VII. CHISELS, GOUGES, HAMMERS, AND OTHER TOOLS
ALTHOUGH, doubtless, many if not most of the instruments of different forms, described in the preceding chapters, were used as tools, and not as weapons, yet in some cases, especially where they have been found in graves, it is more probable that they formed part of the equipment of a warrior than of an artificer. With regard to the various forms of which I intend to treat in the present chapter, there can hardly exist a doubt that they should be regarded as tools, and not as weapons. Already in the Neolithic Period we find many of these forms of tools, such as chisels and gouges, developed; and so far as hammers are concerned, it seems probable that for many purposes a stone held in the hand may have served during the Bronze Period as a hammer or mallet, just as it often does now in the age of steel and steam. I have elsewhere[567] mentioned a fact communicated to me by the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., that in Peru and Bolivia the masons, skilful in working hard stone with steel chisels, make use of no other mallet or hammer than a stone pebble held in the hand.
The simplest form of chisel is of course a short bar of metal brought to an edge at one end and left blunt at the other where it receives the blows of the hammer or mallet. Such at the present day are the ordinary chisels of the stone-mason, and the “cold chisel” of the engineer.
Most of the Scandinavian chisels of flint are of nearly the same form as the simplest metal chisels, being square in section in the upper part and gradually tapering to an edge at the lower end. Bronze chisels of this form are, however, but rarely met with in any part of Europe. One such, however, was found at Plymstock,[568] near Oreston, Devonshire, in company with sixteen flanged celts like Figs. 9 and 10, three daggers, and a tanged spear-head, engraved as Fig. 327. It is shown in Fig. 190. Its length is 4 inches, and the cutting edge is rather more than ¼ inch in width. The late Mr. Albert Way, who describes this specimen in the Archæological Journal, regarded it as unique in England; and the form, so far as I am aware, has not again been found in this country. It is now in the British Museum.
I have a large chisel of the same type, but apparently formed of copper, which was found in the neighbourhood of Pressburg, Hungary. It is 7½ inches long, about ⅞ inch square in the middle, and expands in width at the edge, which is lunate. Others of the same form, 4½ inches and 5¾ inches long, also from Hungary, are in the Zurich Museum. Such chisels have also been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings.
A long chisel, formed from a plain square bar drawn to an edge, was found by Dr. Schliemann[569] in his excavations at Hissarlik.
Bronze chisels of the same form were also in use among the ancient Egyptians.
A smaller chisel, conical at the butt end and possibly intended for insertion into a handle, is shown in Fig. 191. The original is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., and was found with numerous other bronze antiquities in the Heathery Burn Cave, Durham, already so often mentioned. One rather larger, about 3 inches long and 1/5 inch broad, probably found in one of the barrows at Lake[570] or Durnford, is in the collection of the Rev. E. Duke, of Lake House, near Salisbury. It may possibly have been a large awl.
An Aztec[571] chisel of nearly the same form as Fig. 191, and about 4½ inches long, contains 97·87 copper and 2·13 of tin. Another from Lima contains 94 copper and 6 of tin.
The small bronze chisel from Scotland, shown in Fig. 192, exhibits a somewhat different type; the blade tapering evenly away from the edge. The point which was intended to go into the handle appears to have been “drawn down” a little by hammering, which has produced slight flanges at the sides. The edge has also been hammered. The original was kindly lent me by the Rev. George Wilson, of Glenluce, Wigtonshire, and was found, with a conical button and a flat plate of cannel-coal or jet, on the Sandhills of Low Torrs, near Glenluce. Numerous arrow-heads and flakes of flint have also been found among the sands at the same place.
A flat chisel (4½ inches) like Fig. 192, but rather broader at the edge, which is somewhat oblique, was found with two flat sickles on Sparkford Hill,[572] Somersetshire.
There were some small chisels of this class in the Larnaud hoard[573] (Jura).
Others have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings.[574]
Two shorter edged tools, found at Ebnall,[575] Salop, which have been described as chisels or hammers, seem rather to have been punches, and will be mentioned subsequently.
As chisels were probably used in ancient times, as at present, not only in conjunction with a mallet, but also in the hand alone with pressure as paring-tools, it would have been found convenient to attach them to wooden or horn handles. Accordingly we find them both provided with a tang or shank for driving into a wooden handle, like the majority of modern chisels, and also, though more rarely, with a socket for the reception of a handle, like the heavy mortising chisels of the present day. Chisels of the tanged variety vary considerably in size and strength, and in the relative width of the blade to the length.
