridge, to which, at last, greater development is given by a reduction in the thickness of the blade above it. The presence or absence of a loop at the side is, no doubt, a good differentiation, but as this is a mere minor accessory, and two celts may be identical in other respects with the exception of one being provided with a loop and the other being without it, it does not materially assist in the classification of this group of instruments, although for convenience’s sake it is best to treat of the two varieties of form separately. An additional reason for this may be found in the possibility that the loop was a comparatively late invention, so that the palstaves provided with it may be in some cases of later date than those without it, though the identity in the ornamentation of some of the instruments of the two classes, and the fact of their being occasionally found together, are almost conclusive as to their contemporaneity.
In the present chapter I propose to treat of the celts with a stop-ridge, of the winged celts, and of those of the palstave form.
The winged celts may be generally described as those in which the flanges are short and have a great amount of lateral extension. When these wings are hammered over so as to form a kind of socket on each side of the blade, one of the varieties of the palstave form is the result. The other and more common variety of the palstave form has the portion of the blade which lies between the wings or side flanges and above the stop-ridge cast thinner than the rest of the blade, thus leaving a recess or groove on each side into which the handle fitted.
I have already made frequent use of the term palstave, and it will be well here to make a few remarks as to the origin and meaning of the word. The term palstave, or more properly paalstab, comes to us from the Scandinavian antiquaries. Their reason for adopting the term was that there is still in use in Iceland a kind of narrow spade or spud, which is known by the name of paalstab, and which somewhat resembles these bronze instruments. Woodcuts of two of these Icelandic palstaves are given in the Archæological Journal,[247] from drawings communicated to Mr. Yates by Councillor Thomsen, of Copenhagen. They are here by permission reproduced. The derivation of the term suggested in a note to the Journal is that paal comes from the Icelandic verb pula, or pala, to labour, so that the word means the “labouring staff.” But this appears to me erroneous. Pul, indeed, signifies hard, laborious work; but pæli (at pæla) means to dig, and pall (conf. Latin pala and French pelle) means a kind of spade or shovel. The word, indeed, survives in the English language as peel, the name of a kind of wooden shovel used by bakers for placing loaves in the oven. The meaning of the term would appear, then, to be rather “spade staff” than “labouring staff,” unless the word labouring be used in the sense of the French labourer.
Mr. Thoms, in a note to his “Translation of Worsaae’s Primeval Antiquities of Denmark,”[248] says that the “term Paalstab was formerly applied in Scandinavia and Iceland to a weapon used for battering the shields of the enemy, as is shewn by passages in the Sagas. Although not strictly applicable to the (bronze) instruments in question, this designation is now so generally used by the antiquaries of Scandinavia and Germany, that it seems desirable, with the view of securing a fixed terminology, that it should be introduced into the archæology of England.” The term had already been used in 1848 in the “Guide to Northern Archæology,”[249] edited by the Earl of Ellesmere, and has now, like celt, become adopted into the English language.
I have not been able to refer to the passage in the Sagas mentioned as above by Mr. Thoms, but whatever may be the original meaning of the word palstave, it is applied by northern antiquaries to all the forms of celts with the exception of those of the socketed type.[250]
Among English antiquaries it has, I think, been used in a more restricted sense. Professor Daniel Wilson[251] defines palstaves as “wedges, more or less axe-shaped, having a groove on each side terminating in a stop-ridge, and with lateral flanges destined to secure a hold on the handle. The typical example, however, which he engraves has neither groove nor stop-ridge, but is what I should term a winged celt, like Fig. 56.
In the present work I propose confining the term palstave to the two varieties of form already mentioned; viz. the winged celts which have their wings hammered over so as to form what may be termed external sockets to the blade; and those with the portion of the blade which lies between the side flanges and above the stop thinner than that which is below.
The first form, however, of which I have to treat is that of the celts provided with a stop-ridge on each face. These are almost always flanged celts.
A fine specimen, with the stop-ridge consisting of a straight narrow raised band across each face, and with a second curved band at some distance below, is shown in Fig. 50. It was found at Wigton, Cumberland, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. The face between the two bands has a grained appearance given it by hammering. The wings or side flanges are also faceted by the same process. In the same collection is another blade (5¾ inches) of this form, with a small stop-ridge, and having the lower part ornamented with vertical punched lines. The sides have three facets, that in the centre ornamented in a similar manner. This celt was found at Rougham, Norfolk. I have a sketch of another (6¼ inches) found near Longtown, Cumberland, in 1860.
I have a nearly similar specimen, but only 4⅞ inches long, from Stanton, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. Another (5¾ inches) with only a slight stop-ridge was found at Aynhoe,[252] Northamptonshire, and is in the collection of Sir Henry Dryden. Fig. 51 shows a beautifully wrought and highly decorated flanged celt, provided with a somewhat curved stop-ridge connecting the two flanges. The two faces of the celt are ornamented with an interlaced pattern produced by narrow dents, with a border of chevrons along each margin punched into the metal. The flanges are worked into three facets ornamented with diagonal grooves, and the lower side of the stop-ridge has a moulding worked on it. This fine example of an ornamented celt was found near Chollerford Bridge, Northumberland, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
A somewhat similar but unornamented variety of instrument, partaking more of the palstave character, is shown in Fig. 52. The original was found in excavations at Chatham Dockyard, and is now in the British Museum. As will be seen, the recess for the haft ends in a semicircular stop-ridge.
In Fig. 53 is shown a winged celt without stop-ridge found in Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire, and now in my own collection. The side flanges or wings have been hammered into three facets, and are well developed. The form of the blade is otherwise that of a flat celt, except that there is a slight irregularity in the sweep of the sides, which results from the hammering of the flanges. The form occurs occasionally in Ireland, and one (4¼ inches) is figured by Wilde.[253] Winged celts of nearly the same form, but provided with a stop-ridge, are occasionally found. One of these in the British Museum, found at Bucknell, Herefordshire, is shown in Fig. 54. The blade below the stop-ridge is 9/16 inch thick; above it only ⅜ inch. A celt of much the same character (7¼ inches), found at Wolvey, Warwickshire, is in the collection of Mr. M. H. Bloxam, F.S.A.
The double curvature of the sides may be noticed in the narrow chisel-like celt shown in Fig. 55. The blade in this instance tapers both ways from a line just below the wings, but without there being any actual stop-ridge; a third slope is produced by the lower part of the blade having been drawn down by hammering to form the edge. The original was found at Culham, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and is in my own collection.
I have another specimen, 4½ inches long, and half as wide again as the Culham chisel, which was found near Dorchester, Oxon. The blade at the lower end of the wings is an inch wide, but in the straight part between that point and the edge only a little more than ¾ inch wide.
Although these instruments are so narrow that they may be regarded as chisels rather than axes, yet from their general character so closely resembling that of Fig. 53, I have thought it best to insert them here.
A Scotch example will be subsequently cited.
Another form of winged celt without stop-ridge is shown in Fig. 56. In this the blade is flat, and the wings, which form triangular projections, stand at right angles to it. Had they been hammered over to form semicircular receptacles on each side of the blade the instrument would have been more properly described as a palstave. It was found with others near Reeth, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., where are also other specimens of this type from Linden, Northumberland (5¼ inches); Brompton, N.R., Yorkshire (5¼ inches); and Wolsingham, Durham (5⅜ inches).
Fig. 57 shows a winged celt with a broad low stop-ridge. The part of the blade above this is about ⅛ inch thinner than the part below, so that though transitional in character it belongs to one of the classes to which I would wish to restrict the term palstave. This specimen was found near Dorchester, Oxfordshire, and is in my own collection.
I have a nearly similar palstave (6 inches long) found in Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire. In this the blade below the stop-ridge is ½ inch thick, and above it 5/16 inch. In this as well as in that from Dorchester the stop-ridge is well below the level of the side flanges. In one found on Hollingbury Hill,[254] near Brighton, and now in the British Museum, the stop-ridge is nearly on the same level as the side flanges. It was found in the year 1825, together with four looped armillæ, a torque, and three spiral rings, which are said to have been arranged in a symmetrical manner in a depression dug in the chalk. Both the torque and the palstave were broken; and it is thought that this was done intentionally, at the time of the interment.
A similar discovery is recorded as having been made in 1794 on the Quantock Hills, when two large torques were found, within each of which was placed a palstave. In this case, however, these instruments were of the looped kind.
Winged celts of the type of Fig. 57 are of not unfrequent occurrence in Ireland, though the stop-ridge is usually less fully developed.
They also occur in France. One from Jonquières[255] (Oise) has been figured. I have a good specimen (6¼ inches) from the Seine at Paris. The wings are rather wider and the stop-ridge better defined than in the figure. One from Gasny is in the Museum at Evreux.
There are several in the Göttingen Museum, from a hoard found in that neighbourhood.
Usually the stop-ridge is nearly on the same level as the part of the side flanges on which it abuts, as will be seen in Fig. 58. This specimen was found in the gravel of the Trent at Colwick, near Nottingham, and is in my own collection. The blade immediately below the stop is fluted, and the bottom of this fluting tapers somewhat in the contrary direction to the tapering of the blade. The junction of the fluting and the face produces an elliptic ridge of elegant outline. The blade is ⅝ inch thick at this ridge, but above the stop-ridge barely ⅜ inch. It is rather thinner near the stop-ridge than somewhat higher up, so that the blade would be as it were dovetailed into the handle, if tightly tied to it. I have specimens of much the same type from Attleborough, Norfolk (6⅜ inches), Newbury, Berks (6¾ inches), and Hay, Brecknockshire (7⅛ inches). A curious variety of this type found at Monach-ty-gwyn,[256] near Aberdovey, has on the bottom of one of the recesses for the handle a number of sunk diagonal lines crossing each other so as to form a kind of lattice pattern. It seems to me that though this cross-hatching occurs on only one face of the palstave, it was intended rather as a means of giving it a grip on the handle than as an ornament, for when hafted this part of the instrument must have been concealed by the wood. Mr. Barnwell, however, regards it in the light of an ornament.
Plain palstaves of this character are of not unfrequent occurrence in the North of France. I have one from a hoard found at Bernay, near Abbeville. With it were palstaves of different varieties, but none of them provided with loops. The form also occurs occasionally in Holland.
In the palstave engraved as Fig. 59, the half-oval ornament below the stop-ridge is preserved, but there is a raised bead round it. There is also a slight median ridge running down the blade. The joint of the two moulds in which it was cast can be traced upon the sides of the instrument, and it appears as if one of the moulds had been somewhat deeper than the other. The original was found at Barrington, near Cambridge, and is in my own collection. I have other specimens of the same type, and of nearly the same size, from Swaffham Fen, Cambridge; and from Dorchester, Oxfordshire. The semi-elliptical ridge on the latter is larger and flatter than in that figured. The same is the case in a large specimen (6½ inches long) from Weston, near Ross, also in my own collection.
I have seen others from the Fens, near Ely (6½ inches), and from Mildenhall (6¼ inches), in the collections of Mr. Marshall Fisher, of Ely, and the Rev. S. Banks, of Cottenham, near Cambridge. Another (5½ inches) from the Carlton Rode find is in the Museum at Norwich.
One from North Wales[257] (7¼ inches), in an unfinished state, is in the British Museum. Another (6⅜ inches) from Llanfyllin,[258] Montgomeryshire, is also of nearly this type. One from North Tyne (6½ inches), in the Newcastle Museum, has two of the looped ridges one below the other on each face. In this type and in that subsequently described the ridge at the sides of the semi-elliptical ornament sometimes dies into the upper part of the blade. The variety like Fig. 59 is also abundant in the North of France. There were two or three in the hoard from Bernay, near Abbeville, and I have one from the neighbourhood of Lille.
In Fig. 60 the same general type is preserved, but there is a vertical rib running down the middle of the semi-elliptical ornament below the stop; and the median ridge along the upper part of the blade is more fully developed. In this specimen, which is in my own collection, and was found at Harston, near Cambridge, there is an attempt at ornamentation along the sides, the angles of the blade having been hammered in such a manner as to produce a series of small pointed oval facets along them.
I have other specimens of the same type, but without the ornamentation on the sides, from Burwell, Quy, and Reach Fens, near Cambridge, 6 inches, 5⅞ inches, and 6¾ inches long respectively. In that from Burwell there is no median ridge below the ornament. Canon Greenwell has one which was found with three others, one of them with a loop, near Wantage, Berks.
A rather peculiar variety of this type (6¾ inches), found in Anglesea,[259] has been figured, as well as another from Pendinas Hill,[260] near Aberystwith.
In palstaves of this class there is often a slight projection on each of the sides a little below the level of the stop-ridge. Below this projection the sides are usually more carefully hammered and planished than above it.
In a narrow palstave of this class, found at Freeland, near Witney, Oxfordshire, there are three short ridges at the bottom of each of the recesses for the handle, like those in a palstave from Newbury, subsequently described. These were probably designed to assist in steadying the handle.
A palstave (7¼ inches) from Cynwyd,[261] Merionethshire, appears to be of this type.
An instrument of this type from Les Andelys[262] (Eure) has been figured. Another, with the vertical rib in the shield, from a hoard found in Normandy, has been engraved by the Abbé Cochet.[263] Some from the Bernay hoard have a similar ornament.
On some palstaves of this class there is a series of vertical ribs within the semi-elliptical loop, as will be seen in Fig. 61. This is taken from a specimen found at Shippey, near Ely, which is in the collection of Mr. Marshall Fisher of Ely, who has kindly allowed me to engrave it. I have one from Bottisham, near Cambridge (6¾ inches), on which there is a smaller vertical ridge, on each side of the central ridge, within the ornament. One from Snettisham, Norfolk (6⅛ inches), like that from Shippey, is in the Norwich Museum. Another from Lakenheath, Suffolk (5¾ inches), is in the collection of Mr. James Carter of Cambridge.
A palstave with this ornament is in the Museum at Soissons.
The type is also found in Northern Germany.[264]
In some cases these vertical lines below the stop-ridge are not enclosed in any loop. In Fig. 62 is shown an example of the kind from a specimen in my own collection found in the Severn, near Wainlodes Hill, Gloucester. It has a slight rib down the middle of the blade. One of the same class (6¼ inches), with four vertical stripes, found on Clayton Hill, Sussex, is in the collection of Mrs. Dickinson of Hurstpierpoint; four others (about 6½ inches long), with five short vertical ridges, were found with two of the type of Fig. 63 in making the railway near Bognor, and are now in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
Another, apparently of the same type, found near Brighton, is engraved in the Sussex Archæological Collections.[265]
Another variety, having nearly the same general form, but no elliptical ridge below the stop, is shown in Fig. 63, engraved from a specimen in my own collection, found at Sunningwell, near Abingdon. The end of the recess for the handle is somewhat rounded, and there is a well-marked central rib running down the blade. At the upper part, near the stop-ridge, there are also slight side flanges. The metal in the recess for the handle is thinnest near the stop, so as to be somewhat dovetailing.
This is markedly the case in a fine example of the same type (6½ inches) with the provenance of which I am unacquainted. In another, also in my own collection, found at Newbury, Berks, the side flanges of the blade are continued almost down to the edge, and the bottom as well as the end of the recess for the handle is rounded. Near the end of the recess are some slight longitudinal ribs, one on one face and two on the other, perhaps designed to assist in steadying the handle. The mouldings along the sides of the blade are often much more fully developed, like those on Fig. 77.
Palstaves of this type have been obtained from the following localities: from South Cerney,[266] near Cirencester; from the mouth of the River Wandle,[267] in Surrey, now preserved in the British Museum; from Bucks[268] (6 inches long), also in the British Museum; from Chichester;[269] Astley,[270] Worcestershire; Llangwyllog,[271] Anglesea (6¼ inches); from near Bognor,[272] Billingshurst,[273] and Iford,[274] Sussex; and Lovehayne,[275] near Broad Down, Devon (5⅛ inches); where several appear to have been found in the rough state in which they came from the mould. I have an example from the neighbourhood of Penzance.
One (6¾ inches) found near Ashford, Kent, is in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool. One of the same kind was found with a hammer, a tanged chisel, broken spear-heads, and rough metal, in Burgesses’ Meadow, Oxford. The hoard is now in the Ashmolean Museum. In three palstaves of this kind found in the parishes of Llandrinio,[276] and Caersws, Montgomeryshire, and St. Harmon, Radnorshire, there is a hole in the metal between the two recesses for the handle just above the stop-ridge. It has been thought by Professor Westwood that these holes were connected with the manner of fastening the instrument to its haft, but it appears to me much more likely that they arise from accidental defects in casting. This is certainly the case with two specimens of my own, which also have holes through the same part of the instrument, where the metal is thin.
One (5 inches), rather narrower in the blade than the figure, found near Longford, Ireland, is in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
Palstaves with a central and two lateral ribs on the blade are of not unfrequent occurrence on the Continent, especially in the North of France. I have examples much like the figure found in the hoard at Bernay, near Abbeville. Others, much narrower in the blade, have been discovered in large numbers in the North-west of France.
German examples have been figured by Lindenschmit.[277]
In another variety the blade is nearly flat, having only a broad protuberant ridge extending along the upper part to the stop. A palstave of this kind, found near Winfrith, Weymouth, Dorset, is shown in Fig. 64. In this, the metal between the side flanges tapers towards the top of the instrument, instead of being of nearly even thickness, as is often the case, or thinnest near the stop-ridge, as it is sometimes. Close to the stop the metal is ½ inch thick, while at the top of the recess it comes to a nearly sharp edge. A palstave of this character was found on Kingston Hill,[278] Surrey, near Cæsar’s Camp.
In a specimen found at Winwick,[279] Lancashire, the blade below the stop-ridge appears to be nearly flat. A broad flat ring of bronze, 1¾ inch in diameter (Fig. 188), was found at the same time. It has been thought that this was attached to the shaft to prevent its splitting. A palstave much like that from Winwick was found at Chagford, Devon, and is in the possession of Mr. G. W. Ormerod, F.G.S. Another (6½ inches), from Ashford, Kent, is in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool. Another of these plain palstaves, found near Llanidan,[280] Anglesea, with one of the looped kind somewhat like Fig. 76, is engraved in the Archæologia Cambrensis.
I have a palstave of nearly the same form, but with a more clearly defined semi-conical bracket below the stop, which was found at Masseyck, on the frontiers of Belgium and Holland.
A short and thick form of palstave is shown in Fig. 65, engraved from a specimen found in Burwell Fen, Cambridge. On one of its faces it has the semi-elliptical ornament, with one vertical rib in it, below the stop-ridge. On the other there are five ribs instead of one within the ornament.
I have another from Bottisham Fen (4⅜ inches), not quite so heavy in its make, and perfectly flat below the stop-ridge. The ends of the recess for the handle are somewhat undercut, so as to keep the wood close to the blade when a blow was struck.
The shortened proportions of these instruments are probably due to wear. In this instance it is not improbable that the cutting end of the original palstave has been broken off, and the blunt end that was left has been again drawn to an edge by hammering.
A form of palstave without any ornament below the stop-ridge is shown in Fig. 66. This specimen was found in 1846 at East Harnham, near Salisbury, and is now in my own collection. The thickness of the blade below the stop is nearly ½ inch, above it but little more than ⅛ inch. The sides are remarkably flat.
One, only 2½ inches long, merely recessed for the handle, found at Chatham Hill, Kent, is in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool.
This plain form with a square stop-ridge is found in France and in Western Germany.
A long chisel-like form of palstave is shown in Fig. 67, engraved from a specimen in my own collection found in Burwell Fen, Cambridge. It is ornamented with a semi-elliptical projecting ridge below the stop. The flanges at the sides of the recess have some notches running diagonally into them, so as to form a kind of barb, such as would prevent the blade from being drawn away from the handle when bound to it by a cord.
I have another nearly similar tool, also from the Cambridge Fens, but without any barbs. In a third, from the neighbourhood of Dorchester, Oxon, there are neither barbs at the sides nor any ornament below the stop-ridge. I have seen another of the same character (4½ inches) which was found at Wolsonbury, Sussex, and is in the collection of Mrs. Dickinson. Another (4¾ inches), found in the Thames at Kingston, Surrey, is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. I have seen another (6⅝ inches), found at Sutton, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, in which there was a tongue-shaped groove below the stop-ridge, like that on the socketed celt, Fig. 148, but single instead of double.
The Rev. James Beck, F.S.A.,[281] has a palstave of this kind 6 inches long and 1¼ inch wide at the edge, with a projecting rib below the stop-ridge and also in the recess above. It was found at Westburton Hill, near Bignor, Sussex. There are depressions on each side of the rib below the stop, forming an ornament like that on Fig. 81.
A narrow palstave, apparently of the same character, found at Windsor,[282] is engraved by Stukeley.
A very beautiful narrow palstave, found in the Thames, and now in the collection of General A. Pitt Rivers, F.R.S., is shown in Fig. 68. As will be seen, the angles are ornamented with a kind of milling, and the sides are also decorated with zigzag and chevron patterns.
In Fig. 69 is shown an unfinished casting for a palstave of unusually small size, which formed part of the great hoard found at Stibbard,[283] Norfolk. About seventy such castings were found, and about ten castings for spear-heads (see Fig. 407).
The form of palstave with the side wings or flanges hammered over so as to form a kind of semicircular socket on either side of the blade, is of rare occurrence in Britain, and is usually provided with a loop. In Canon Greenwell’s collection is one (7 inches) without any ornament below the square stop-ridge, with the side wings slightly hammered over. It was found with others (with and without loops), together with a mould for palstaves (Fig. 527), at Hotham Carr, Yorkshire, E. R.
In a hoard of about sixty bronze objects found at Westow,[284] about twelve miles from York on the Scarborough Road, was one palstave of this kind, like Fig. 85, but without a loop, and about thirty socketed celts, six gouges, a socketed chisel, two tanged chisels, and numerous fragments of metal, including some jets or runners broken off castings.
The type is of common occurrence in Austria, South Germany, and the South of France.
Palstaves of the adze form, or having the blade at right angles to the septum between the flanges, are but very seldom found in Britain. A small specimen from the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., is shown in Fig. 70. It was found at Irthington, Cumberland.
Another, from North Owersby, Lincolnshire, in the same collection, is shown in Fig. 71. It has a remarkably narrow chisel-like blade.
Irish examples will be subsequently cited.
I have, in Fig. 72, engraved for comparison a larger specimen in my own collection, which came from the Valley of the Rhine, near Bonn. One from Baden[285] is figured by Lindenschmit.
Others have been found near Landshut,[286] Bavaria, and in the Rhine district.[287] One with a loop, from Hesse,[288] is engraved by Lindenschmit. A long and narrow example of this type[289] was found at Villeder, near Ploërmel, Morbihan, and has been figured by Simonin. There are specimens in the museums at Rouen and Tours. Some have a loop on one face. A specimen from Escoville is in the museum at Caen. Several with and without loops have been found in the Swiss lake-dwellings,[290] the type being termed the Hache Troyon by Desor.[291]
A beautiful palstave of the same character is preserved in the Antiken Cabinet at Vienna. Its sides are ornamented with four small sets of concentric circles and a pattern of dotted lines, punched in after the instrument was fashioned. The form has also been found in Italy.[292]
Palstaves without loops, but of which no detailed description is given, are recorded to have been found at the following places:—The Thames,[293] near Kingston; Drewsteignton,[294] Devonshire; Cundall Manor,[295] North Riding, Yorkshire; Aspatria,[296] Cumberland; Ackers Common,[297] near Warrington, Lancashire; Bushbury,[298] Brewood, Handsworth, and a barrow on Morridge, Staffordshire; near Llanvair Station,[299] Rhos-y-gad, Anglesea.
Palstaves of which it is not specified whether they were provided with a loop or no, have been found in the Thames,[300] near London; the old River, Sleaford,[301] Lincolnshire; Canada Wharf,[302] Rotherhithe; Wolvey,[303] Warwickshire; and near Corbridge,[304] Glamorganshire (?).
Plain palstaves without loops have frequently occurred with other forms of instruments in hoards of bronze objects. The following instances may be cited. Several were found with unfinished socketed celts, fragments of swords and spears, a socketed chisel, and lumps of metal, at Romford,[305] Essex. At Nettleham,[306] near Lincoln, one was found with looped palstaves, socketed celts, spear-heads, and a tube, most of which will be mentioned in subsequent pages. In the hoard at Battlefield,[307] near Shrewsbury, a palstave without loop, a flat wedge-shaped celt, and three curious curved objects were found together. Other instances are given in Chapter XXII.
The palstaves which are provided with a loop on one side present as many varieties as those without the loop. The same character of ornamentation occurs on the instruments of both classes. Indeed, for some length of time both forms appear to have been contemporaneous and in use together.
Some of them are, however, entirely devoid of ornament, as will be seen from Fig. 73. This represents a palstave in my own collection found near Dorchester, Oxfordshire. The loop has unfortunately been broken off. At the stop the metal is 1¼ inch thick, but the diaphragm between the two recesses for the haft is only ⅜ inch thick. This specimen is shorter than usual in the blade, which not improbably has been considerably worn away by use.
A somewhat larger instrument, but of precisely the same type, found at Ramsbury,[308] Wilts, is engraved in the Salisbury volume of the Archæological Institute. The Rev. James Beck, F.S.A., has one (6¼ inches) of narrower proportions, found at Pulborough,[309] Sussex. I have seen another from near Wallingford, Berks. Stukeley has engraved a somewhat similar palstave found near Windsor.[310]
In some the bottom of the recesses, instead of being square, is rounded more or less like Fig. 52, and there is a projecting bead round its margin. I have a narrow specimen of this kind 5⅝ inches long and 1⅛ inch broad at the edge, found in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, Oxon.
A number of palstaves of this kind were discovered in 1861 at Wilmington,[311] Sussex, in company with socketed celts, fragments of two daggers, and a mould for socketed celts. The whole of these are now in the Lewes Museum.
In the hoard found near Guilsfield,[312] Montgomeryshire, were some instruments of this kind, associated with socketed celts, gouges, swords, scabbards, spear-heads, &c. Others from Stretton,[313] Staffordshire (5¼ inches), and Lancashire[314] (5½ inches) are engraved, though badly, in the Archæologia. Two others of this character (5 inches) were found on Hangleton Down,[315] near Brighton, and another at Glangwnny,[316] near Caernarvon.
I have seen others found at Sutton, near Woodbridge, Suffolk.
A larger example of the same type, found near Wallingford, and communicated to me by Mr. H. A. Davy, is shown in Fig. 74. In this the blade is flat and without ornament. The short specimen shown in Fig. 73 may originally have resembled this; as such instruments must have been liable to break, and would then have been drawn out and sharpened in a curtailed condition; or if not broken would become eventually “stumped up” by wear. In the British Museum and elsewhere are many palstaves and celts which have been worn almost to the stump by resharpening.
Nearly thirty palstaves, mostly, I believe, of this type, were found with about twelve socketed celts, like Fig. 116, and lumps of rough metal, near Worthing, in 1877. The whole had been packed in an urn, of coarse earthenware.
Looped palstaves of the type of Fig. 74 are occasionally found in Ireland. One with a small bead running down the centre of the blade found in West Meath is engraved in the Archæologia.[317]
One from Grenoble,[318] Isère, is engraved by Chantre.
Some palstaves of much the same general character have a median ridge, occasionally almost amounting to a rib, running down the blade below the stop. One of this kind from Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, is shown in Fig. 75. On the face of the recess there are some slightly raised ribs running down to the stop, which are not shown in the cut. Two (6¾ inches) were found near Bolton Percy, Yorkshire, one of which is in Canon Greenwell’s collection, and the other in the British Museum.
Mr. John Brent, F.S.A., has an example of nearly the same type from Blean, near Canterbury. Another from Buckland, near Dover (6¼ inches), is in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool. One from Ombersley,[319] Worcestershire, appears to be of the same kind. I have also a large specimen (6⅞ inches) from Bottisham, Cambridge.
In the palstave engraved as Fig. 76, the central rib down the blade is much more fully developed. It was found at Brassington, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and is in my own collection. It is considerably undercut at the stop, so as to keep the handle pressed against the central diaphragm of metal.
A palstave of the same character from Llanidan,[320] Anglesea, has been figured. It is said to have been found with another without a loop. Another from Boston,[321] Lincolnshire, is engraved in the Archæologia. Others with the ribs very distinct were found in a hoard at Wallington, Northumberland, and are in the possession of Sir Charles Trevelyan.
I have seen others of the same general character which were found at Downton, near Salisbury (5¾ inches), and at Aston le Walls, Northamptonshire.
One with a narrower and more distinct midrib, found at Nymegen, Guelderland, Holland, is in the museum at Leyden.
In Fig. 77 is shown another variety which has two beads running down the sides of the blade, in addition to the central rib. I bought this specimen at Bath, but I do not know where it was discovered. It is much like one which was found on the Quantock Hills,[322] in Somersetshire, and is engraved in the Archæologia. The side flanges are, however, in that case more lozenge-shaped, and project to obtuse points about half an inch above the stop. Two palstaves and two torques were on that occasion found buried together, as has already been mentioned. One of the same type (5¾ inches) from Elsham, Lincolnshire, is in the British Museum.
One of narrower form (6⅛ inches) but of the same character, found with socketed celts (some of them octagonal at the neck) at Haxey, Lincolnshire, is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
I have another of the same type, but imperfect, which was found with a plain bronze bracelet, and what from the description must have been a small ribbon-like gold torque, at Winterhay Green, near Ilminster. I have a smaller specimen (5 inches) from the Cambridge Fens.
The unfinished casting for a palstave of the type Fig. 77 (5½ inches) was found with four looped palstaves, and one without a loop, and a spear-head like Fig. 409 at Sherford,[323] near Taunton, in 1879. Some of the palstaves have a raised inverted chevron below the stop-ridge by way of ornament.
Palstaves of the same character, but without the loop, have already been described under Fig. 63. The looped type, like Fig. 77, occurs also in Ireland.[324]
In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London is a heavy narrow looped palstave (8 inches by 2 inches) with this ornamentation, found in Spain.
The central rib running down the blade is in many cases connected with some ornament below the stop-ridge. The ornament consists usually of raised ribs, either straight and converging, as on Fig. 78, or curved so as to form a semi-elliptical or shield-shaped loop, as on Fig. 79.
The original of Fig. 78 was found on Oldbury Hill, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, and is in my own collection. I have a smaller example of the same type (5⅜ inches) found at Hammerton, Huntingdonshire, as well as one from the Cambridge Fens (6 inches).
One (6¾ inches) found at Danesfield,[325] near Bangor, has been figured. I have seen one found near Chelmsford (6¾ inches) with much the same ornament. One (6¼ inches) in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, found in Northamptonshire, has the middle rib large, and the converging ribs much slighter. There are some which have only a slight central ridge on the blade, and are ornamented with an indented chevron below the stop-ridge. I have one such from the Cambridge Fens, and I have seen one (6½ inches) which was found at Broomswell, near Woodbridge, Suffolk.
A palstave of this character 6 inches long, found near the Upper Woodhouse Farm, Knighton, Radnorshire, is engraved in the Archæologia Cambrensis.[326] The loop, owing to a defect in casting, is filled with metal. Six others (6 inches long), apparently of the same character, were found with some rough castings of flanged celts at Rhosnesney,[327] near Wrexham.
Two others (6 inches) were found with a chisel and a spear-head, like Fig. 407, at Broxton, Cheshire, and are in the collection of Sir P. de M. Grey Egerton, Bart.
The type is found upon the continent. One from Normandy[328] has been engraved by the Abbé Cochet. I have an example from the neighbourhood of Abbeville.
One from near Giessen, in the museum at Darmstadt, is figured by Lindenschmit.[329]
That with the shield-shaped ornament below the stop-ridge, shown in Fig. 79, is in my own collection, and was found near Ross. The central rib runs only part of the way up the shield. In a specimen from the Cambridge Fens (5⅝ inches) it stops short on joining the ridge forming the shield.
In others it forms a heraldic pale running through the shield, as in five found at Waldron,[330] Sussex.
A smaller variety, in which the vertical rib does not extend into the shield, is shown in Fig. 80. This specimen was found at Honington, Suffolk.
In some the shield-shaped ornament consists of merely two triangular depressions. A palstave of this class, rather narrow at the stop-ridge, and with almost triangular blade, is shown in Fig. 81. The original, which is of more yellow metal than ordinary, was found in the neighbourhood of Ely, and is in the collection of Mr. Marshall Fisher, who has kindly allowed me to figure it. In one such from Downton, near Salisbury, in the Blackmore Museum, the faces of the diaphragm between the recesses for the handle have raised ridges or ribs running along nearly the whole length, five on one face and six on the other. These are longer than in the Nottingham specimen shortly to be mentioned.
In one found at Hotham Carr (5¾ inches), Yorkshire, and now in Canon Greenwell’s collection, there is a bead running down the blade between the two depressions.
This shield-shaped ornament below the stop-ridge is well shown in a palstave from Bottisham Lode, Cambridge, engraved as Fig. 82. What may be called the field of the shield is on one face nearly flat; on the other there are indentations on either side of the central ridge. As will be seen, the extremities of the cutting edge are recurved, both in this and the specimen from Ross shown in Fig. 79. It does not, however, appear that the instruments were originally cast in this form, but the wide segmental edge, together with the recurved ends, seem to be the result of a constant hammering out of the blade, in order to renew or harden the edge. Though the hammer was thus freely used, the whetstone was employed both to polish the sides of the blade and to perfect the cutting edge.
I have a French palstave found near Abbeville, almost identical with this in size and form. The shield ornament is, however, replaced by two triangular depressions with a rib left between them, like that on Fig. 81.
In some specimens the ornamentation consists of a greater or less number of parallel ribs below the stop-ridge, as in that from Nettleham,[331] Lincolnshire, shown in Fig. 83. With this were found two others and a fourth without loop, two peculiar socketed celts, two spear-heads, and a ferrule, which will be subsequently mentioned. They are now in the British Museum.
A nearly similar discovery was made in 1860 near Nottingham,[332] where a palstave was found similarly ornamented, but also having three ribs on the diaphragm above the stop-ridge. It was accompanied by sixteen socketed celts, four spear-heads, a tanged knife, fragments of swords, a ferrule, &c.
In Mr. Brackstone’s collection was a palstave of the same type, found near Ulleskelf,[333] Yorkshire, in 1849, with two socketed celts, one of them of the peculiar type shown in Fig. 158.
I have a palstave found near Dorchester, Oxfordshire, of the same kind as Fig. 83, with three ribs below the stop-ridge. There are also side flanges at that part of the blade of the same length and character as the ribs in the middle of the blade, so as virtually to make five ribs.
Canon Greenwell has specimens of this type (6⅛ inches) from Llandysilio, Denbighshire, and (6 inches) from Ubbeston, Suffolk. One (6¼ inches) from Keswick, Cumberland, in the same collection has the ribs 1¾ inches long. Another (6⅜ inches) was found at Vronheulog,[334] Merionethshire.
I have a very fine and perfect specimen (6¾ inches) from the Cambridge Fens, on which the three ribs stand out in high relief and converge so as to form a triangle below the stop-ridge something like that on Fig. 78.
A palstave, having a series of ribs upon the diaphragm as well as below the stop-ridge, is shown in Fig. 84. In this instance the upper series of ribs extends nearly to the top of the instrument. It was probably thought that they assisted in making the haft firm to the blade. This specimen, which has been much cleaned, is in the British Museum, and as it formed part of the late Mr. Lichfield’s collection it was probably found in the neighbourhood of Cambridge.