That shown in Fig. 192 is from the great hoard discovered at Carlton Rode,[576] Norfolk, already mentioned, and is preserved in the Norwich Museum. The marks of the joint of the mould are still visible on the tang. It was found with numerous celts and gouges, a hammer, and at least one socketed chisel. Another tanged chisel of nearly the same form and dimensions is also in the Norwich Museum. It formed part of the Woodward Collection, and was probably found in Norfolk.
A chisel much more expanded at the edge, and also of lighter make, was found at Wallingford, Berks, in company with a double-edged knife or razor, and a socketed celt, gouge, and knife, of which notices are given in other parts of this book. It is engraved as Fig. 193, and is in my own collection, as is also the original of Fig. 194. This formed part of the hoard discovered in Reach Fen, Cambridge, and was the only one of the kind there found. A socketed chisel-like celt from the same hoard has been already described and figured at page 133, Fig. 159.
Tanged chisels have also occurred in various other hoards of bronze antiquities. Some were found with numerous celts and other tools at Westow,[577] on the Derwent, Yorkshire, which from their curved edges and general character the late Mr. James Yates regarded as the σμίλα χαρτοτόμος, or chisel for cutting paper, mentioned by Philoxenus, and as the currier’s chisel, σκιτοτόμος, mentioned by Julius Pollux. If I were to offer an opinion it would be that any cutting tool of the Bronze Period in Britain was more likely to have been used for cutting leather than paper, the latter commodity being, to say the least of it, scarce in Britain at that time; and, moreover, that chisels are generally used for cutting wood and not leather.
In the collection of Canon Green well, F.R.S., are two of these tanged chisels from Westow, about 4½ inches long and 1⅛ inch broad at the edge. A small part of the blade below the round collar is cylindrical. In the British Museum is a small specimen of this kind (3½ inches) from the Thames.
In the Mayer Collection at Liverpool is a specimen, 4 inches long and ⅞ inch broad at the edge, found near Canterbury in 1761. The collar is flat above and almost hemispherical below. Another, with part of the tang broken off, and the blade 2½ inches long and 1½ inch wide, was found in the Kirkhead Cave, Ulverstone, Lancashire, and was described to me by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith.
Another, rather like Fig. 199, but broken at the angles, was found with spear-heads and a socketed celt at Ty Mawr,[578] Anglesea. What appears to be a chisel of this kind (4¾ inches long) was found near Biggen Grange,[579] Derbyshire, and is in the Bateman Collection. Another was found at Porkington,[580] Shropshire.
A fragment of a tanged chisel was found with a large hoard of broad spear-heads, &c., at Broadward, Shropshire.
A remarkably small specimen from Thixendale, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, who has kindly allowed me to engrave it as Fig. 195. The stop, instead of being as usual a circular collar, consists of a bead on each face, so that in the side view it appears as if an oval pin traversed the blade.
Nearly similar side-stops are to be observed in the chisel represented in Fig. 196, which was found with two others (3¾ inches and 4½ inches) in a hoard of bronze antiquities at Yattendon,[581] Berks, of which I have given an account elsewhere. With the chisels were instruments of the following forms, some in a fragmentary condition: flat celts, palstaves, socketed celts, gouges, socketed and tanged knives, swords, scabbard ends, spear-heads, and flat, conical, and annular pieces of bronze. The other two chisels from this hoard were more like Fig. 194.
A very large example of a chisel of this kind is shown in Fig. 197, the original of which was kindly lent me by Sir Philip de M. Grey Egerton, F.R.S. It was found in company with two looped palstaves and a spear-head near Broxton, Cheshire, about twelve miles south of Chester.
An instrument of somewhat the same character, from Farley Heath, has already been described at p. 69.
A tanged chisel, 5 inches long, and without any stops or collar, was found with other objects at Burgesses’ Meadow, Oxford, in 1830, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum.
This form of instrument occurs but rarely in Scotland; but what appears to be a chisel of this kind is engraved by Wilson.[582] His figure is, however, a mere diagram, without any scale attached, and the instrument is described as an axe blade with a cross limb, or as a “spiked axe.” Whatever its character, the original of the figure is said to have been found with other bronze relics at Strachur, Argyleshire.
An example of a chisel of elongated form is in the Antiquarian Museum[583] at Edinburgh, but it is uncertain in what part of Scotland it was found. By the kindness of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland it is shown as Fig. 198.
In Ireland they are much more common. There are thirteen specimens in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, as catalogued by the late Sir William Wilde,[584] varying in length from 2½ to 6¼ inches. Some of these Irish chisels, which approximate to flat celts in character, have already been described in Chapter III.
That which Wilde has given as his Fig. 395 is almost identical in form with the chisel from Ireland in my own collection which is here engraved as Fig. 199, though considerably longer altogether, and somewhat longer proportionally in the tang.
I have another example from Belaghey, County Antrim, which is 6⅜ inches long, and much stouter in the tang and in the neck of the blade than that here figured. It is only 1⅜ inches wide at the edge.
Among those in the museum at Dublin is one which is decorated with knobs round the collar. Two others are figured in “Horæ Ferales.”[585] In the British Museum is one (4⅝ inches) with a well-marked collar. Another, with the square tang broken off, has a loop at the side of the round part of the blade, which is 2¼ inches long. This curious specimen was found near Burrisokane, county Tipperary.
Another chisel (4¾ inches) in the same collection has side-projections only, like Fig. 195.
Another (3¼ inches), with a well-developed collar, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[586] The form shades off into that of the flat celts having projections at the sides.
Others in the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A., resemble Fig. 196 (4½ inches) and Fig. 197 (6 inches). The latter was found at Kanturk, Co. Cork.
Tanged chisels have been found, though not abundantly, in France. One from Beauvais is in the museum at St. Germain.
The socketed form of chisel is by no means common in this country; but some instruments, probably intended for use as chisels, have already been described among the socketed celts not provided with loops. These are all comparatively broad at the cutting edge; but there is another variety, with a narrow end, formed much like the modern engineer’s “crosscut chisel,” some specimens of which will be now described.
That shown in Fig. 200 is from the great find of Carlton Rode,[587] Norfolk (1844), from which several specimens, including a tanged chisel (Fig. 192) and a socketed celt without loop (Fig. 160), have already been described; and some other forms, such as gouges and hammers, have yet to be mentioned. The edge is only 3/16ths of an inch in width, and the tool seems well adapted for cutting mortises. The idea of a mortise and tenon must be of very early date, as a mere stake driven into the ground supplies it in a rudimentary form; and tools let into sockets, or having sockets to receive handles, afford instances of connections of the same kind. In our modern mortising chisels the cutting edge, instead of being in the middle of the blade, so as to have a V-shaped section, is usually at the side, and presents an outline like the upper part of a K, V. I have not met with this bevelled edge among bronze chisels.
On the side of this Carlton Rode chisel may be seen the mark of the joint of the mould in which it was cast. The socket, as usual with these tools, is circular.
A bronze chisel of the same form, 3¾ inches long, was found at Romford,[588] Essex, in company with socketed celts, palstaves, fragments of swords, a broken spear-head, and lumps of metal. It has already been figured.
In the hoard found at Westow, Yorkshire, already mentioned, were two or three socketed chisels. One of them, 2½ inches long, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[589] That which I have here engraved as Fig. 201 is probably the same specimen. It is now in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. Tanged chisels, gouges, and socketed celts were found at the same time.
In the same collection is a somewhat smaller chisel, the socket of which is square instead of circular. This was found in the Heathery Burn Cave, Durham, together with a number of objects, belonging to the Bronze Period, of which further mention will be made hereafter. Another, found at Roseberry Topping, Yorkshire, is now in the Bateman Collection, at Sheffield. A small narrow-edged chisel was found in a hoard at Meldreth, Cambridgeshire.
I am not aware of any socketed chisels of the narrow form having been found in Scotland.
In Ireland they are rare, but in the collection of Mr. R. Day, F.S.A., are a few specimens of undoubtedly chisel-like character. The broad celt-like form has been described in a previous chapter.
In France they are also far from common. There are, however, two in the museum at Tours, found at the Chatellier d’Amboise. There is also one in the museum at Narbonne.[590] They have been found in Savoy,[591] Doubs,[592] and Jura.[593]
Several have been found in the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland.[594] One with a treble moulding round the mouth and a polygonal neck from Mœrigen[595] exhibits much taste in its manufacture.