The form of palstave, so common in France and Germany, without stop-ridge, and with the side wings hammered over so as to form a kind of semi-cylindrical socket on either side of the blade, is rare in England. A specimen from the great find of Carlton Rode,[335] Norfolk, is shown in Fig. 85. There is usually at the top of the blade a sort of dovetailed notch, which may possibly have been made of service in hafting the tool. It originates, however, in there having been two runners by which the metal was conducted into the mould, which when broken off left two projections at the top of the blade. These being hammered so as to round the external angles and flatten the ends have come over towards each other, and made what was a notch with parallel sides into one which is dovetailed.
In this hoard were found numerous socketed celts, gouges, chisels, hammers, pieces of metal, &c. It seems to have been the stock in trade of a bronze-founder. Some other specimens from the same hoard will subsequently be described.
Another palstave of the same character was found, with many socketed celts, fragments of swords and daggers, and rough metal, at Cumberlow,[336] near Baldock, Herts.
Three others were found in 1806, with two socketed celts, a fragment of a sword, three lumps of raw copper, and four gold armlets, on the beach near Eastbourne,[337] immediately under Beachy Head. They passed with the Payne Knight collection into the British Museum.
That found “in an old wall, in Purbeck,”[338] with the socket “double or divided by a partition,” as described by Mr. Hutchins in a letter to Bishop Lyttelton in 1768, must probably have been of this kind.
A good specimen of the same character but bent (5⅜ inches), as well as part of another, was found at Wickham Park, Croydon, together with several socketed celts. They are now in the British Museum.
The upper part of a palstave of this character was found with socketed celts, gouges, &c., in the Hundred of Hoo,[339] Kent. It has been thought that this was cast hollow to receive a central prong, but the cavity is probably due to defective casting. A broken instrument of this kind was found with socketed celts and metal on Kenidjack Cliff,[340] Cornwall.
Palstaves of this type, both with and without loops, are much more abundant on the Continent than in Britain. Numerous examples have been found in France, in Rhenish Prussia, and in the Lake habitations of Savoy and Switzerland.
A Danish example is engraved by Worsaae,[341] and several from Germany[342] by Lindenschmit.
Iron palstaves with and without loops, some of them closely approximating to the form of Fig. 85, but others more like the ordinary Italian form of palstave, with a broad chisel-like blade, have been found in the cemetery of Hallstatt.[343] In a specimen in my own collection the side flanges are ornamented with transverse ribs, precisely like those on some of the bronze palstaves from the same locality. In one instance the upper part with the flanges is of bronze, and the lower part of the blade of iron or steel.
This form of instrument, with a section in the form of the letter H above, though easily cast, must have been extremely difficult to forge; and though we can readily trace its evolution in cast bronze, it so ill accorded with the necessary conditions for the profitable working of malleable iron that it seems soon to have disappeared when iron came into general use. The fact of the form occurring at all in iron shows that the iron instruments were made in imitation of those in bronze, and not the bronze in imitation of the iron. The same observation holds good with the iron socketed celts, spear-heads, and swords from the same cemetery.
Looped palstaves, without sufficient details being given of their types, are recorded to have been found in Harewood Square, London,[344] Oxford,[345] Devonshire,[346] and with socketed celts, near Kidwelly,[347] Caermarthen.
A looped palstave rather like Fig. 75 is said to have been found in a barrow near St. Austell,[348] Cornwall, in 1791, but no details are given.
Palstaves provided with a loop on either side are of rare occurrence in the British Islands.
A specimen found in 1871 at Penvores,[349] near Mawgan-in-Meneage, Cornwall, is engraved as Fig. 86. In character it closely resembles that from Brassington, Fig. 76, the main difference consisting in its second loop. This specimen, with another from Cornwall and two from Ireland, was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries in 1873, and is now in the British Museum. In the same collection is another, 6½ inches long, somewhat lighter below the stop-ridge, and having the central rib less fully developed on the blade. It was found in Somersetshire in 1868, in making the Cheddar Valley line of railway. Another found in 1842, near South Petherton,[350] in the same county, is in the possession of Mr. Norris at that place.
Another example, shown in Fig. 87 was found at West Buckland,[351] Somersetshire, and is in the collection of Mr. W. A. Sanford. With it were discovered a torque (Fig. 468,) and a bracelet, (Fig. 481,) and also some charcoal and burnt bones, but there was no sign of any tumulus. Irish specimens will be subsequently mentioned.
Another two-looped instrument of a different character was found at Bryn Crûg,[352] near Carnarvon, in company with a tanged knife and a pin with three holes through its flat head (Fig. 450). It is shown in Fig. 88, copied on a reduced scale from the Archæological Journal. It resembles a flanged celt except in having that part of the blade which lies between the side loops raised to the level of the flanges.
In France these double-looped palstaves are of rare occurrence, but I have seen one much like Fig. 86 which was found in the Department of Haute Ariège, and is now in the Toulouse Museum. One from Tarbes[353] was in the Exposition des Sciences Anthropologiques, at Paris in 1878. Another was found at Langoiran (Gironde).
The form is much more abundant in Spain, but in most cases both the blade and the tang are long and narrow in their proportions. An engraving of one from Andalusia is given in the Archæological Journal,[354] and is here by permission reproduced as Fig. 89. I have one like it from a mine in the Asturias. One rather broader from the Sierra de Baza,[355] Andalusia, has also been figured. A broken and unfinished double-looped palstave from Oviedo, now in the British Museum, has a cup-shaped projection at the butt end which has been filled with lead, possibly in old times, but for what purpose it is impossible to say. An engraving of one much like it has been published.[356] There are several such in the Museums at Madrid, with the head of metal left on the castings.
The forms of celts and palstaves treated of in this chapter are found also in Scotland, though perhaps less frequently than those of the flat and flanged forms described in the previous chapter.
Many so closely resemble English specimens that it is needless to give representations of them, as a reference to the figures in the preceding pages will sufficiently indicate their character.
In the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh is a winged celt 4½ inches long much like Fig. 56, which was found on the top of a hill called Lord Arthur’s Cairn, in the parish of Tullynessle,[357] Aberdeenshire. Another, 6 inches long, with the wings somewhat curved inwards, was found at Kerswell,[358] in the parish of Carnwath, Lanarkshire. Another winged celt, 4 inches long, was ploughed up on the estate of Barcaldine,[359] Argyleshire.
In the same Museum are also winged celts (5 inches) from Birrenswark, Dumfriesshire, and from the neighbourhood of Peebles, much like that from Reeth (Fig. 56).
A chisel-shaped celt, in character much like Fig. 55, but having a slight stop-ridge, was found in Burreldale Moss,[360] Keith Hall, Aberdeenshire, and has been engraved by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, to whom I am indebted for the use of Fig. 90.
In a palstave (6¾ inches) from Kilnotrie,[361] Crossmichael, Kircudbright, the lateral flanges are continued below the stop-ridge, and there is a median ridge down the blade.
In some palstaves in the British Museum, found between Balcarry and Kilfillan, Wigtonshire, the stop-ridges instead of being at right angles to the face of the blade shelve outwards. One of them is engraved as Fig. 91. The sides are hammered into V-shaped depressions forming a kind of fern-leaf pattern along them.
Two of these palstaves are figured on a larger scale in the Ayr and Wigton Collections.[362]
Another palstave from Windshiel, near Dunse, in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh, has also the flanges somewhat hammered over.
A palstave without loop, and which from the engraving appears to have a well-marked stop-ridge and to have the side flanges much hammered over, is said to have been found near Tintot-top,[363] in Clydesdale. The description, however, says that it has no stop, otherwise the figure would almost justify an attribution of the instrument to Southern Germany rather than to Scotland. Another of much the same character, but without any stop-ridge, has been figured from Baron Clerk’s[364] collection as having been found in Scotland.
Palstaves with a side loop have been said[365] to be common in Scotland; but this can hardly be the case, as in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there are no authenticated examples.
One from Aikbrae,[366] Lanarkshire (6¾ inches), like Fig. 77, has been figured. Wilson gives another example like Fig. 78, but does not say where it was found. The “spade” he gives as his Fig. 59 is in all probability Italian.
A palstave rather like that from Balcarry, Fig. 91, but with a loop, is figured by Gordon[367] as having been found in Scotland.
What may be classed as a celt with two side loops, or possibly as a chisel, is said to have been found in the year 1810 in a barrow near Pettycur,[368] Fifeshire. It is described as very strong, and the bend in the upper part, as seen in Fig. 92, is thought to be accidental. Wilson describes it as a crowbar or lever, but as its total length is only 7½ inches it can hardly be classed among such instruments.
A somewhat similar tool, but without holes in the side stops (7⅞ inches), is in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.[369]
Turning now to the instruments of this class discovered in Ireland, I may observe that it is so difficult to draw the line between the flanged celts, tapering both ways from a central ridge, and those which have a slight projecting stop-ridge upon them, that some Irish instruments of the latter class have already been mentioned in the preceding chapter, to which the reader is referred for the more highly ornamented varieties. Other Irish types have also been incidentally cited.
Some of the Irish palstaves much resemble English and Scottish types, but generally speaking there are sufficient peculiarities in their forms to enable a practised observer to recognise their origin. For several other varieties of form, besides those mentioned in the following pages, the reader is referred to Wilde’s Catalogue.
Winged celts without a stop-ridge, like Fig. 53, have occasionally been found in Ireland, and one is figured by Wilde.[370] I have one (5¼ inches) from Armoy, Co. Antrim. The wide-spreading celt with a slight stop-ridge and segmental band upon the blade, like Fig. 50, also occurs. A remarkably fine specimen from Westmeath with punctured ornaments on the wings and at the lower margin of the band has been engraved by Wilde.[371] Some are without the segmental band.
The type of Fig. 54 has also been found. I have a specimen (6 inches) from Ballinamallard, near Enniskillen.
Palstaves without a stop-ridge, and with broad lozenge-shaped wings, like Fig. 56, are of rare occurrence. One of nearly the same type, but having a low projecting ridge between the wings, is shown in Fig. 93.
I have another from Armoy, Co. Antrim (6 inches), with a still slighter transverse ridge, which forms the upper boundary to a shield-shaped projection on the blade, on which is a central vertical ridge with two others on each side less definitely marked. The base of the shield is pointed.
A not uncommon type has a very high stop-ridge coming up to the level of the side wings, the blade above the stop-ridge being somewhat thinner than it is below. An example is shown in Fig. 94.
I have another from County Antrim, in which the lower part of the blade has a slight median vertical ridge.
In a palstave in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,[372] with elliptical wings, a long fusiform boss has been cast in the centre of the blade.
In another instrument in the same collection the whole blade is thickened out so as to form the stop-ridge, as will be seen in Fig. 95.
In other cases the ridge of the wings is continued as a moulding on the face of the blade, so as to enclose a space below the stop-ridge. From the base of this there sometimes proceeds a vertical rib, as seen in Fig. 96.
Inverted chevrons by way of ornament below the stop-ridge are not uncommon, sometimes with a vertical rib in addition.
Such compartments are often seen on the winged celts, with only a slight stop-ridge. Fig. 97 shows an example from Lanesborough, Co. Longford, now in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. The compartment is ornamented with vertical punch marks. The outside of the wings is faceted after a fashion not unusual in Ireland, but there is here a slight shoulder at the base of the central facet which may have assisted in securing the blade to the handle. On a specimen at Dublin there are on the otherwise flat sides elevated transverse ridges, which, as Sir W. Wilde[373] has pointed out, may have served “to keep the tying in its place.”
The sides of other specimens of much the same type are otherwise fashioned and ornamented. In Fig. 98 is shown a celt from Trillick, Co. Tyrone, on the sides of which a kind of fern-leaf pattern has been hammered, or rather punched, not unlike the carving on one of the stones in the great chambered tumulus of New Grange. The shield plate has two vertical hollows worked on it.
The side of a celt ornamented in the same manner is engraved by Wilde.[374]
A small palstave, with two vertical grooves in the blade, is shown in Fig. 99.
Another form of winged celt, with a low stop-ridge and with a vertical rib passing through an inverted chevron on the blade, is shown in Fig. 100. The original is in the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A.
The same style of ornament occurs on palstaves of other forms.[375]
In some instances, there is in the centre of the stop-ridge a kind of bracket on the blade, and the side wings are hammered over so as to form an imperfect socket. A small example of the kind is shown in Fig. 101. I have a larger specimen (4½ inches) from Trillick, Co. Tyrone. Vallancey[376] engraves a palstave of this type.
Others with flat blades and no brackets have the side flanges hammered over in the same manner.
A fine example, in which the conical bracket dies into the stop-ridge and side flanges, is in the British Museum.
Palstaves with a loop at the side are not of such frequent occurrence in Ireland as those without. Wilde[377] has engraved a specimen (6⅜ inches) like Fig. 77 as well as that[378] which I have here shown on a larger scale as Fig. 102. This latter has the wings well hammered over at the base, so as to form a kind of socket on each side of the blade. It differs, however, from the English and foreign specimens like Fig. 85 in having a well-marked shoulder or stop on the blade between the wings.
Palstaves of nearly the same character, but without the loop, have already been mentioned as found both in Ireland and Scotland. Others, with loops like Fig. 103, have a bracket on the blade between the flanges.
A remarkable form with slight side flanges and no stop-ridge, from the Dublin Museum, is shown in Fig. 104. It is No. 630 in Wilde’s Catalogue. The sides have deep diagonal notches upon them and the upper part of each face is chequered, perhaps in order to assist in steadying the blade in its handle.
Another noteworthy palstave, found at Miltown, Co. Dublin, is shown in Fig. 105. In this the side wings are not hammered over, and the stop is supported by a conical bracket. The shoulders, instead of being nearly square to the midrib, are inclined upwards at an angle of nearly 45°, so as to form receptacles in which the wedge-shaped ends of the split handle would be held tight against the blade. These inclined stops have been observed in other palstaves of different forms, and Sir W. Wilde[379] has called attention to them in connection with a palstave much like that now under consideration, but without any projection or loop on the side. The most remarkable feature in the Miltown example is a projecting, slightly curved spike or neb placed near the top of the blade rather above the position usually occupied by the loop. At first sight it looks like an imperfect loop, but, on examination, it is evident that the casting is perfect; and, on consideration, it seems clear that this projection would serve quite as well as a loop for receiving a cord to hold the blade back upon its haft, while for the actual tying it would be more convenient, as the cord would have merely to be passed over a hook, and not to be threaded through a loop. In a somewhat similar palstave (3⅞ inches) in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy[380] there is also a projecting neb, but more semicircular in outline. I am not sure that it was intended for the same purpose. A looped palstave of this type, but with the bottom of the side socket more circular, is engraved by Vallancey.[381]
Some of the socketed celts from the Bologna hoard have curved nebs on each side instead of rings. Instruments of the same character, also from Italy, have been engraved by De Bonstetten,[382] Schreiber,[383] and Caylus.[384]
Double-looped palstaves, with a loop on either side, and in character like Fig. 86, are almost or quite as rare in Ireland as in England. The only specimen engraved by Wilde[385] is in the collection of Lord Talbot de Malahide. It is 6¼ inches long, with the loops not quite symmetrical. It was supposed to be unique. I have, however, another specimen of this type (6⅜ inches) found at Ballincollig,[386] Co. Cork, in 1854, which was formerly in the collection of the Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A. It so closely resembles Fig. 86 that it is not worth while to engrave it.
Another remarkable and indeed unique instrument, in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,[387] is shown in Fig. 106. It is like a flat celt, but has grooves and stops at the side like a palstave with a transverse edge. Below the stops are two loops. The sides below the stops are ornamented with transverse lines, and on the face here shown there is a dotted kind of cartouche below the stops, and a square compartment chequered in lozenges above them. This latter is wanting on the other face, but the corresponding cartouche below is divided into small lozenges alternately hatched and plain.
Another Irish instrument of nearly the same form, but without the grooves and stops at the sides, is in the Bell Collection in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh; but its exact place of finding is uncertain. It is shown in Fig. 107, and, like that last described, has each of its faces ornamented in a different manner.
The palstaves with a transverse edge are of more common occurrence in Ireland than in England, but are even there very rare. That engraved as Fig. 108 was formerly in the collection of the Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A.[388] A similar tool is figured by Vallancey.[389]
The smaller specimen shown in Fig. 109 was found near Ballymena, Co. Antrim, and is in the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A. I have one from the North of Ireland (4 inches) with the stops less distinct.
Another Irish specimen (3 inches) is in the British Museum. In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy are several varying in length from 2⅝ inches to 5¼ inches. They are classed by Wilde[390] among the chisels. In describing the various forms illustrated by the figures, I have from time to time called attention to the analogies which they present with other European forms, and it is hardly necessary to make any broad comparison of British palstaves and winged celts with those of other European countries. It would indeed be a difficult task to attempt, as in each country, if not in several districts in each country, the instruments of this kind are characterised by some local peculiarity.
Perhaps it will be more instructive to mention certain continental forms which are conspicuous by their absence in Britain.
We have not, for instance, the southern French form with a kind of contracted waist and broad side flanges or rounded wings in the middle of the blade; nor, again, the long narrow form almost resembling a marrow spoon; nor that with the almost circular blade, much like an ancient mirror. Nor have we the German form, with the V-shaped stop-ridge, nor that in which the stop-ridge forms a circular collar above a blade with beadings along the sides. Nor have we the common Italian form, with the blade like a long spud; nor, again, the narrow Scandinavian form, which is often highly decorated.