A number of chisels both of the tanged and the socketed forms were present in the great hoard of bronze objects discovered at Bologna.
Socketed examples from Italy are in the museum at Copenhagen,[596] and in the British Museum.
I have some from Macarsca, Dalmatia, of which the sockets have been formed by hammering out the metal and turning it over, instead of being produced as usual, by means of a core in the casting.
Socketed chisels from Emmen and Deurne, Holland, are in the museum[597] at Leyden.
From North Germany I may cite one (6⅛ inches) from Schlieben,[598] which is in the Berlin Museum.
Others are engraved by Lindenschmit,[599] Schreiber,[600] and Lisch.[601]
One from Kempten, Bavaria, is in the Sigmaringen Collection.[602]
GOUGES.
Closely allied to chisels are gouges, in which, the edge, instead of being straight, is curved or hollowed, so that it is adapted for working out rounded or oval holes. In some languages, indeed, the name by which these tools are known is that of “hollow chisels.” It is an early form of instrument, and a few specimens made of flint have been found in this country, though they are here extremely rare, while, on the contrary, they are very abundant in Denmark and the South of Sweden. In the Scandinavian countries, however, bronze gouges are never found; and though gouges of stone were not unknown in this country during its Stone Period, their successors in bronze do not appear to belong to the early part of the Bronze Period, but, on the contrary, seem to be characteristic of its later phases.
Of bronze gouges there are the same two varieties as of the ordinary chisel, viz. the tanged and the socketed, of which the former is far rarer than the latter. Indeed the only tanged gouge from Britain with which I am acquainted is that from the Carlton Rode[603] hoard, already so often mentioned, which is shown in Fig. 203. The original is in the Norwich Museum, the trustees of which kindly allowed me to engrave it. As will be seen, it is of remarkably narrow form, especially as contrasted with the socketed gouge from the same hoard shown in Fig. 207. There was a broken tanged gouge in the great hoard of bronze objects found at Bologna.
Of English socketed gouges the most common form is that shown in Fig. 204, from an original in the British Museum, which was found with a spear-head (Fig. 391), socketed knife (Fig. 240), hammer (Fig. 210), awl (Fig. 224), and two socketed celts, at Thorndon,[604] in Suffolk. There were six gouges of the same character, but of different sizes, in the hoard found at Westow,[605] Yorkshire, some of which have been figured. Another (3½ inches) found with socketed celts and some curious ornaments under a large stone at Roseberry Topping,[606] in Cleveland, has also been figured. Another was found with socketed celts and spear-heads at Exning,[607] in Suffolk. The cutting end of another was associated with socketed celts in the hoard discovered at Martlesham in the same county. Part of another was discovered, with a socketed celt, fragments of blades, and rough copper, at Melbourn,[608] Cambridgeshire. Another was found, with socketed celts, spear-heads, and an armlet, within the encampment on Beacon Hill,[609] Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. Another, with socketed celts, spear-heads, &c., at Ebnall,[610] near Oswestry; and another (2½ inches), with socketed celts, fragments of knives, a button or stud, and lumps of metal, at Kensington.[611] This hoard is in the British Museum.
A gouge was found with four socketed celts and about 30 lbs. of rough copper in an urn at Sittingbourne,[612] Kent. A plain gouge formed part of the hoard found at Stanhope,[613] Durham. A remarkably fine gouge, 4¼ inches long and nearly 1¼ inch wide at the edge, was found, with spear-heads, socketed celts, part of a celt mould, and lumps of metal, at Beddington,[614] Surrey. At Porkington,[615] Shropshire, a gouge accompanied the tanged chisel lately mentioned. In the hoard found at Guilsfield,[616] Montgomeryshire, there were two gouges in company with looped palstaves, socketed celts, &c. In my own collection are three socketed gouges, about 3½ inches long, which form part of the hoard from Reach Fen, Cambridgeshire, in which were socketed celts, socketed and tanged knives, and numerous other objects. In some of the instances cited, as at Guilsfield and Ebnall, the upper part of the socket is beaded instead of plain. One of this kind from the Harty hoard already mentioned is shown in Fig. 205. There were two such in the hoard, which comprised numerous socketed celts and the moulds for them, and various tools of the bronze-founder. There were also the two halves of a bronze mould for such gouges which will subsequently be described. In the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society is a gouge from Bottisham Lode (3 inches) with a slight shoulder about ½ inch from the top of the blade, the upper part of the neck being larger than the lower. One of three found in the Heathery Burn Cave (2¾ inches) is also shouldered. Of the other two (3⅜ inches and 3¼ inches) one is very slightly shouldered. They are in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., as is also a plain example (3¾ inches) from Scothorn, Lincolnshire.
In the British Museum are the unfinished castings for two gouges, one 2¾ inches long and fully ½ inch wide, and the other 3 inches long and ⅜ inch wide at the edge, which in both is but slightly hollowed. They were found with a socketed celt (Fig. 146) near Blandford, Dorset. The longer one is of very white and hard bronze.
Two gouges, one 3½ inches and the other broader, but only 2 inches long, found with various other objects at Hounslow; as well as one from the Thames at Battersea (4 inches), are in the same collection.
Two gouges (3¼ inches and 5 inches) were found, with a hammer, a spear-head, and a socketed celt with a loop on the face (Fig. 154), near Whittlesea. The whole are in the museum at Wisbech.
Two from Derbyshire are in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
A socketed gouge of unusually long proportions is shown in Fig. 206. It was found at Undley, near Lakenheath, Suffolk, and is in my own collection. In the Carlton Rode hoard were also two long gouges with the hollow extending more nearly to the socket end. They are both rather trumpet-mouthed. One of them is 4½ inches long and 9/16 inch wide at the edge, the other 4⅛ inches long and ¾ inch wide. I have not seen the originals, but describe them from a lithographed plate.
The broad short gouge shown in Fig. 207 is also from Carlton Rode. It is broken at the mouth of the socket, but I have, in the figure, restored the part that is wanting. The original was lent me by the trustees of the Norwich Museum. Another[617] from the same hoard, about 3¼ inches long, has the groove, which is wide and rather flat, extending only an inch upwards from the edge.
Socketed gouges have been found, though very rarely, in Scotland. That shown in Fig. 208, the cut of which has been kindly lent to me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was dredged up in the river Tay.[618] This appears to be almost the only Scottish specimen at present known. Professor Daniel Wilson[619] terms it “one of the rarest of the implements of bronze hitherto found in Scotland;” but he adds that other specimens have been met with in the Tay.
In Ireland they are considerably more abundant, there being at least twenty specimens in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, one of them as much as 4½ inches long.
One, much like Fig. 208, has been engraved by Wilde as Fig. 399. Others are figured in the Archæological Journal[620] and “Horæ Ferales.”[621] In one of these, 2½ inches long, the hollow is carried up to the collar round the mouth as a square-ended recess. One gouge appears to have been originally tanged. Several socketed gouges from Ireland are in the British Museum. Mr. R. Day, F.S.A., has examples from Mullingar and Derry, the latter with a collar at the top. They occurred also in the Dowris hoard. A gouge[622] only 2½ inches long and unusually broad has a small loop at the upper end of the concave part. It is here engraved as Fig. 209, from the original in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. This may be the specimen figured by Vallancey.[623] I have a specimen like Fig. 208. /#
#/ Socketed gouges are occasionally found in France. One, 4¼ inches long, with two mouldings round the top, ornamented with faint diagonal lines, was found with socketed celts and other implements in the Commune de Pont-point[624] (Oise), near the river Oise, and is in the Hotel Cluny, Paris. Others from the Hautes Alpes[625] and from the Fonderie de Larnaud have been figured in Mr. Ernest Chantre’s magnificent Album.
There are three with moulded tops, from the hoard of Notre Dame d’Or, in the Poitiers Museum.
A fine gouge (about 5½ inches) with a moulded top is in the museum at Clermont Ferrand (Puy de Dôme). A very fine French gouge of this character is in the British Museum.
I have a specimen much like Fig. 208 found in the Seine at Paris. Others were in the hoard at Dreuil, near Amiens, and in a second hoard also found near that town.
Large gouges with moulded tops, from the Stations of Auvernier,[626] in the Lake of Neuchâtel, and Mœrigen, in the Lake of Bienne, are in Dr. Victor Gross’s collection.
There was at least one socketed gouge in the great Bologna hoard.