And yet, in comparing the instruments described in the present chapter with those of neighbouring countries, and especially of France, it will at once be remarked that, as might have been reasonably expected, the closest analogies are to be observed between some of those of England and France, while in the more peculiarly Scottish and Irish types the resemblances are more remote. It must, however, be borne in mind that there is good evidence in the shape of moulds and bronze-founders’ hoards, such as will subsequently be mentioned, to prove that these instruments were cast in various parts of this country; so that, though some palstaves may be of foreign origin, yet, as a rule, it was the fashion of the objects rather than the objects themselves for which the inhabitants of Britain were indebted to foreign intercourse. Even in the area now embraced by France there does not appear to have been any single centre of manufacture, but, taken as a group, the palstaves of the South, the North, and the North-west of France present some distinguishing characteristics. The same is the case with the socketed celts of that country, the English representatives of which will be discussed in the next chapter.
V. SOCKETED CELTS
THE class of celts cast in such a manner as to have a socket for receiving the haft is numerously represented in the British Isles. In this form of instrument the haft was actually imbedded in the blade, whereas in the case of the flat and flanged celts, and of the so-called palstaves, the blade was imbedded in the handle, so that the terms, “the recipient” and “the received,” originally given to the two classes by Dr. Stukeley, are founded on a well-marked distinction, and are worthy of being rescued from oblivion.
That the recipient class is of later introduction than the received is evident from several considerations. In the first place, a flat blade not only approaches most nearly in form to the stone hatchets or celts which it was destined to supersede, but it also requires much less skill in casting than the blade provided with a socket. For casting the flat celts there was, indeed, no need of a mould formed of two pieces; a simple recess of the proper form cut in a stone, or formed in loam, being sufficient to give the shape to a flat blade of metal, which could be afterwards wrought into the finished form by hammering. And secondly, as will subsequently be seen, a gradual development can be traced from the flat celt, through those with flanges and wings, to the palstave form, with the wings hammered over so as to constitute two semicircular sockets, one on each side of the blade; while on certain of the socketed celts flanges precisely similar to those of the palstaves have been cast by way of ornament on the sides, and what was thus originally a necessity in construction has survived as a superfluous decoration. There is at least one instance known of the intermediate form between a palstave with pocket-like recesses on each side of a central plate and a celt with a single socket. In the museum at Trent[391] there is an instrument in which the socket is divided throughout its entire length into two compartments with a plate between, and, as Professor Strobel says, resembling a palstave with the wings on each side united so as to form a socket on each side. The evolution of the one type from the other is thus doubly apparent, and it is not a little remarkable that though palstaves with the wings bent over are, as has already been stated, of rare occurrence in the British Islands, yet socketed celts, having on their faces the curved wings in a more or less rudimentary condition, are by no means unfrequently found. The inference which may be drawn from this circumstance is that the discovery of the method of casting socketed celts was not made in Britain but in some other country, where the palstaves with the converging wings were abundant and in general use, and that the first socketed celts employed in this country, or those which served as patterns for the native bronze-founders, were imported from abroad.
Although socketed celts, with distinct curved wings upon their faces, are probably the earliest of their class, yet it is impossible to say to how late a period the curved lines, which eventually became the representatives of the wings, may not have come down. This form of ornamentation was certainly in use at the same time as other forms, as we know from the hoards in which socketed celts of different patterns have been found together. As has already been recorded, the socketed form has also been frequently found associated with palstaves, especially with those of the looped variety.
The form of the tapering socket varies considerably, the section being in some instances round or oval, and in other cases presenting every variety of form between these and the square or rectangular. There is usually some form of moulding or beading round the mouth of the celt, below which the body before expanding to form the edge is usually round, oval, square, rectangular, or more or less regularly hexagonal or octagonal. The decorations generally consist of lines, pellets, and circles, cast in relief upon the faces, and much more rarely on the sides. Not unfrequently there is no attempt at decoration beyond the moulding at the top. The socketed celts are, almost without exception, devoid of ornaments produced by punches or hammer marks, such as are so common on the solid celts and palstaves. This may be due to their being more liable to injury from blows owing to the thinness of the metal and to their being hollow. They are nearly always provided with a loop at one side, though some few have been cast without loops. These are usually of small size, and were probably used as chisels rather than as hatchets. A very few have a loop on each side.
The types are so various that it is hard to make any proper classification of them. I shall, therefore, take them to a certain extent at hazard, keeping those, however, together which most nearly approximate to each other. I begin with a specimen showing in a very complete manner the raised wings already mentioned.
This instrument formed part of a hoard of celts and fragments of metal found at High Roding, Essex, and now in the British Museum, and is represented in Fig. 110. With it was one with two raised pellets beneath the moulding round the mouth, and one with three longitudinal ribs. The others were plain.
Another (4 inches), with a treble moulding at the top, from Wateringbury, Kent, was in the Douce and Meyrick Collections, and is now also in the British Museum.
I have a German celt of this type, but without the pellets, found in Thuringia. Others are engraved by Lindenschmit,[392] Montelius,[393] and Chantre.[394] I have a good example from Lutz (Eure et Loir).
On many French celts the wings are shown by depressed lines or grooves on the faces. I have specimens from a hoard found at Dreuil, near Amiens, and from Lusancy, near Rheims. Others with the curved lines more or less distinct have been found in various parts of France.
There is an example from Maulin in the Museum at Namur, and a Dutch example is in the Museum at Assen.
In Fig. 111 is shown a larger celt in my own collection, found in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, Oxon. The wing ornament no longer consists of a solid plate, but the outlines of the wings of the palstave are shown by two bold projecting beads which extend over the sides of the celt as well as the faces. The socket is circular at the mouth, but the neck of the instrument below the moulding is subquadrate in section. In the socket are two small projecting longitudinal ribs, probably intended to aid in steadying the haft. Such projections are not very uncommon, and are sometimes more than two in number.
A celt ornamented in a similar manner, but with two raised bands near the mouth, was found with several other socketed celts and some palstaves with the wings bent over at Cumberlow,[395] near Baldock, Herts. Some of these are in the British Museum.
Another with two small pellets between the curved lines was found in a hoard at Beddington,[396] Surrey.
Fig. 112 represents another celt of much the same character, but with a bolder moulding at top, and a slight projecting bead all round the instrument just below the two curved lines representing the palstave wings, which on these celts have just the appearance of heraldic “flanches.” On the face not shown there is a triangular projection at the top like a “pile in chief” between the flanches. Inside the socket there are two longitudinal projections as in the last. The original of this figure, which has been broken and repaired with the edge of another celt, is in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury, and was probably found in Wilts.
In the British Museum is an example of this type (4 inches) which has on one face only a pellet in the upper part of the compartment between the two “flanches.” It was found at Hounslow.
Another (4 inches) from the Heathery Burn Cave, Durham, is now in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. I have one with the pattern less distinct from a hoard found in the Barking Marshes, Essex, in 1862. A celt much of the same pattern, but without the transverse line below the flanches, was found on Plumpton Plain,[397] near Lowes.
The same type occurs in France. I have examples from a hoard found at Dreuil, near Amiens. The same ornament is often seen on Hungarian celts, though usually without the lower band.
In Fig. 113 is shown one of the celts from the hoard discovered in the Isle of Harty,[398] Kent, to which I shall have to make frequent reference. Besides eight more or less perfect unornamented socketed celts, various hammers, tools, and moulds, five celts of this type were found. Although so closely resembling each other that they were probably cast in the same mould, in fact in that which was found at the same time, there is a considerable difference observable among them, especially in the upper part above the loop. In the one shown in the figure there are three distinct beaded mouldings above the loop, and above these again is a plain, somewhat expanding tube. In one of the others, however, there are only the two lowest of the beaded mouldings, and the upper half-inch of the celt first mentioned is absolutely wanting. The three others show very little of the plain part above the upper moulding. As will subsequently be explained, the variation in length appears to be connected with the method of casting, and to have arisen from a greater part of the mould having been “stopped off” in one case than another.
It will be noticed that the “flanches” on these celts are placed below the loop and not close under the cap-moulding. The beads which form them are continued across the sides. Running part of the way down inside the socket are two longitudinal ridges which are in the same line as the runners by which the metal found its way into the mould. The vertical ridge above the topmost moulding shows where there is a channel in the mould for the metal to pass by. If the celts had been skilfully cast so that their top was level with the upper moulding, no traces of this would have been visible.
In Fig. 114 is shown one of the plain socketed celts from the same hoard. The mould in which it was cast was found at the same time, as well as the half of a mould for one of smaller size. The five other plain celts from the same hoard were all rather less than the one which is figured, and appear to have been cast in three different moulds, as the beading round the top varies in character, and in some is double and not single. The two projections within the socket are in these but short, though strongly marked.
In the British Museum is a celt of this kind, 4 inches long, found at Newton, Cambridgeshire, which on its left face, as seen with the loop towards the spectator, has a small projecting boss 1½ inch below the top.
Five socketed celts of this plain character (2½ inches to 3¾ inches) were found together at Lodge Hill, Waddesdon, Bucks, in 1855, and were lithographed on a private plate by Mr. Edward Stone.
The outline and general character of the celt shown in Fig. 115 may be taken as representative of one of the most common forms of English socketed celt. This particular specimen differs, however, from the ordinary form in having a ridge or ill-defined rib on each face which adds materially to the weight and somewhat to the strength of the instrument. It was found near Dorchester, Oxon.
A nearly similar celt found in Mecklenburg has been figured by Lisch.[399]
A larger celt of the same general character, found with a hoard of bronze objects in Reach Fen, Burwell Fen, Cambridge, is shown in Fig. 116. This may also be regarded as a characteristic specimen of the socketed celts usually found in England, though the second moulding is often absent, and there is a considerable range in size and in the proportion of the width to the length. No doubt much of this range is due to some instruments having been more shortened by use and wear than others. The edge of a bronze tool must have been constantly liable to become blunted, jagged, or bent, and when thus injured was doubtless, to some extent, restored to its original shape by being hammered out, and then re-ground and sharpened. The repetition of this process would, in the course of time, materially diminish the length of the blade, until eventually it would be worn out, or the solid part be broken away from the socketed portion.
Celts of this general character, plain with the exception of a single or double beading at the top, occur of various sizes, and have been found in considerable numbers. In my own collection are specimens (3 inches) from Westwick Row, near Gorhambury, Herts, found with lumps of rough metal; from Burwell Fen, Cambridge (3¼ inches), found also with metal, a spear-head like Fig. 381 and a hollow ring; from Bottisham, Cambridge (3 inches), and other places.
In the Reach Fen hoard already mentioned were some other celts of this type. They were associated with gouges, chisels, knives, hammers, and other articles, and also with two socketed celts, one like Fig. 133, and two like Fig. 124, as well as with two of the type shown in Fig. 117, with a small bead at some little distance below the principal moulding round the mouth. One of them has a slightly projecting rib running down each corner of the blade, a peculiarity I have noticed in other specimens. The socket is round rather than square.
I have other examples of this type from a hoard of about sixty celts found on the Manor Farm, Wymington, Bedfordshire (3¾ inches); from Burwell Fen, Cambridge (4 inches); and from the hoard found at Carlton Rode, Norfolk (4 inches). This last has the slightly projecting beads down the angles.
Socketed celts partaking of the character of the three types last described, and from 2 inches to 4 inches in length, are of common occurrence in England. Some with both the single and double mouldings were found in company with others having vertical beads on the face like Fig. 124, and a part of a bronze blade at West Halton,[400] Lincolnshire. I have seen others both with the single and double moulding which were found with some of the ribbed and octagonal varieties, a socketed knife, parts of a sword and of a gouge, and lumps of metal, at Martlesham, Suffolk. These are in the possession of Captain Brooke, of Ufford Hall, near Woodbridge. Another, apparently with the double moulding, was found with others (some of a different type), seven spear-heads, and portions of a sword, near Bilton,[401] Yorkshire. These are now in the Bateman Collection. Another with the single moulding was found near Windsor.[402] Others with the double moulding, to the number of forty, were found with twenty swords and sixteen spear-heads of different patterns, about the year 1726, near Alnwick Castle,[403] Northumberland. Some also occurred in the deposit of nearly a hundred celts which was found with a quantity of cinders and lumps of rough metal on Earsley Common,[404] about 12 miles N.W. of York, in the year 1735. A socketed celt with the single moulding was found with spear-heads, part of a dagger, and some small whetstones, near Little Wenlock,[405] Shropshire. Four socketed celts of this class with the double moulding were found, with a socketed gouge and about 30 pounds weight of copper in lumps, at Sittingbourne,[406] Kent, in 1828. They are, I believe, now in the Dover Museum. One (4¾ inches), obtained at Honiton,[407] Devonshire, has a treble moulding at the top, that in the middle being larger than the other two. The socket is square.
A plain socketed celt, 2¼ inches long, was found in digging gravel near Cæsar’s Camp,[408] Coombe Wood, Surrey. It is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. In the collection of Messrs. Mortimer, at Fimber, is a celt with the double moulding (3 inches long), found at Frodingham, near Driffield, which has four small ribs, one in the centre of each side running down the socket. Another, with the double moulding (4 inches), and with a nearly round mouth to the socket, was found at Tun Hill, near Devizes, and is in the Blackmore Museum, where is also one found near Bath (3¾ inches) with the mouldings more uniform in size.
A socketed celt without any moulding at the top, which is hollowed and slopes away from the side on which is the loop, is said to have been found in a tumulus near the King Barrow on Stowborough Heath,[409] near Wareham, Dorset.
Socketed celts of this character occur throughout the whole of France, but are most abundant in the northern parts. They are of rare occurrence in Germany.
The same form is found among the Lake habitations of Switzerland. Dr. Gross has specimens from Auvernier and Mœrigen,[410] which closely resemble English examples.
A celt of the same general character as Fig. 114, but of peculiar form, narrowing to a central waist, is shown in Fig. 118. The original was found at Canterbury, and was kindly presented to me by Mr. John Brent, F.S.A.
Broad socketed celts nearly circular or but slightly oval at the neck, and closely resembling the common Irish type (Fig. 167) in form and character, are occasionally found in England. That shown in Fig. 119 is stated to have been discovered at the Castle Hill, Usk, Monmouthshire.
I have seen another (3¼ inches) in the collection of Mr. R. Fitch, F.S.A., which was found at Hanworth, near Holt, Norfolk.
Among those found at Guilsfield,[411] Montgomeryshire, was one of somewhat the same character, but having a double moulding at the top. Another,[412] with a nearly square socket, has above a double moulding, a cable moulding round the mouth, like that on Fig. 172. In the same hoard were looped palstaves, gouges, spears, swords, scabbards, &c.
Another, that, to judge from a bad engraving, had no moulding at the top, which was oval, is said to have been found under a supposed Druid’s altar near Keven Hirr Vynidd,[413] on the borders of Brecknockshire.
Another variety, with a nearly square socket and long narrow blade is shown in Fig. 120, the original of which was found at Alfriston, Sussex. The loop is imperfect, owing to defective casting. The socket is very deep, and extends to within an inch of the edge. Instruments of this type are principally, if not solely, found in our southern counties. The type is indeed Gaulish rather than British, and is very abundant in the north-western part of France. It appears probable that not only was the type originally introduced into this country from France, but that there was a regular export of such celts to Britain. For I have in my collection a celt of this type, 4½ inches long, that was found under the pebble beach at Portland, and in which the core over which it was cast still fills the socket, the clay having by the heat of the metal been converted into a brick-like terracotta. It could, therefore, never have been in use, as no haft could have been inserted. It is waterworn and corroded by the action of the sea, the loop having been almost eaten and worn away, so that it is impossible to say whether the surface and edge were left as they came from the mould. In the large hoard, however, of bronze celts of this type which was found at Moussaye, near Plénée-Jugon, in the Côtes du Nord, the bulk were left in this condition, and with the burnt clay cores still in the sockets.
I have another celt of the same size and form as that from the Portland beach, which was found near Wareham, Dorset, and appears to have been in use.
Two found with many others in the New Forest[414] (3 and 5 inches long) are engraved in the Archæologia. The larger has a rib 3 inches long running down the face and terminating in an annulet.
Others of the same type have been found at Hollingbury Hill,[415] and near the church at Brighton,[416] Sussex.
Among the celts found at Karn Brê, Cornwall, in 1744, were some of this character, but expanding more at the cutting edge. Others were more like Fig. 124, though longer in proportion. With them are said to have been found several Roman coins, some as late as the time of Constantius Chlorus. Others (5 inches long) seem to have formed part of the hoard found at Mawgan,[417] Cornwall, in which there was also a fine rapier. Another, from Bath,[418] is in the Duke of Northumberland’s museum at Alnwick. Another has been cited from Cornwall.[419]
Celts of this form are of rare occurrence in the North of England, but one, said to have been disinterred with Roman remains at Chester-le-Street,[420] Durham, is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Celts like Fig. 120 are of very frequent occurrence in Northern France; large hoards, consisting almost entirely of this type, have been found. A deposit of sixty was discovered near Lamballe[421] (Côtes du Nord), and one of more than two hundred at Moussaye, near Plénée-Jugon, in the same department. Most of the celts in both these hoards had never been used, and in a large number the core of burnt clay was still in the socket. A hoard of about fifty is said to have been found near Bevay,[422] Belgium.
Plain socketed celts nearly square at the mouth have occasionally been found in Germany. One from Pomerania[423] is much like Fig. 120 in outline.
The form of narrow celt, which I regard as of Gaulish derivation, is not nearly so elegant as that of a more purely English type of which an example is shown in Fig. 121. The original was found in the Cambridge Fens, and is in my own collection. Within the socket on the centre of each side is a raised narrow rib running down 2 inches from the mouth, or to within ¾ inch of the bottom of the socket.
The type is rare; but a specimen (5 inches) of nearly the same form as the figure was found, with palstaves, sickles, &c., near Taunton, Somerset.[424] There is also a resemblance to the Barrington celt, Fig. 148.