In Germany they are very rare, but one from the museum at Sigmaringen, with a somewhat decorated socket, is engraved by Lindenschmit. It was found at Kempten, Bavaria.[627] Others, from Düren and Deurne, North Brabant, Holland, are in the museum at Leyden.
A socketed gouge, with the edge turned to a sweep of about 1 inch radius, is in the museum at Agram, Croatia.
One from Siberia[628] has been figured by Worsaae.
HAMMERS AND ANVILS.
Another form of tool constructed with a socket to receive the handle in precisely the same manner as the socketed celts and gouges is the hammer. It is worthy of notice that, though perforated hammers formed of stone are comparatively abundant in this country, yet that instruments of the same kind in bronze are unknown. It is true that what looks like a perforated hammer, said to be of bronze, was found in Newport, Lincoln, and is engraved in the Archæological Journal,[629] but there is no evidence of its belonging to the same period as the ordinary tools formed of bronze; and the suggestion that it may have been the extremity of a bell-clapper is, I think, not far from the truth. It is very probable that many of the perforated stone hammers belong to the Bronze Period of this country, as do doubtless most of the perforated stone battle-axes or axe-hammers; for in the early part of the Bronze Period it is likely that metal was far too valuable to be used for heavy tools and weapons, and even towards the close of the period it seems as if it was only the lighter kind of hammers which were formed of bronze. The heaviest I possess weighs only five ounces, and the lightest less than half that weight. As will subsequently be seen, it is possible that some of these instruments were of the nature of anvils rather than of hammers, but for the present it will be most convenient to speak of them under the latter name.
The most common form of hammer is that which is shown in Fig. 210, from an original in the British Museum found at Thorndon,[630] Suffolk, in company with a spear-head, socketed gouge, socketed knife, and two socketed celts. The two hammer-like instruments engraved as Figs. 211 and 212 were found, with a number of socketed celts, moulds, &c.—in fact the whole stock-in-trade of an ancient bronze-founder—in the Isle of Harty, Sheppey, and are in my own collection. The larger of the two shows a considerable amount of wear at the end, which is somewhat “upset” by constant use. The smaller is more oxidized, so that the marks of use are less easily recognised. The metal of which they are formed seems to contain a larger admixture of tin than is usual with the cutting tools; and I have noticed the same appearance in some other instances, so that even in early times the singular fact must have been known that by adding to copper the softer metal, tin, in a larger proportion than the one-tenth usually employed for bronze, a much harder metal resulted. At the present time the extremely hard alloy used for the specula of reflecting telescopes is formed by an admixture of about two parts of copper and one part of tin, the two soft metals mixed in these proportions forming an alloy almost as hard as hardened steel.
In the Carlton Rode find, of which mention has already been frequently made, was a hammer of much longer proportions than those from the Isle of Harty. By the kindness of the trustees of the Norwich Museum I have been able to engrave it as Fig. 213. It expands considerably at the mouth. As will be seen, the end is “upset” by use. What appears to be a hammer of much the same kind, but with the face still smaller, was found with a hoard of bronze objects, including palstaves, spear-heads, flat sickles, a torque, &c., at Taunton.[631] It is shown in Fig. 214.
A hammer somewhat larger in its dimensions than Fig. 211, but in type more resembling Fig. 212, having no shoulder upon its body, was found at Roseberry Topping,[632] in Cleveland, with a socketed celt, a gouge, and other objects. Another broken hammer was found, with a hoard of bronze objects, at Stanhope,[633] Durham.
A small hammer (2¼ inches), found with gouges and other objects near Whittlesea, is in the Wisbech Museum.
Another with a circular socket was in the hoard found in Burgesses’ Meadow, Oxford.
A small one was found at Rugby,[634] and is in the possession of Mr. M. H. Bloxam, F.S.A. I have one (3 inches) found near Cambridge.
I am not aware of any examples having as yet been found in Scotland.
In Ireland they are rare, but four “round-faced socketed punches,” varying from 2 to 4 inches in length, are mentioned in Wilde’s Catalogue. These are probably hammers.