I have already mentioned a celt with a moulded top, which, on one of its faces, is ornamented with a small projecting boss. In Fig. 122 is shown an example with two pellets beneath the upper moulding. It was found with others at High Roding, Essex, and is now in the British Museum. Another with three such knobs on each face, placed near the top of the instrument, is shown in Fig. 123. The original is in the British Museum, and was found at Chrishall,[425] Essex, where also several plain celts with single or double mouldings at the top, some spear-heads, and a portion of a socketed knife were dug up.
A large brass coin of Hadrian, much defaced, is said to have been found at the same time. As in other instances, the evidence on this point is unsatisfactory, and if it could be sifted, would probably carry the case no farther than to prove that the Roman coins and the bronze celts were found near the same spot, and possibly by the same man, on the same day. In illustration of this collection of objects of different dates, I may mention that I lately purchased a fifteenth-century jeton as having been found with Merovingian gold ornaments.
Some of the Breton celts, in form like Fig. 120, have two or three knobs on a level with the loop.
Another and common kind of ornament on the faces of socketed celts consists of vertical lines, or ribs, extending from the moulding round the mouth some distance down the faces of the blade. They vary in number, but are rarely less than three. In some instances the ribs are so slight as to be almost imperceptible, a circumstance which suggests the probability of celts in actual use having served as the models or patterns from which the moulds for casting others were made, as in each successive moulding and casting any prominences such as these ribs would be reduced or softened down. On any other supposition it is difficult to conceive how an ornamentation so indistinct as almost to escape observation could have originated. There are some celts which on one face are quite smooth and plain, while on the other some traces of the ribs may just be detected. The same is the case with some of the celts which have the slightest possible traces of the “flanches,” such as seen on Fig. 111. The smearing of metal moulds with clay, to prevent the adhesion of the castings, would tend to obliterate such ornaments.
A celt with the vertical ribs from the hoard of Reach Fen, Cambridge, is shown in Fig. 124. There are slight projecting beads running down the angles. The three ribs die into the face of the blade. Another of nearly the same type, but with coarse ribs somewhat curved, is shown in Fig. 125. It has not the beads at the angles. This specimen was found in company with a celt like Fig. 116, and with a gouge like Fig. 204, at Barrington, Cambridge, and is in my own collection.
Celts of wider proportions, and having the three ribs farther apart, have been frequently found in the Northern English counties. I have one (3¼ inches) from Middleton, on the Yorkshire Wolds, which was given me by Mr. H. S. Harland; and Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., has several from Yorkshire. The celt which was found near Tadcaster,[426] in that county, and which has been so often cited, from the fact of its having a large bronze ring passing through the loop, on which is a jet bead, is also of this type. There can be little doubt that the ring and bead, which not improbably were found at the same time as the celt, were attached to it subsequently by the finder, in the manner in which they may now be seen in the British Museum. A celt with three ribs, from the hoard found at Westow,[427] in the North Riding, has been figured, as has been one from Cuerdale,[428] near Preston, Lancashire, and one (4½ inches) from Rockbourn Down,[429] Wilts, now in the British Museum. One (3¾ inches long) was found near Hull,[430] in Yorkshire; and five others at Winmarley,[431] near Garstang, Lancashire, together with two spears, one of them having crescent-shaped openings in the blade (Fig. 419).
Another was found, with other bronze objects, at Stanhope,[432] Durham.
The celts found with spear-heads and discs near Newark, and now in Canon Greenwell’s collection, are of this type, but of different sizes. That found at Cann,[433] near Shaftesbury, with, it is said, a human skeleton and two ancient British silver coins, had three ribs on its face.
Several others were found in the hoard at West Halton,[434] Lincolnshire, already mentioned. Others were discovered in company with a looped palstave, some spear-heads, ferrules, fragments of swords, and a tanged knife, near Nottingham,[435] in 1860. Seven or eight such celts, and the half of a bronze mould in which to cast them, were found with a socketed knife, spear-heads, and numerous other objects, in the Heathery Burn Cave,[436] near Stanhope, Durham, of which further mention will subsequently be made. Many have also been found in Yorkshire and Northumberland.
The type is not confined to the Northern Counties, for specimens occurred in the great find at Carlton Rode,[437] near Attleborough, Norfolk. I have seen another, 4 inches long, which was found with many other socketed celts and other articles at Martlesham, Suffolk, in the hoard already mentioned (p. 113). I have one (3⅝ inches) from Llandysilio, Denbighshire. Another, with traces of the three ribs, was found at Pulborough,[438] Sussex. This specimen is in outline more like Fig. 130. A socketed celt of this kind (5 inches long), with three parallel ribs on the flat surface, was found near Launceston,[439] Cornwall. Some long celts of the same kind were found at Karn Brê, in the same county, as already mentioned.
In some celts with the three ribs on their faces, found in Wales, the moulding at the top is large and heavy, and forms a sort of cornice round the celt, the upper surface of which is flat. That engraved as Fig. 126 was found at Mynydd-y-Glas, near Hensol, Glamorganshire, and is now in the British Museum. In the same collection is another of much the same character, but of ruder fabric, 4¾ inches long, with a square socket, found in 1849 with others similar, in making the South Wales Railway, in Great Wood,[440] St. Fagan’s, Glamorganshire. The loop is badly cast, being filled up with metal.
Canon Greenwell has a celt of this type (4 inches), found at Llandysilio, Denbighshire, with two others having three somewhat converging ribs (3¾ inches and 3¼ inches), a socketed knife, and part of a spear-head.
Two others (5⅛ inches and 4⅜ inches) were found with part of a looped palstave[441] and a waste piece from a casting, and lumps of metal, on Kenidjack Cliff, Cornwall. Another (4 inches) from Cornwall is in the British Museum. One from Sedgemoor, Somersetshire, is in the Taunton Museum.
The three-ribbed type occurs occasionally in France. Examples are in the Museums of Amiens, Toulouse, Clermont Ferrand, Poitiers, and other towns. Three vertical ribs are of common occurrence on celts from Hungary and Styria.
In some rare examples the three ribs converge as they go down the blade. One such is shown in Fig. 127. The original is in the possession of Sir A. A. Hood, Bart., and was found with twenty-seven other socketed celts, some of oval and some of square section, two palstaves, two gouges, two daggers, twelve spear-heads, and numerous fragments of celts and leaf-shaped swords, as well as rough metal and the refuse jets from castings. The whole lay together about two feet below the surface at Wick Park,[442] Stogursey, Somerset.
In other rare instances there is a transverse bead running across the blade below the three vertical ribs. The celt shown in Fig. 128 was found near Guildford, Surrey, and is in the collection of Mr. R. Fitch, F.S.A.
On other celts the vertical ribs are more or less than three in number. A specimen with four ribs, also in Mr. Fitch’s collection, is engraved as Fig. 129. It was found at Frettenham, Norfolk.
Others with four ribs occurred in the find at West Halton,[443] Lincolnshire, already mentioned. One was also found at the Castle Hill,[444] Worcester, and another at Broust in Andreas,[445] Isle of Man. Examples with three and four ribs from Kirk-patrick and Kirk-bride, Isle of Man, are in the collection of Mr. J. R. Wallace of Distington, Whitehaven.
One (4⅛ inches) with five ribs was found in the hoard at Martlesham, Suffolk, also already mentioned.
One (3¾ inches) with six small vertical ribs on the faces, found at Downton, near Salisbury, is in the Blackmore Museum. In a celt with square socket from the Carlton Rode find there are traces of six ribs on one of the faces only. This specimen, in my own collection, is in good condition, and the probability is in favour of this almost complete obliteration of the pattern being due to a succession of moulds having been formed, each rather more indistinct than the one before it, in which the model that served for the mould was cast.
Celts closely resembling Fig. 129 are in the museums at Nantes and Narbonne.[446]
As an instance of a celt having only two of these vertical ribs upon it, I may mention a large one in my own collection (4¾ inches) found in the Isle of Portland. The mouth of the socket is oval, but the external faces are flat, the sides being rounded. The ribs run about 2½ inches down the faces, but the metal is too much oxidised to see whether they end in pellets or no.
It is not unfrequently the case that the ribs thus terminate in roundels or pellets. That from the Fens, near Ely, which has been kindly lent me by Mr. Marshall Fisher, and is shown in Fig. 130, is of this kind, though the pellets are so indistinct as to have escaped the eye of the engraver. This celt is remarkable for the unusually broad and heavy moulding at the top. The notches in the edge, which the engraver has reproduced, are of modern origin.
The celt from Caston, Norfolk, shown in Fig. 131, has also the three ribs ending in pellets, but there are short diagonal lines branching in each direction from the central rib near the top.
I have another of the same kind, but longer, and without the diagonal lines, from Thetford, Suffolk.
A celt of this type is in the Stockholm Museum.
In Figs. 132 and 133 are shown two celts of this class, one with five short ribs ending in pellets, from the Carlton Rode find, and the other with five longer ribs ending in larger roundels, from Fornham, near Bury St. Edmunds. The latter was bequeathed to me by my valued friend, the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S.
It will be observed that in the Fornham celt the first and last ribs form beadings at the angles of the square shaft. In the other none of the beads come to the edge of the face. I have a celt like Fig. 133, but shorter (4 inches), from the hoard found in Reach Fen, already mentioned. Another (4⅛ inches), in all respects like Fig. 133, except that the outer ribs are not at the angles, was found at Brough,[447] near Castleton, Derbyshire, and is in the Bateman Collection, where is also another (4¼ inches) from the Peak Forest, Derbyshire. Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., has one (4½ inches) from Broughton, near Malton, on one face of which there are only four ribs, and in the place where the central rib would terminate, a ring ornament. The other face of the celt has only four ribs at regular intervals, ending in pellets. Another, similar (5 inches), was found in the Thames, near Erith.[448] I have seen another rather more hexagonal in section, which was found in the Cambridge Fens.
Celts with vertical ribs ending in pellets are occasionally found in France. One from Lutz (Eure et Loir) is in the museum at Chateaudun; others are in that of Toulouse. Another with four ribs, found at Cascastel, is in the museum at Narbonne. Canon Greenwell has one from l’Orient, Brittany.
I have a small one like Fig. 120 in form, but barely 3 inches long, found near Saumur (Maine et Loire). It has five ribs, arranged as on Fig. 133.
An example with a far larger array of vertical ribs than usual is shown in Fig. 134. The ribs are arranged in groups of three, and each terminates in a small pellet. The outer lines are so close to the angles of the celt as almost to merge in them. This instrument was found at Fen Ditton, Cambridge, and is now in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
On some celts there is, besides the row of roundels or pellets at the end of the ribs, a second row a little higher up, as is shown in Fig. 135, which represents a specimen in the British Museum, from Bottisham Lode, Cambridge. The sides of this celt are not flat, but somewhat ridged, so that in its upper part it presents an irregular hexagon in section. There are ribs running down the angles, with indications of terminal pellets.
In the Warrington Museum is a curious variety of the celt with the three vertical ribs ending in pellets, which by the kindness of the trustees of the museum I have engraved as Fig. 136. It will be seen that in addition to the vertical ribs there is a double series of chevrons over the upper part of the blade. The metal is somewhat oxidised, and the pattern is made rather more distinct in the engraving than it is in the original. This celt has already been figured on a smaller scale, and was found at Winwick,[449] near Warrington, Lancashire.
An ornamentation of nearly the same character, but without pellets at the end of the ribs, occurs on a socketed celt from Kiew,[450] Russia.
The vertical ribs or lines occasionally end in ring ornaments or circles with a central pellet, like the astronomical symbol for the sun ☉. Next to the cross this ornament is, perhaps, the simplest and most easily made, for a notched flint could be used as a pair of compasses to produce a circle with a well-marked centre on almost any material, however hard. We find these ring ornaments in relief on many of the coins of the Ancient Britons, and in intaglio on numerous articles formed of bone and metal, which belong to the Roman and Saxon periods. On Italian palstaves they are the commonest ornaments. But though so frequent on metallic antiquities of the latter part of the Bronze Age, it is remarkable that the ornament is of very rare occurrence on any of the pottery which is known to belong to that period.
A good example from Kingston, Surrey, of a celt with ring ornaments at the end of the ribs is in the British Museum, and is shown in Fig. 137. Canon Greenwell possesses a nearly similar celt (5 inches) from Seamer Carr, Yorkshire, the angles of which are ribbed or beaded. A socketed celt with the same ornamentation, but with pellets having a central boss instead of the ring ornaments, is in the museum at Nantes.[451] It was found in Brittany.
Some of the Brittany celts like Fig. 120 have one ring-ornament on each face, composed of two concentric circles and a central pellet.
On a celt found at Cayton Carr, Yorkshire, and in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., there is a double row of ring ornaments at the end of the three ribs. Below the principal moulding at the top of the celt is a band of four raised beads by way of additional ornament. It is shown in Fig. 138. A nearly similar specimen is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne.
In a very remarkable specimen from Lakenheath,[452] Suffolk, preserved in the British Museum and engraved as Fig. 139, there are three lines formed of rather oval pellets, terminating in ring ornaments, and alternating with them two plain beaded ribs ending in small pellets. There are traces of a cable moulding round the neck above.
In another variety, also in the British Museum, and shown in Fig. 140, the three ribs ending in ring ornaments spring from a transverse bead, between which and the moulding round the mouth are two other vertical beads, about midway of the spaces between the lower ribs. It is probable that this celt was found in the Thames.
Another of remarkably analogous character was certainly found in the Thames near Kingston,[453] and is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. It is shown in Fig. 141. On it are only two descending ribs, ending in ring ornaments, the pellets in the centre of which are almost invisible; but above the transverse bead are three ascending ribs, which alternate with those that descend. All these ribs are double instead of single.
In some rare instances there are ring ornaments both at the top and at the bottom of the vertical lines, as is seen on one of the faces of the curious celt shown in Fig. 142, where the usual ribs are replaced by rows of two or three slightly raised lines. On the other face it will be seen that the ornamentation is of a different character, with one ring ornament at top and three below, the two outer of which are connected with ribs diverging from two curved lines above. The original was found, with three others less ornamented, at Kingston,[454] Surrey, and is in the British Museum.
A nearly similar celt from Scotland is described at page 137.
In another very rare specimen the vertical lines are replaced by two double chevrons of pellets, the upper one reversed. There is still a ring ornament at the base, and lines of pellets running down the margins of the blade. This specimen, shown in Fig. 143, was found in the Thames,[455] and is in the collection of Mr. T. Layton, F.S.A.
In another equally rare form there is a treble ring ornament at the bottom of a single central beaded rib, and at the top two “flanches,” represented by double lines, as shown in Fig. 144. The neck of this celt is in section a flattened hexagon. It was found at Givendale, near Pocklington, Yorkshire, E. R., and is now in the British Museum.
In the celt shown in Fig. 145 the central rib terminates in a pellet, and there are three curved ribs on either side. In this case the section of the neck of the blade is nearly circular. The specimen is in the British Museum, and was probably found near Cambridge, as it formed part of the late Mr. Lichfield’s collection. A celt ornamented in the same manner, but without the central rib, was found near Mildenhall, Suffolk, and is in the collection of Mr. H. Prigg.
Another (4 inches), also in the British Museum, has two ribs on each margin, parallel to the sides, as seen in Fig. 146. It was found near Blandford, Dorsetshire, in company with unfinished gouges, and is remarkable on account of its having been cast so thin that it seems incapable of standing any hard work.
It seems probable that the instruments from Blandford, now in the British Museum, formed part of a large hoard, for in the collection of the late Mr. Medhurst, of Weymouth, were a dozen or more of much the same outline and character. The section at the neck is a flattened hexagon. Some have a straight rib on each of the sloping sides, as well as two curved lines on the flat face. Others have three lines, one straight and two curved, on the flat face, each ending in a pellet; and others again have merely a central line on the flat face.
A celt of nearly the same outline as Fig. 146 (4¼ inches), found at Gembling, Yorkshire, E. R., has slight flutings down the angles for about two-thirds of its length. It is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
Another of these instruments, ornamented in the same manner, but having a curved edge, is shown in Fig. 147, from an original in the British Museum. It formed part of the Cooke Collection from Parsonstown, King’s County, but I doubt its being really Irish.
A rare form of socketed celt is shown in Fig. 148. The original was found in the Fens, near Barrington, Cambridge, and is in my own collection. It has at the top of the blade, below the moulding, a shield-shaped ornament, of much the same character as that on the palstaves, like Fig. 60, but in this case formed by indented lines cast in the metal.
Another, of unusually narrow form, found at Thames Ditton,[456] is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries.
A broader celt, ornamented with a reversed chevron, formed of three raised ribs, and with short single ribs on each side, is shown in Fig. 149. It was found at Hounslow, with a flat celt, a palstave, and a socketed celt like Fig. 112, and is now in the British Museum.
A more common form has a circular socket and moulded top, below which the neck of the blade is an almost regular octagon. That shown in Fig. 150 is in my own collection, and was found at Wallingford,[457] Berks, in company with a socketed gouge, a tanged chisel (Fig. 193), a socketed knife, and a two-edged cutting tool or razor (Fig. 269).
One nearly similar, supposed to have been found in Yorkshire, together with the mould in which it was cast, is engraved in the Archæologia.[458] The mould was regarded as a case in which the instrument was kept. Another of the same kind seems to have been found, with other celts and fragments of swords and spears, at Bilton,[459] Yorkshire. I have seen another, 4 inches long, from the hoard found at Martlesham, Suffolk, already mentioned. A broken specimen, found with a socketed gouge and an article like Fig. 493, at Roseberry Topping,[460] in Cleveland, Yorkshire, appears to be of this kind. Another (5 inches long), found at Minster, Kent, is in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool. I have also one from the Cambridge Fens.
In the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., are three socketed celts with octagonal necks, which were found with others, both plain and having three ribs on the face, together with a looped palstave, at Haxey, Lincolnshire. Two of these are of the usual type, but the third (3½ inches) is shorter and broader, resembling in outline the common Irish form, Fig. 167. A celt apparently of the type of Fig. 150, but with a double bead round the top, was found in the Severn, at Holt,[461] Worcestershire. In the Faussett Collection, now at Liverpool, is a celt of this kind, with the angles engrailed or “milled.” This was probably found in Kent.