In the British Museum are also several Irish hammers, one of which is shown full size in Fig. 215, for the use of which I am indebted to the Council of the Society of Antiquaries.[635] It is cylindrical in form, with two rings of projecting knobs around it. The end is circular and slightly convex, and has a ridge across it, due to constant use. Another, found, with trumpets, spear-heads, and numerous other bronze relics, at Dowris,[636] King’s County, is shown in Fig. 216, also lent me by the same Council. It is of a different type from any of the others, expanding beyond the socket into a large flat blade. It appears never to have been in use. Two other small Irish specimens, one with a long oval face, are in the British Museum. I have a hammer (2½ inches) much like Fig. 210, but with the shoulder nearer the top, found with a socketed celt and some perforated and other rings, near Trillick, Co. Tyrone. I have also an imperfect specimen with the end expanded, but not to the same extent as Fig. 216. This was found with a broken sword, spear-heads, and a socketed knife, on Bo Island, Enniskillen, and was kindly procured for me by the Earl of Enniskillen.
Socketed hammers have been found in several European countries. I have two from France. One of them (3½ inches), like Fig. 212 in form, was found, with a spear-head, a double-edged knife, some curved cutting tools, and an anvil of bronze (Fig. 217), together with a large torque and a plain bracelet of gold, at Fresné la Mère, near Falaise, Calvados. The other (2 inches), stouter in its proportions and more like Fig. 210, was found near Angerville, Seine et Oise. A short thick hammer was found at Briatexte, Tarn.[637]
An instrument in the British Museum, in form much like Fig. 216, found at Vienne (Isère?), has only a small square hole in the socket, and may have served as an anvil rather than as a hammer. A hammer also with expanded end was found near Chalon,[638] and another in the Valley of the Somme.[639]
A cylindrical hammer or anvil was found in the hoard of the Jardin des Plantes at Nantes.[640]
Cylindrical hammers have been found among the Lake-dwellings of the Lac du Bourget,[641] Savoy, one of them provided with a loop. M. Rabut, of Chambéry, has a stone mould from the same lake for casting such hammers. Another hammer-mould of stone was found at the Station of Eaux Vives, near Geneva.
In my own collection is one of these looped socketed hammers, nearly square in section, from Auvernier, in the Lake of Neuchâtel. Others from Swiss Lake-dwellings, both with and without loops, are engraved by Keller. Professor Desor has a hammer expanding towards the end from the Lake of Neuchâtel.[642] A hammer found at Mœrigen[643] seems to have been formed from a portion of a looped palstave. The Lake-dwellers frequently utilized such broken instruments. Another hammer, from the Lake of Bienne,[644] is hexagonal in section, and ornamented with reversed chevrons on its faces.
They are occasionally found in Hungary. I have seen one ornamented with chevrons in relief upon the sides. One with saltires on the sides, and some fragments of others, were in the Bologna hoard.
The object engraved by Madsen[645] as possibly the ferrule of a lance may be a hammer of this kind.
A solid bronze hammer (4½ inches), of oblong section, with two projecting lugs on each side for securing the handle, found near Przemysl, Poland, was exhibited at the Prehistoric Congress at Pesth. It was found with a bronze spear-head, and is in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences at Cracow.
As to the manner in which these socketed hammers were mounted we have no direct evidence. It seems probable, however, that many of them had crooked hafts of the same character as those of the socketed celts. It is worth notice that on some of the coins of Cunobeline[646] there is a seated figure at work forging a hemispherical vase, and holding in his hand a hammer which in profile is just like a narrow axe, the head not projecting beyond the upper side of the handle. A seated figure on a hitherto unpublished silver coin of Dubnovellaunus, a British prince contemporary with Augustus, holds a similar hammer, or possibly a hatchet, in his hand. But though when in use as hammers they were mounted with crooked shafts, it is quite possible that some of these instruments may have been fitted on to the end of straight stakes and have served as anvils. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A., informs me that at the present day the peasants of Brittany make use of iron-tipped stakes, which, when driven into the ground, form convenient anvils on which to hammer out the edges of their sickles, and which have the great advantage of being portable. Though such anvils are not, so far as I am aware, any longer used in this country, traces of their having been formerly employed appear to be preserved in our language, for a small anvil to cut and punch upon, and on which to hammer cold work, is still termed a “stake.”
It is worthy of remark that an implement of the same kind as these so-called socketed hammers, and made in the same manner, of a very hard greyish alloy, was found in the cemetery at Hallstatt,[647] and was regarded by the Baron von Sacken as a small anvil. A bronze file was found with it.