A celt of this type, found at Orgelet, Jura, is figured by Chantre,[462] as well as one from the Lac du Bourget.[463] They have also been found in the Department of La Manche.[464] I have one from the hoard found at Dreuil, near Amiens, the neck of which is decagonal.
Nearly the same form has been found in Sweden.[465]
Another example, more trumpet-mouthed, is shown in Fig. 151, from the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. It was found in 1868 in draining at Newham, Northumberland. I have another of nearly the same form (4¾ inches), from Coveney, in the Isle of Ely. Another, found at Stanhope,[466] Durham, without loop, and with two holes near the top, was regarded as an instrument for sharpening spear-heads.
Occasionally the neck of the blade is hexagonal instead of octagonal. In one found at Ty-Mawr,[467] on Holyhead Mountain, Anglesea, the hexagonal character is continued to the mouth. The socket is of an irregularly square form. It was found with a socketed knife, a tanged chisel, spear-heads, &c., which are now in the British Museum. This form occurs more frequently in Ireland. A nearly similar celt has been found in the Lake of Geneva.[468]
Another celt, with the neck irregularly octagonal, but with a series of mouldings round the mouth of the socket, is shown in Fig. 152. The original is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, and formed part of the hoard found at Westow, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, already mentioned at p. 118.
In Fig. 153 is shown, not on my usual scale of one-half, but of nearly the actual size, a very remarkable celt, which was found in the bed of the Thames[469] near Wandsworth, and was presented to the Archæological Institute. The original is, unfortunately, no longer forthcoming. It was 4¾ inches long, and, besides its general singularity of form, presented the peculiar feature of having the hole of the loop in the same direction as the socket of the celt, instead of its being as usual at right angles to the blade.
Socketed celts with a loop on the face instead of on the side are of exceedingly rare occurrence either in Britain or elsewhere. That shown in Fig. 154 is in the Museum at Wisbech, and was found in company with three socketed celts, two gouges, a hammer, and a leaf-shaped spear-head at Whittlesea. The socket shows within it four vertical ribs at equal distances, with diagonal branches from them. These latter may have been intended to facilitate the escape of air from the mould. I am indebted to the managers of the Museum for the loan of the specimen for engraving.
The type has occasionally been found in the Lake-dwellings of Savoy. In the Museum of Chambéry[470] there are three examples from the Lac du Bourget, and I possess another specimen from the same locality. Another (about 4 inches), from la Balme,[471] Isère, is in the Museum at Lyons; it is more spud-shaped than the English example. Another, of different form, was in the Larnaud hoard,[472] Jura. One has also been found at Auvernier,[473] in the Lake of Neuchâtel. Another (4 inches), in the late M. Troyon’s collection, was found at Echallens, Canton Vaud.
One with curved plates on the sides, like Fig. 155, but having the loop on one face, was found near Avignon, and is now in the British Museum. It has a round neck with a square socket. A smaller one, of nearly the same form, was found in a hoard at Pont-point, near the River Oise. Another, with curved indentations on the sides, from the department of Jura,[474] is in the museum at Toulouse. Socketed celts with a loop on the face have been found in Siberia.[475]
In some socketed celts the reminiscence of the “flanches” or wings upon the palstaves, of which I have spoken in an earlier part of this chapter, has survived in a peculiar manner, there being somewhat hollowed oval projections upon each side of the blade, that give the appearance of the “flanches” on the face, but at the same time produce indentations in the external outline of the instrument.
This will be seen in Fig. 155, which was found with the palstave (Fig. 83), the socketed celt (Fig. 157), and other objects at Nettleham,[476] near Lincoln, as already described (page 93). Another of the same class is said to have been found in a tumulus on Frettenham Common,[477] Norfolk. Another, shown in Fig. 156, was in the Crofton Croker Collection. All these are now in the British Museum. The second celt from Nettleham (Fig. 157) shows only the indented outline without any representation of the oval plates. The nearest approach in form to these celts which I have met with is to be seen in some from the South of France. These are, however, generally without loops. I have two from the departments of Haute Loire and Isère. One from Ribiers, in the department of the Hautes Alpes, is in the museum at St. Omer. Another is in the museum at Metz.
A socketed celt, found at Aninger, and now in the Antiken Cabinet at Vienna, has large oval plates on each of its sides, which nearly meet upon the faces.
In the collection of the late Mr. Brackstone was a remarkable celt, exhibiting a modification of this form. It is said to have been found with a large socketed celt with three mouldings round the mouth, and a looped palstave with three ribs below the stop ridge, near Ulleskelf, Yorkshire. Mr. Brackstone printed a lithographic plate of the three, from which and from an engraving in the Archæological Journal[478] Fig. 158 is taken. It will be observed that this celt is elaborately ornamented, even on the ring, either by engraving or punching. The original is now in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
A celt of closely allied character, with the lower part of the blade and the C-shaped flanches similar to that from Ulleskelf, with the exception of the chevron ornament, is said to have been also found in Yorkshire. A woodcut, from a drawing by M. Du Noyer, will be found in the Archæological Journal.[479] The upper part is rectangular and plain, without any moulding round the top, and there is no loop. The original is 6 inches long. In general appearance and character this celt approaches those of Etruscan and Italian origin; but I see no reason why it may not have been found, as stated, in Britain, though, so far as I know, it is unique of its kind.
The next class of socketed celts which has to be noticed consists of those in which the loop is absent. No doubt, in some cases, this absence arises either from defective casting, or from the loop having been accidentally broken off, and all traces of it removed; but in many instances it is evident that the tools were cast purposely without a loop. It seems probable that many of them were intended for use as chisels, and not like the looped kinds as axes or hatchets. The similarity between the looped and the loopless varieties is so great that I have thought it best to describe some of the instruments which may be regarded as undoubtedly chisels in this place rather than in the chapter devoted to chisels, in which, however, such of the socketed kinds as are narrow at the edge, and do not expand like the common forms of celt, will be found described.
The small tool shown in Fig. 159 may safely be regarded as a chisel. It does not show the slightest trace of ever having been intended to have a loop, and is indeed too light for a hatchet. It was found with a tanged chisel, a hammer, numerous socketed celts, and other articles, in the hoard from Reach Fen, Cambridge, already mentioned at p. 112. I have seen another, 2⅛ inches long, with a somewhat oval socket and no loop, which was found in Mildenhall Fen, and was in the collection of the Rev. S. Banks, of Cottenham.
A longer celt of the same character is engraved by Dr. Plot.[480] It was sent to him by Charles Cotton, Esq., and according to Plot “seems to have been the head of a Roman rest used to support the lituus, the trombe-torte, crooked trumpet, or horne pipe used in the Roman armies.” Another of nearly the same form was found on Meon Hill,[481] near Camden, Gloucestershire.
A celt or chisel of this character found at Düren, in North Brabant, is in the museum at Leyden.
Another was found at Zaborowo,[482] in Posen, in a sepulchral urn.
A celt of the octagonal form of section and without a loop is shown in Fig. 160. It formed part of the great hoard found at Carlton Rode, near Attleborough, Norfolk, of which some particulars have already been given. The joint marks of the moulds are still very distinct upon the sides. This specimen is in the Norwich Museum, and was kindly lent by the trustees for me to have it engraved. A nearly similar Scottish celt is shown in Fig. 165. A celt from the hoard of Cumberlow, near Baldock,[483] has been figured as having no loop, but I believe that this has arisen from an error of the engraver, as in a drawing which I have seen the loop is present.
One of hexagonal section and socket from a hoard found on Earsley Common,[484] Yorkshire, in 1735, is engraved as having no loop.
Celts without loops are not uncommon in France, and are often found of small size in Denmark.[485]
Socketed celts have rarely if ever been found with interments in barrows in Britain. Sir R. Colt Hoare mentions “a little celt” as having been found with a small lance, and a long pin with a handle, all of bronze, near the head of a skeleton, in a barrow on Overton Hill,[486] near Abury, Wilts. The body had been buried in the contracted attitude, and had, as was thought, been enclosed within the trunk of a tree. It appears, however, from Dr. Thurnam’s account,[487] that this was a flat and not a socketed celt. It was a celt like Fig. 116, 3¼ inches long, which is reported to have been discovered by the late Rev. R. Kirwan in a barrow on Broad Down, Farway, Devonshire.[488] It is said to have lain in the midst of an abundant deposit of charcoal which was thought to be the remains of a funeral pyre. Mr. Kirwan informed Dr. Thurnam that there was every reason to believe that the celt was deposited where found at the time of the original interment. No bones, however, were actually with the celt, which lay 18 inches from the central cist.
A socketed celt with three vertical ribs, like Fig. 125, is also said to have been found with a human skeleton, and two uninscribed ancient British coins of silver, at Cann,[489] near Shaftesbury, in 1849. The celt and coins are now in the collection of Mr. Durden, of Blandford. In neither case are the circumstances of the discovery absolutely certain.
A curious instance of the survival of the bronze celt as an ornament or amulet is afforded by that which was found in a barrow at Arras, or Hessleskew,[490] near Market Weighton, Yorkshire. It is only an inch in length, and is shown full-size in Fig. 161. With it was a pin which connected it with a small light-blue glass bead. It accompanied the contracted body of a woman laid in a grave, and having with it a necklace of glass beads, a large amber bead, and a brooch, bracelets, ring, tweezers, and pin, apparently of bronze, some of them ornamented with a kind of paste or enamel. The majority of the objects found in the group of barrows at Arras, of which this was one, seem to belong to what Mr. Franks has termed the “Late-Celtic” period, or approximately to the time of the Roman invasion of this country.
Socketed celts not more than ¾ of an inch in length have been found in Ireland, but with sockets large enough for serviceable handles, so that they might possibly have been used as chisels. The diminutive celts, about 2 inches in length, which have been found in large numbers in Brittany, and have been regarded by French antiquaries as votive offerings, might also by some possibility have served as tools; but this can hardly have been the case with the Arras specimen. A golden celt found in Cornwall is said to have been in the possession of the Earl of Falmouth,[491] but nothing is known of it by the present Viscount Falmouth, and the statement in the “Barrow Diggers” is probably erroneous.
It will be well to postpone the account of the different hoards of bronze objects, in which socketed celts have been found with other tools and weapons, until I come to treat of such ancient deposits, though some of them have already been mentioned.
Turning now to the socketed celts which have been discovered in Scotland, we find them to present a considerable variety of types, though hardly so great as that exhibited by those from England, and the recorded instances of their finding are comparatively few in number.
In Fig. 162 is shown a socketed celt of the plain kind which was found at Bell’s Mills,[492] on the Water of Leith, Edinburgh, in company with those given as Figs. 164 and 165.
A celt found in a bog between Stranraer and Portpatrick, Wigtonshire,[493] like Fig. 162, but with a bead at the level of the top of the loop, has been figured.
The nearly square-necked celt shown in Fig. 163 is of a broader type than usual, and was found at North Knapdale,[494] Argyleshire.
Socketed celts with oval necks, and resembling the common Irish type, Fig. 167, in form, have occasionally been found in Scotland. One (3¼ inches), with a double moulding round the mouth, was found on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh. Another (3 inches) was found with several other socketed celts and a spear-head near the Loch of Forfar. One of these, like Fig. 150, has a round socket and a twelve-sided neck.
A celt with a long socket and narrow blade was found, with spear-heads, bronze armlets, and some pieces of tin, at Achtertyre,[495] Morayshire.
Another type, which appears to be more especially Scottish, has the ornamented moulding placed on the neck of the blade in such a manner as to run through the loop. One of this character, dug up near Samson’s Ribs,[496] Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, has been figured by Professor Daniel Wilson. A second (2⅞ inches), with three raised bands passing through the loop, was found in the Forest of Birse,[497] Aberdeenshire.
A type which is also common to England is shown in Fig. 164 from another of the Bell’s Mills specimens.
Others with raised lines on the sides are preserved in the museum at Edinburgh. One of these was found near the citadel at Leith.[498]
One (3½ inches), ornamented with four longitudinal lines on each face, was found in the parish of Southend,[499] Cantire. Another (4¼ inches), with traces of five ribs, three down the middle and two at the margins of each face, was found at Hangingshaw,[500] in Culter parish, Lanarkshire.
A third celt from Bell’s Mills is shown in Fig. 165. This is of the variety without the loop, and closely resembles that from the Carlton Rode hoard, Fig. 160, the main difference being that the neck is of decagonal instead of octagonal section.
Moulds for celts of other patterns have also been found in Scotland, as will subsequently be seen. A modern cast from some moulds found at Rosskeen, Ross-shire, has been engraved by Professor D. Wilson.[501] It is of hexagonal section, and is ornamented on each face by two diverging ribs starting from an annulet close below the moulding round the mouth, and ending in two annulets about two-thirds of the way down the blade, which expands considerably, and has a nearly flat edge.
For the use of Fig. 166 I am indebted to the Council[502] of the Ayrshire and Wigtonshire Archæological Association. The original was found in a peat-moss near the farm-house of Knock and Maize, in Leswalt parish, Wigtonshire, and is now in the cabinet of the Earl of Stair. Its analogies with that found at Kingston, Surrey (Fig. 142), are very striking, while at the same time it closely resembles the type exhibited by the mould from Ross-shire already mentioned. The occurrence of instruments of so rare a form at such a distance apart is very remarkable; but if, as appears probable, the celts of this type are among the latest which were manufactured, and may possibly belong even to the Late Celtic period, their wide dissemination is the less wonderful.
Socketed celts have been found in very large numbers in Ireland, upwards of two hundred being preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy; and numerous specimens are to be seen in other collections, both public and private. Mr. R. Day, F.S.A., of Cork, has upwards of forty in his own cabinet. The Irish celts vary much in size, the largest being a little over 5 inches long, and the smallest less than an inch. The most common form is oval at the neck, and expands into a broad cutting edge. There is usually some kind of moulding round the mouth, giving the end of the instrument a trumpet-like appearance. The effect of the moulding is not unfrequently exaggerated by a hollow fluting round the neck, as in Fig. 167.
Celts of this and some of the following types have been figured by Vallancey.[503]
In that shown as Fig. 168 there is a slight shoulder below the trumpet-shaped part of the mouth, and the loop, instead of springing straight out from the neck, has its ends extended into four ridges, running over the neck of the celt like half-buried roots.
An example of a celt with the loop attached in a similar manner has been engraved by Wilde.[504] Another (3¾ inches) is in the collection of Mr. R. Day, F.S.A.
Fig. 169 shows a finely patinated celt, with a triple moulding below the expanding mouth, which was found near Belfast. With it are said to have been found a set of three gold clasps, or so-called fibulæ, with discs at each end of a slug-like half-ring (see Wilde, Figs. 594-598). Curiously enough, I have another set of three of these ornaments, also found together at Craighilly, near Ballymena, Co. Antrim. Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A., has a specimen which also is one of three found together in the Co. Down. It seems, therefore, probable that, like our modern shirt-studs, these ornaments were worn in sets of three.
A celt with four hands (3½ inches) has been engraved by Wilde.[505] The middle member of the triple band is often much the largest.
A small example of the same type, but with a single band at the mouth, is shown in Fig. 170. One from Co. Antrim, 1⅝ inch long and 1¼ inch broad at the edge, is in the British Museum.
These oval-necked celts are occasionally, but rarely, decorated with patterns cast in relief upon them. One of them, in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,[506] is shown in Fig. 171.
Inside the sockets of most of the instruments of this class there are near the bottom, where the two sides converge, one, two, or more vertical ridges, probably destined to aid in steadying the haft.
In some instances the upper member of the moulding round the mouth is cast in a cable pattern. Fig. 172 shows an example of this kind from Athboy, Co. Meath, in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. Others are in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
Socketed celts, with vertical ribs on the faces, are of rare occurrence in Ireland. A specimen from Co. Meath, in Canon Greenwell’s collection, is engraved as Fig. 173.
One (2⅝ inches) found near Cork, and now in Mr. Robert Day’s collection, has six vertical ribs on each face, three on either margin. They are placed close together, and vary in length, the outer one being about twice as long as that in the middle, which is, however, nearly three times as long as the innermost of the three ribs.
I have an example of the same kind (2⅜ inches), from Trillick, Co. Tyrone,[507] in which there are five equidistant vertical ribs on each face. The edge has been much hammered, so as to be considerably recurved at the ends. Wilde[508] has figured a much larger specimen (4½ inches), with three vertical ribs, which cross a ring, level with the top of the loop, and run up to the lip moulding. Another,[509] with rectangular socket, has the ribs arranged in the usual manner. In a few instances the ribs end in pellets, and in one instance Wilde[510] describes them as “ending in arrow points.”
A short but broad socketed celt in the Petrie Collection has on each face six vertical ribs terminating at each end in annulets.
The socketed celts with an almost square socket and neck are not so common in Ireland as those of the broad type with an oval neck, but are yet not absolutely rare. Fig. 174 shows a good specimen of this type. I have another (3½ inches), from the neighbourhood of Belfast, rather wider at the edge, and with three flat vertical ribs below the neck moulding.
Fig. 175 shows a short variety of the same type, from Newtown Crommolin, Co. Antrim. One from Trillick, Co. Tyrone (2½ inches), though nearly rectangular at the neck, has an oval socket.
Mr. Robert Day has an example (3¼ inches), from Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath, with two beads round it, the lower one at the level of the bottom of the loop. This celt is rectangular at the neck, though the socket is oval.
Some few have grooves running down the angles. One from Londonderry (4¼ inches) is in Mr. Day’s collection.
The long narrow celt with a rib ending in an annulet on the face, engraved by Wilde as Fig. 283, appears to me to belong to Brittany rather than to Ireland.
An elegant type of socketed celt of not uncommon occurrence in Ireland is shown in Fig. 176. The neck is octagonal below the rounded trumpet mouth, which is ornamented with a series of small parallel beads, between which a number of minute conical depressions have been punched, making the beads appear to be corded. Around the loop is an oval of similar punch marks. A nearly similar specimen has been engraved by Wilde (Catal., Fig. 276), who also gives one of the same general type, but with two plain broad beads, alternating with three narrow ones, round the mouth (Catal., Fig. 277). It has a hexagonal neck. A celt (4¼ inches) from Ballina, Co. Mayo, in the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A., has an octagonal neck, and five grooved lines round its circular mouth.
Canon Greenwell has one of the type of Fig. 176 (3⅞ inches), with hexagonal neck and five equal beads round the mouth, from Carlea, Co. Longford, and another (3¾ inches), with ten small beads round a somewhat oval mouth, from Arboe, Co. Tyrone. The neck of this latter is nearly rectangular. I have a celt of this type from Balbriggan, Co. Dublin (3½ inches), with a hexagonal neck and a plain mouth. The loop has root-like excrescences from it, as already described.
There is one more Irish type of looped socketed celts which it will be well to figure, and to which Wilde has given the name of the axe-shaped socketed celt. As will be seen, the blade is expanded considerably below the socketed part, and assumes a form not uncommon among iron or steel axes. I have copied Fig. 177 from Wilde’s cut, No. 281, on an enlarged scale.
A socketed celt expanding into a broad axe-like edge is in the Pesth Museum.
An analogous but narrower form is found in France. I have seen the drawing of one found at Pont-point, Oise (?).
Socketed celts without loops have not unfrequently been found in Ireland. One of this type has been figured by Wilde,[511] whose cut is, by the kindness of the Council of the Royal Irish Academy, here reproduced as Fig. 178. There are two others in the same collection. Another of the same length (2-1/16 inches), but wider at the edge, was found in the Shannon,[512] at Keelogue Ford. A longer and narrower instrument (3¾ inches) of the same kind has also been engraved by Wilde.[513] Another has been engraved by Vallancey.[514] Others (2 and 2⅛ inches) from Lisburn and Ballymoney, Co. Antrim, are in the British Museum. The former has a small bead on a level with the base of the socket. The latter is oval at the neck, but oblong at the mouth.
A bronze instrument of this form, but wider at the edge, was in common use among the ancient Egyptians, and has been regarded as a hoe.
A socketed celt without loop, but with two projections on one side, from the Sanda Valley,[515] Yunan, China, has been figured by Dr. Anderson. The edge is very oblique. An example brought from Yunan by the same expedition is in the Christy Collection. One from Cambodia,[516] without loop, but in form like Fig. 119, has been figured by Dr. Noulet.
A very remarkable socketed celt without loop from Java is in the Cabinet of Coins at Stuttgart. It expands widely at the edge and has three facets on one side of the neck, while the other is curved, so that it was probably mounted as an adze. The surface of the socket is not flat, but there is a V-shaped depression across it.
Socketed celts with two loops have not as yet been recorded as found within the United Kingdom, though a stone mould for celts of this form was found at Bulford Water, Salisbury. In Eastern Europe the form is more common. The specimen shown as Fig. 179 was found in the neighbourhood of Kertch,[517] and is now in the British Museum. I have seen others ornamented on the faces, brought from Asiatic Siberia by Mr. H. Seebohm. Others from Siberia[518] have been figured. One of these is without loops, and has chevron ornaments in relief below a double moulding.
A socketed celt with two loops, and apparently hexagonal at the neck, found at Ell, near Benfeld, Alsace, is figured by Schneider.[519]
I have elsewhere described a two-looped socketed celt from Portugal[520] (6½ inches). It is like Fig. 120, but has a second loop. Another, of gigantic dimensions, 9½ inches long and 3½ inches wide, was found in Estremadura, Portugal.[521]
A two-looped celt with square socket and the loops at the junction with the flattened blade was in the great hoard found at Bologna. Only one of the loops, however, is perforated.
In the museum at Stockholm are also some socketed celts with two loops.
In looking over these pages, it will have been observed, that though socketed celts occur in numbers throughout the British Isles, yet that those found in England for the most part differ in form from those found in Ireland, and that some few types appear to be peculiar to Scotland. Traces of continental influence are, as might have been expected, most evident in the forms found in the southern counties of England, and are barely, if at all, perceptible in those from Ireland and Scotland. Some few of the socketed celts from both England and Scotland are of the type Fig. 167—a type so common in Ireland as to be characteristic of it—and these appear for the most part, though by no means exclusively, to have been found in western counties. Although, therefore, the first socketed celts in Britain were doubtless of foreign origin, there was no regular importation of them for use over the whole country; but the fashion of making them spread through local foundries, and different varieties of pattern originated in various centres, and were adopted over larger or smaller areas as they happened to commend themselves to the taste of the bronze-using public. The use of socketed celts would, from their abundance, seem to have extended over a considerable period; and from their having apparently been found with objects belonging to the Late Celtic Period they must have been among the last of the bronze tools or weapons to be superseded by those of iron. A socketed celt, somewhat like Fig. 116 but more trumpet-mouthed, is stated to have been found in company with a looped spear-head, two pins like Figs. 453 and 458, a bronze bridle-bit, and some portions of buckles of a late Celtic character on Hagbourne Hill, Berks. These objects are now in the British Museum, and there seems reason to believe the account of their discovery given in the Archæologia.[522] Some coins of gold and silver are said to have been found with them, but these are not forthcoming. Socketed celts have also been found associated with clasps like Figs. 504 and 505 at Dreuil, near Amiens, while at Abergele such clasps accompanied buckles almost, if not quite, late Celtic in character.
No doubt the final disuse of socketed celts was not contemporaneous throughout the whole of the country, and their employment probably survived in the north and west of Britain and in Ireland to a considerably later date than in the districts more accessible to Gaulish influences. The chronology of our Bronze Period will, however, have to be considered in a subsequent chapter. The transition from bronze to iron cannot so readily be traced in this country as on the Continent; but socketed celts, &c. formed of iron, and made in imitation of those in bronze, have occasionally been found in Britain. One (4 inches) with a side loop, and a part of its wooden handle, was found in Merionethshire, and is now in the British Museum. It has been figured in the Archæologia Cambrensis.[523] Another of the same type was found in North Wales.[524]
I have one (5¼ inches) with a rounded socket and no loop, found at Gray’s Thurrock, Essex.
I have another (4 inches) with a square socket, from Pfaffenburg in the Hartz; and others of longer proportions with round sockets from Hallstatt. The metal has been carefully welded together to form the sockets, in which there is no slit like those commonly to be seen in more modern socketed tools of iron. There are ornaments round the mouth of some of the Hallstatt[525] socketed celts, and both they and the iron palstaves are frequently provided with a side loop, in exact accordance with those on their analogues in bronze. Some of the socketed celts in iron from the cemetery of Watsch,[526] in Carniola, are also provided with a loop.
As an illustration of the view that similar wants, with similar means at command with which to supply them, lead to the production of similar forms of tools and weapons in countries widely remote from each other, I may mention a socketed celt (10¾ inches) found in an ancient grave near Copiapo, Chili.[527] In general form it is almost identical with some of the Italian bronze celts, but it is of copper, and not bronze; and is not cast, but wrought with the hammer. The socket has, therefore, been formed in the same manner as those of the early iron celts from Hallstatt, with which it also closely corresponds in outline. The surface, however, has been ornamented by engraving; and among the patterns we find bands of chevrons, alternately plain and hatched, closely allied to the common ornament of the European Bronze Age. What is, perhaps, more striking still is that the Greek fret also occurs as an ornament on the faces.
The method in which socketed and other celts were hafted will be discussed in the next chapter.
VI. METHODS OF HAFTING CELTS
ANY account of the various forms of celts and palstaves which have been discovered in this country, such as that attempted in the preceding chapters, would be incomplete without some observations as to the manner in which they were probably hafted or mounted for use, and some account of the discoveries which throw light upon that subject.
In a previous chapter I have cited numerous opinions of the older school of antiquaries as to the nature of these instruments or weapons, and the uses which they were intended to serve. Many of these opinions are so palpably absurd that it is needless again to refer to them. Others which regard the instruments as having been mounted in such a manner as to serve for axes or adzes, for chisels, or for spud-like tools or weapons, have an evident foundation in the necessities of the case. There can, in the first place, be no doubt that celts and palstaves were cutting tools or weapons. There can, in the second place, be but little doubt that they were not destined for direct use in the hand without the addition of any shaft or handle. In fact, with the palstave and socketed forms, it is evident that special provisions are made for a haft of some kind. In the third place, this haft, whether long or short, must either have been straight or crooked. If straight, a kind of chisel or spud must have resulted; if crooked or L-shaped, an axe, hatchet, or adze.
It is possible that the same form of bronze instruments may have been mounted both with straight and with L-shaped handles; but, as will subsequently be seen, the probability, judging from what few ancient handles have been discovered, is that the great majority were mounted with elbowed handles as axes. At the same time, from the form and small size of some celts, especially of some of those of the socketed variety, it is probable that they were used as chisels. Indeed, judging from the analogy of some other forms, and from the discovery at Everley, mentioned at p. 163, this may be regarded as certain.
As the discoveries of the original hafts of bronze celts have principally been made upon the Continent, I shall, in treating of this part of my subject, be compelled to have recourse to foreign rather than British illustrations. It will also, in speaking of the method of hafting, be desirable to make an attempt to trace the successive stages of development of the socketed celts; and, in connection with this part of the subject also, foreign examples will become of service.
And first, in illustration of the use of bronze blades as axes, rather than as spuds, or chisels of any kind, I may mention an instrument not uncommon in Hungary, and occasionally occurring in other parts of Southern Europe, which is perforated and similar in general form to our modern axe-heads of iron and steel. In Scandinavia also other varieties of these perforated axe-heads have been found. The common axe-like type has also been discovered among Assyrian antiquities. Another and distinct form which has been found in Egypt mounted as an axe or hatchet, with a wooden handle, is a flat blade not unlike the ordinary flat celt, except that instead of tapering at the butt-end it expands so as to have two more or less projecting horns, by which it was bound against the haft in a shallow socket provided for it. Egyptian axes mounted in this manner may be seen in many museums, and have been frequently figured in works on Egyptian antiquities.[528] The blade of an axe of this kind, formerly in the collection of the Rev. Sparrow Simpson, D.D., F.S.A.,[529] and by him presented to the British Museum, bears an inscription in hieroglyphics upon it, with cartouches probably containing the name of a shepherd king of the sixteenth or seventeenth dynasty. In my own collection is another bronze blade of the same shape and size, and with the same inscription, except that the names in the cartouches are different. Unfortunately this part of the blade is corroded, but Dr. S. Birch thinks that the cartouches contain the name either of Ramses I. or of a subordinate Ramses of the eighteenth dynasty. The hieroglyphics are the same on both faces of the blade, but on one run from right to left, and on the other from left to right. A hatchet of the same form, still bound to its haft, was found in the tomb of Queen Aah-Hotep,[530] of the eighteenth dynasty.
Some of the stone hatchets from Ecuador, in South America, are also provided with projecting ears, and were tied against their helves in the same manner.
The stone axe, said to be that of Montezuma II., preserved in the Ambras Museum at Vienna, and shown in Fig. 180, may also be of this kind. Copper or bronze blades of this crescent or cheese-cutter form, with two projecting lugs at the top of the narrow part of the blade, have been found in Peru.
Broad blades of bronze, in form more like the ordinary flat celts, but with the projections at the top, have been found in the same country. I have one about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide, with strong lugs at the top 2 inches long. It came from Eastern Peru.
Some blades of this form were hafted in a rather different manner, as will be seen by means of Fig. 181.
This represents an iron hatchet used by the Aymara Indians, of the province of La Paz, Bolivia, which was brought from that country and presented to me by my friend, the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S. In this form the handle is split, and the blade is secured by a leather thong, two turns of which pass under the two lugs of the blade, and thus prevent it from coming forward; two other turns pass over the butt-end, and thus prevent it from being driven backwards by any blow; while all the coils of the thong hold the cleft stick firmly against the two faces of the blade. Although no celts with the T-shaped butt-end have been found in Britain, or, indeed, in Western Europe, I have thought it worth while to engrave this curious example of the method of mounting such blades, especially as the central projections of the Irish form of celt, like Fig. 45, may have been secured by thongs in a somewhat analogous manner.
Turning now to the other British forms of celts, of which, as already observed, the flat and doubly tapering blades, like Fig. 2, seem to be the most ancient, it is probable that these were hafted by the butt-end being merely driven into a club or handle of wood, in the same manner as many stone celts appear to have been mounted. The modern iron hatchet, from Western Africa, shown in Fig. 182, will give a good idea of the manner in which the bronze celts that are so much like it in form were probably hafted. Another modern African axe has been engraved by Sir John Lubbock.[531] It is, of course, possible that some of the ancient flat celts were mounted after the manner of spuds, as is, by several German and Danish antiquaries, held to have been the case with those of the palstave form. It must, however, be borne in mind that as a rule the stone celts, which the earliest of those in bronze must in all probability have supplanted, were mounted after the manner of hatchets. Moreover, the few stone celts, the axis of the straight handle of which was in the same direction as the blade, appear to have been hafted with short handles as chisels, and not with long shafts as spuds. Among those found still attached to their hafts in the Swiss lake dwellings, some few were mounted in short stag’s-horn handles as chisels, but the majority were fitted for use as hatchets, with a club-like handle, in which a short stag’s-horn socket was mortised as affording a receptacle for the stone, harder and less liable to split than those of wood. In some cases, however, the handles were made from a bough of a tree with a short projecting branch, which was cleft to receive the stone. One of these, from Robenhausen, is shown in Fig. 183, which is copied from Dr. Keller’s work.[532]
In Britain the traces of the original handles of bronze celts have been not unfrequently found, though the actual wood had perished.
In a barrow in the parish of Butterwick,[533] Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., found what he describes as “an axe-blade of bronze,” engraved as Fig. 2, which lay with a skeleton, and “the handle, which had been under two feet in length, could be plainly traced by means of a dark line of decayed wood extending from the hips towards the heels; moreover, from the presence of decayed wood on the sides of the blade, it would seem as if the axe had been protected by a wooden sheath. To all appearance the weapon had been worn slung from the waist.” In this case the blade had been fixed, apparently after the manner of Fig. 182, into a solid handle to the depth of two inches, as is evident from the surface of the metal being oxidized on that part of the blade differently from what it is elsewhere.
In a barrow at Shuttlestone,[534] near Parwich, Derbyshire, Mr. Bateman found about the middle of the left thigh of a skeleton a bronze celt, of “the plainest axe-shaped type. The cutting edge was turned upwards towards the upper part of the person, and the instrument itself has been inserted vertically into a wooden handle by being driven in for about two inches at the narrow end—at least, the grain of the wood runs in the same direction as the longest dimension of the celt.” “A fact,” adds Mr. Bateman, “not unworthy of the notice of any inclined to explain the precise manner of mounting these curious implements.” It may be remarked, however, that no part of the handle itself, beyond this grain upon the bronze, was preserved, and that this direction of the grain of the wood would be quite consistent with the blade having been mounted in a side branch from the shaft, after the manner of the Swiss stone celt shown in Fig. 183.
It appears to me possible that in other cases where the marks of the grain of the wood, or even the traces of the wood itself, have been found upon celts, running along and not across the blade, the somewhat hasty conclusion has been drawn that they were attached to the end of straight shafts instead of into side branches; and that possibly this opinion, when once accepted, may have affected insensibly the reports of the position of the blade of the celts with regard to the bodies with which they were found, and to the traces of their shafts.
The opinion first enounced by J. A. Fabricius that the celt was the ancient German framea or spear mentioned by Tacitus, seems also insensibly to have affected observers.
There is an account given by Thorlacius[535] of the discovery in a tumulus near Store-Hedinge, in Denmark, of a palstave with the wooden shaft an ell and a quarter long, into which the blade was inserted; the wood, as might have been expected, running down between the side wings; at the other end of the shaft there was a leather strap wound round for about a quarter of an ell. The whole was so decayed that not the least part of it could be taken out of the ground. Although nothing appears to be said with regard to the position of the palstave with respect to the shaft, this has been cited by Lisch[536] and others in evidence of this form of instrument having been mounted spud-fashion, as a kind of chisel-ended spear. A more conclusive instance is that adduced by Westendorp,[537] who has figured a socketed celt without a loop, found in a fen in the province of Groningen, Holland, mounted in this manner on a straight shaft. I have, however, already remarked that some of the socketed celts of this character were probably used as chisels.
Whatever reliance may be placed upon the older discoveries, all those of more recent times are in favour of the instruments of the palstave form having been mounted as axes, hatchets, or adzes. In the museum at Salzburg, Austria, there are at least four crooked handles for this kind of blade, found in the salt-mines of Hallein, one of which is shown in the annexed cut. I am not, however, sure whether the blade was actually found with the haft in which it is now placed, nor, if so, whether it was originally in its present position with the loop outwards. It looks much more like an Italian than a German specimen, which has been added to the haft in recent times, and it has not the appearance of having been exposed for centuries to the action of salt. It seems more probable that the salt, which has fortunately had the power of preserving the wood, would in course of years have dissolved the whole of the metal, assuming that at the time when the haft was lost, or left in the mine, a blade was still attached to it, than that it should have left the metal, as here, almost uninjured. In this instance, moreover, the haft is perfect, and not, as in some of the other cases, broken, so as to raise an inference of their having been thrown away. The position of the blade with the loop outwards is also suspicious.
A broken example of the same kind of haft, also from the salt-mines of Hallein, has been figured by Klemm,[538] and is to be seen in the British Museum. There are others in the museum at Linz.
Handles of the same kind, intended for palstaves, have been found in the Italian lake dwellings. In some discovered in the “palafitta” of Castione,[539] the notch is in the transverse direction to the shaft, as if the blade had been mounted as an adze, and not as an axe. In others the notch is longitudinal, and not transverse. In one instance the side branch has no notch, but there is a shoulder on it, as if it had served for a socketed celt.
A looped palstave, mounted in a similar branched handle, has been found at the lake dwelling of Mœrigen,[540] on the Lac de Bienne. In this case also the loop is on the farther side of the shaft.
That the flanged and winged celts and palstaves were, as a rule, destined to be mounted in the manner of hatchets or adzes, and not as spuds or spear-heads, is to some extent witnessed by the development of their form; the progressive increase in the size of the wings and flanges, more especially about the middle of the blade, appearing to be intended as a precaution against lateral strains, such as the blade of an axe undergoes, rather than against a mere thrust, such as that to which the head of a spear or lance is subject. Of course the stop-ridge is a preservative against the blade being driven back into its handle, in whatever way it is mounted. But the flanges, at first slight, then expanding at the middle of the blade, then becoming projecting wings, and finally being bent over, so as to form side sockets on each side of the blade, seem rather the result of successive endeavours to steady the blade against a sideways strain.
This development can best be traced in the series of flat celts, flanged and winged celts, and palstaves, discovered in the South of France.
Even the long narrow palstaves, which have so much the appearance of chisels, seem to have been mounted on crooked shafts. There is a long German[541] form with a narrow butt above the stop-ridge, and with but slight side flanges, which are continued down along the sides of the blade below the ridge, that seems much more like a chisel than a hatchet. The usual length of this form is about 6 inches, and the width at the edge about 1½ inches, that of the butt-end, including the side flanches, being about ¾ inch.
But that palstaves of this kind were mounted as hatchets will be evident from an inspection of Fig. 185, which represents a specimen in my own collection, found in the district of Raron, near Brigue, Valais, Switzerland. It is, as will be seen, in fact, a socketed celt, but with the socket at right angles to the axis of the blade. The reason why it should have been cast in this manner is probably to be found in the fact that boughs of trees with a smaller branch at right angles to them are not easily met with, though such boughs are best adapted for conversion into the helves of this kind of hatchet. Some ingenious bronze-founder of old times conceived the idea of producing a hatchet which did not require a crooked helve, but for hafting which any ordinary straight stick would serve; and we have here his new form of axe-head. In practice, however, it was probably found both to balance badly, and to be expensive in metal, and the design appears not to have spread, as up to the present time this specimen seems to be unique. The most remarkable features in it have still to be noticed. The pattern from which it was cast seems to have been a palstave already mounted on its haft, and we have here the smooth and rounded end of the bough, with the smaller side branch running off at right angles, reproduced in bronze. Even the band by which the blade was secured in the cleft part of the handle is reproduced as a spiral moulding. The banding which extends to the mouth of the socket is also spiral, and probably represents a binding round the original wooden handle at the part where, from experience, it was found most liable to break. The straight haft of this hatchet was secured in its place by a bronze rivet passing through the socket from side to side, which is still in its place, though all trace of the wood has disappeared.
With this singular celt was found a small dagger, 6½ inches long, which had been secured to its hilt by four rivets, and a penannular bracelet decorated with ring ornaments. It is remarkable how well the discovery of this form of celt bears out the theoretical suggestions of Sir Joseph Banks,[542] Sir Samuel Meyrick,[543] Mr. Dunoyer,[544] and others, including Sir W. Wilde.[545] Indeed, Dr. Richard Richardson[546] many years ago advanced the same opinion as to the manner in which such celts were hafted.
With regard to the usual manner of mounting those of the socketed form there can be but little doubt, as in some few instances the original handles have been preserved with them.
One such, found in the bed of the river Boyne, near Edenderry, King’s County, has been figured by Wilde,[547] whose cut, by the kind permission of the Royal Irish Academy, is here reproduced as Fig. 186. The helve is only 13¾ inches long, but seems well adapted to the size of the blade. So far as I know this is the only instance of such a discovery within the United Kingdom.
In Fig. 187, however, is shown an Italian socketed celt of a common form, with the original handle still attached. This specimen is in my own collection, and was found about the year 1872 in the neighbourhood of Chiusi, Tuscany. With it were another, also retaining its handle, a large fibula of silver, a scarabæus, and many small square plates of bronze, each having a fylfot cross upon it, probably the ornaments of a girdle. All these objects had been buried in an urn, which was covered by a slab of stone, and most of them are to be seen in the Etruscan Museum at Florence. With the exception of a fracture not far from the angle, the handle of my specimen is perfect. The preservation is due to its having been entirely coated with thin plates of bronze, the sides of which overlap, and have been secured round the handle by round-headed nails about ¾ inch apart.
This plating is turned over square at the end of the handle, where there is a little projecting bronze eye, through which a ring may have passed, so as to serve for its suspension. At the sides above the celt there are some larger round-headed nails, or possibly rivets; and the end of the branch which goes into the socket appears to be secured by a rivet, which passes through from face to face. At the end of the handle itself, above the celt, is a nearly circular flat bronze plate, with a round-headed nail in the middle to attach it to the wood. The fracture exposes the wood inside the plates, which has been preserved by the salts, or oxide, of copper. It has been thought to be oak. On the blade of the celt are some flakes of oxide of iron, as if it had lain in contact with some articles made of that metal. Indeed, from the form, as well as from the objects found with it, the presumption is that this instrument belongs to quite the end of the Bronze Age of Italy, or to the transitional period between bronze and iron.
It may be well here to mention that celts of iron of the flat form, with projections at the sides like Fig. 45; of the palstave kind, with the semicircular side sockets; and of the socketed form, have been found in the cemetery at Hallstatt, in Austria, the researches in which of Herr Ramsauer have been described by Baron Von Sacken. These discoveries seem to show that all three varieties were still in use at the close of the Bronze Period. In the same cemetery celts of the two last-mentioned forms were found in bronze, and palstaves occurred with the wings formed of bronze and the blade of iron.
In 1866 I exhumed from this cemetery with my own hands, when in company with Sir John Lubbock, a socketed celt of iron, with a portion of the haft still in it. The celt is attached to a branch of the main handle, which projects at an angle of about 80°. This has been split off from the handle, only a small part of which remains attached; and it is this portion only of the wood which has been preserved by the infiltration of some salts of iron, while the rest, which was detached from contact with metal, has disappeared. The wood of which the handle was made appears to be fir. On an iron palstave from the same spot it seems to be oak. On two bronze palstaves from France in my own collection, one from Amiens and the other from the Seine, at Paris, the portions of wood which still remain attached to the blades appear also to be oak.
In the Hallstatt specimen the inclination of the blade seems to have been towards the hand, and the part of the handle beyond the branch which enters the socket presents some appearance of having been bound with an iron ferrule, probably with the view of preventing it from splitting. The projection is somewhat longer proportionally than that in Fig. 185, and the end appears to have been truncated, and not rounded.
There have been in this country a few instances of the discovery of bronze rings in company with palstaves and socketed celts, and these rings may possibly have served a similar purpose, though it must be confessed that such an use is purely conjectural. That shown in Fig. 188 was found in company with a bronze palstave without a loop, but much like Fig. 74, at Winwick,[548] near Warrington, Lancashire, and was kindly lent me by Dr. James Kendrick, who in 1858[549] suggested that it was a “sort of ferrule to put round the handle of the palstave to prevent the wood from splitting when the instrument was struck.” The ornament on the ring, somewhat like the “broad arrow” of modern times, is of much the same character as the shield-like pattern below the stop-ridge of some palstaves. In the British Museum is a stone mould from Northumberland for flat rings, 3 inches in diameter, and for flat celts; but such rings probably served some other purpose.
Another bronze ring, 1⅔ inches in diameter, was found with a socketed celt in the Thames,[550] opposite Somerset House, but here the actual association of the two is doubtful.
I have already expressed a doubt whether the celt from Tadcaster, Yorkshire, and now in the British Museum, had, when found, the bronze ring with a jet bead upon it passing through the loop. The ring itself is made not of one continuous piece of metal, but of stout wire, with the ends abutting against each other, and nothing would be easier for the workman who found the three objects than to pass the ring through the loop of the celt and the hole of the bead. I have myself received from Hungary two socketed celts, each having imperfect penannular bracelets passed through the loop in the same manner, though they certainly had no original connection with the celts. It is, however, but right to mention that in the British Museum is the upper part of a celt with an octagonal neck, found with other objects near Kensington, on the loop of which is a small ring, barely large enough to encircle the loop. Of what service this could have been it is difficult to imagine.
If the association of the larger rings and the celts must be given up, it is needless to cite the opinions which have been held as to the use of the one in connection with the other. Some references are given in the note.[551]
The early Iron Age of Denmark is no doubt considerably later in date than that of Hallstatt, but in several of the discoveries of objects of that period in Denmark socketed celts of iron have been found still attached to their helves. In the Nydam find[552], described by Mr. Conrad Engelhardt, the majority of the axes were of the ordinary form, with eyes for the shafts; but there were some also of the form of the socketed celt, though without any loops. These were mounted as axes, and not as adzes, on crooked handles about 17 inches long. The helves of axes of the ordinary form were from 23 to 32 inches in length. In the Vimose find[553] there were several of these iron celts, one of which was thought to have been mounted on a crooked handle, but the others appear to have been mounted as chisels.
The palstaves with the edges transverse to the septum between the side flanges seem to have been mounted in precisely the same manner as those of the ordinary form, except that when attached to their handles they formed adzes, and not axes. It has been suggested[554] that the palstaves of the ordinary form may also have been mounted as adzes, and probably this was so in some exceptional cases. Mention has already been made of some Italian helves with transverse notches for the reception of the blade. Some of the flat celts may have also been mounted as adzes by binding them against the shorter end of an L-shaped handle, in the same manner as the Egyptians fixed their adze blades.
In some palstaves, but more especially in those of the South of Europe, there is at the butt-end of the blade a kind of dovetailed notch, which appears to have been formed by hammering over a part of the jets or runners of the original castings, which were left projecting a short distance instead of being broken off short at the blade. Whether the hammering over was for the purpose of rounding the angles or for that of forming this dovetailed notch is somewhat uncertain; it is, however, possible that one or more pins or rivets may have been driven through the handle, so as to catch the dovetails and retain the blade in its place. It is not often the case that this portion of the blade is so long that it would have gone through the handle and have allowed of a pin beyond it, as suggested by Mr. Dunoyer[555] in the case of a long palstave, with a rivet-hole near the butt-end of the blade. A palstave, found in a tomb in the department of Loir et Cher,[556] by my friend the late Abbé Bourgeois, is provided with a rivet-hole near the top, counter-sunk on either side so as to guide a pin into the place intended for it; and it seems probable, as the Abbé suggests, that this was connected with the securing of the blade, which is destitute of a loop, to the helve. Of six thin flat bronze celts, 7 or 8 inches long, from the Island of Thermia,[557] or Cythnos, in the Greek Archipelago, which are now in the British Museum, three that are broad are provided with square or lozenge-shaped holes towards the upper end of the blade, and three that are narrower are without. A flanged celt from Italy,[558] 6 inches long, has a circular hole in the same position, which may have received a pin. Some contrivance for keeping blades of smooth bronze fast in their handles must have been necessary or desirable from the earliest times. With stone celts we often find that the butt-end destined to be let into the wooden or horn socket was purposely roughened. With bronze, however, such a process does not seem to have been adopted to any extent; and probably with blades of bronze, so much less tapering than those of stone, the difficulty of keeping them in place was surmounted by attaching them with some sort of resinous or pitchy cement. A safe remedy against slipping out was no doubt found in the addition of the ring or loop to the side, which there can be but little doubt served for a cord to pass through, so as to hold the blade back to the handle. In a socketed celt, 5½ inches long, found in the Seine, at Paris, and now in my own collection, not only is the wood preserved in the socket by saturation with some salt of copper, but within the upper part of the loop there are distinct traces of a cord which was apparently formed of vegetable fibre. The Irish palstave, Fig. 105, with the curved projection instead of the usual loop, seems to show that it was only against the upper part of the loop that the strain came. No doubt, however, there was more strength in the loop attached to the blade at both ends than in the mere neb or projection. Some Italian socketed celts have similar projecting nebs, one on either side. In the case of the palstaves and celts with two loops, it seems probable that the handle must have been somewhat prolonged beyond the side branch, which received the palstave or went into the socket of the celt.
It has been stated that some of the Spanish palstaves[559] with two loops were, when first discovered, attached to a straight handle of wood. But this opinion may have been formed from the grain of the wood impressed on the upper part of the blade running along and not across it. In the first account[560] given of the discovery, these palstaves were regarded as having been used for picking out the strata of coal, and one of them is said to have been firmly attached to a wooden handle by means of thongs interlaced and held by notches in the wood. This handle was described as having been straight, so that the instrument was fitted to be used as a crowbar and not as a hatchet. But inasmuch as the groove for the handle is only 2¼ inches long and ½ inch wide, while the length of the blade projecting beyond the handle is nearly 5 inches, it is almost impossible for it to have served in this manner.
Axe-heads of bronze of the modern form with an eye through them to receive a straight helve have not been found in this country, though, as already observed, they are not uncommon in Hungary, Southern Germany, and Italy. That the form was already known in Greece in the Homeric Age is evident from the feat of skill in shooting an arrow through the shaft holes of a number of axe-heads, arranged in a row, recorded in the Odyssey.[561] I have in my collection a fine double-edged axe, or πέλεκυς, from Greece, 8½ inches in length, with a round shaft-hole ⅞ inch in diameter. I have also two from Salamis.
Looking at the widespread distribution of perforated stone implements, especially battle-axes, throughout Europe, it seems strange that so few bronze weapons of the same class should be found. Possibly, however, these stone weapons may have remained in use even until the latter part of the Bronze Period, as they certainly did through the earlier part of it. In this country it seems doubtful whether any of the perforated battle-axes of stone belong to a time when bronze was absolutely unknown, as bronze knife-daggers, like Fig. 279, have so often been found associated with them in interments. Hungary is the country in which the perforated bronze battle-axes seem to have arrived at their fullest development, many of them being of graceful form and beautiful workmanship. The perforated copper implements of that country were probably used for agricultural purposes, and I see no reason for assigning them to so early a date as the commencement of the Bronze Period of Hungary. They may, indeed, belong to a much later period. It is hard to account for this absence of perforated axes of bronze in Britain, but various causes seem to have conduced to render their introduction difficult. When first bronze came into use it must have been extremely scarce and valuable; and to cast an axe-head in bronze, like one of the perforated axe-hammers of stone, would have required not only a considerably greater amount of the then precious metal than was required for a flat hatchet-head, but would also have involved a far higher skill in the art of casting. Moreover, the flat form of these simple blades rendered them well adapted for being readily drawn out to a sharp cutting edge, and when once they had come into general use they would not have been readily superseded by those of another form, hafted in a different method, even were that method more simple. If the bronze celts were mainly in use for peaceful industries, while the warlike battle-axes were made of stone, the progressive modifications in the shape of the former would be less likely to be affected by the characteristics of the latter. It must also be remembered that in France,[562] which then as now set the fashion to Britain, perforated axe-heads of stone were very seldom used, and those of bronze were in the north of the country unknown.
But, to return to the celts of the British Islands, there can, I think, be but little doubt that the loop is, as already described, connected with the method of mounting these instruments on their hafts; and is not intended for the attachment of a cord, by which they might be withdrawn and recovered after they had been thrown at the enemy. Like the American tomahawks, they may, no doubt, have occasionally been used as “missile hatchets,” the “missiles secures” of Sidonius;[563] but the days of young Sigimer, whose followers were provided with these weapons, are many centuries more recent than those to which the bronze celts must be referred.
In the same manner, any idea of the loops having merely served for hanging these instruments at the girdle may be at once discarded. For such a purpose the projection which we find substituted for the loop would be useless, and the presence of two loops would be superfluous.
On the whole, we may conclude that the majority of these instruments were mounted for use, somewhat in the manner described, so as to serve as axes or adzes. A smaller proportion of them may, however, not improbably have been provided with short straight handles, to serve as chisels, especially the socketed celts of small size and without loops. This is the more probable as several socketed instruments closely resembling them in character cannot be regarded as other than chisels and gouges. No example, however, of a socketed celt provided with a handle of this kind has as yet been found. The little instrument of brass fixed into a handle made of stag’s horn, which was found in a cist in a barrow at Everley,[564] Wilts, by Sir R. Colt Hoare, has more the appearance of being a tanged chisel, such as will subsequently be described, than a flat celt. It is shown full size in Fig. 189, which I have copied from Sir R. C. Hoare’s plate. There were no bones or ashes found in the cist, but several pointed instruments, and what appears to be a kind of long, flat bead of bone, as well as two whetstones of freestone, and a hone of a blueish colour had been deposited with it.
Professor Worsaae[565] has published an engraving of a narrow Danish palstave, which was found in a hill in Jutland fastened to its handle by three rings of leather. This handle was straight, but unlike that from Store Hedinage, which was an ell and a quarter long, was not more than about 8 inches in length. In some other instances, he says, the blade has been fastened to the handle by nails or rivets.
I have already mentioned that some of the socketed celts of iron belonging to the early Iron Age of Denmark have been found mounted as chisels. A good example of one thus hafted has been figured by Engelhardt.[566] The part of the handle which goes into the socket is tapered to fit it. Above this the handle expands with a shoulder projecting somewhat beyond the outside of the celt. It continues of this size for about 1½ inches, and is then again reduced to the same size as the mouth of the celt. The whole of the handle beyond the metal is about 4 inches in length.
Having said thus much with regard to the early iron chisels, it will, however, now be well to proceed to the consideration of those formed of bronze, and of the other bronze tools found in this country.