It is also to be observed that of the two hammer-like instruments found together in the Harty hoard one is much larger than the other, and may have formed the head of a stake or anvil, while the other served as a hammer. Still, as a rule, a flat stone must have served as the anvil in early times, as it does now among the native ironworkers of Africa, and did till quite recently, for many of the country blacksmiths and tinkers of Ireland.[648] Among Danish antiquities some carefully made anvils of stone occur, but I am not certain as to the exact age to which they should be assigned.
Bronze anvils of the form now in use are of extremely rare occurrence in any country. That figured by Sir William Wilde[649] appears to me to be of more recent date than the Bronze Period, and I am not aware of any other specimen having been found in the British Isles; but as it is a form of tool which may eventually be discovered, it seems well to call attention to it by engraving a French example. This anvil is shown in two views, in Figs. 217 and 218. As will be seen, it is adapted for being used in two positions, according as one or the other pointed end is driven into the workman’s bench. In one position it presents at the end two plane-surfaces, the one broad and the other narrow, inclined to each other at an angle of about 120 degrees, so that their junction forms a ridge. This part of the anvil has seen much service, as there is a thick burr all round it, caused by the expansion of the metal under repeated blows. On the projecting beak there are three slight grooves gradually increasing in size, and apparently intended for swages in which to draw out pins. In the other position the anvil presents no smooth surface on which to hammer, but a succession of swages of different forms—some half-round, some V-shaped, and some W-shaped. There are also some oval recesses, as if for the heads of pins. The metal of which the anvil is made appears to contain more tin than the ordinary bronze, and therefore to be somewhat harder. On one face is the mark of the runner ⅞ inch in diameter, which was broken off after the tool was cast.
This interesting tool was found with the hammer already mentioned, a spear-head, a double-edged knife or razor, a knife with the end bent round so as to present a gouge-like edge, and a large curved cutting-tool of the same character (Fig. 247), all of bronze, at Fresné la Mère, near Falaise, Calvados. With them was a magnificent gold torque with recurved cylindrical ends, the twisted part being of cruciform section; and a plain penannular ring or bracelet, formed from what was a cylindrical rod. The whole find is now in my own collection. It is not by any means improbable that this anvil was rather the tool of a goldsmith of the Bronze Age than that of a mere bronze-worker.
I have another anvil of about the same size, but thinner, which was found in the Seine at Paris. It also can be mounted two ways, but in each position it presents a nearly flat but somewhat inclined face, and there are no swages in the beaks, one of which is conical and the other nearly rectangular.
M. Ernest Chantre has engraved two other specimens, somewhat differing in form, but of much the same general character. They were found near Chalon-sur-Saône and near Geneva.[650] The analysis of the metal of one of them gives 16 parts of tin to 84 parts of copper.
Another bronze anvil is in the museum at Amiens, and a fifth, also from France, is in the British Museum. This has a flat projecting ledge at the top, and at right angles a slightly tapering beak. An anvil of the same kind, but without the beak, was found with other objects near Amiens, and is now in the museum of that town.
A small anvil without a beak, found at Auvernier,[651] in the Lake of Neuchâtel, is in the collection of Dr. Gross. A square flat anvil, somewhat dented on the face, formed part of the Bologna hoard.
In my own collection is what appears to have been a larger anvil of bronze, which was found, with other instruments of the same metal, at Macarsca, Dalmatia. In form it is not unlike an ordinary hammer-head about 5 inches long; but the eye through it appears to be too small for it ever to have served to receive a haft of the ordinary kind, though it probably held a handle by which to steady the tool when in use. One end is nearly square and but slightly convex; the other is oblong and rounded the narrow way. Both ends are much worn. On one face and one side are rounded notches or swages. This tool has been cast in an open mould, as one face presents the rough surface of the molten metal, which contains a large proportion of tin. The other face and the sides are fairly smooth.
SAWS AND FILES.
While speaking of bronze tools, which up to the present time have not been noticed in Britain, but which may probably be some day discovered—if, indeed, they have not already been found—the saw must not be forgotten.
A fragment of what has been regarded as a rudely formed saw of bronze was indeed found, with a sword and several celts, at Mawgan,[652] Cornwall, and is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. It is 4 inches by ¾ inch, coarsely toothed, and the serrations appear to have been cast. I am, however, rather doubtful whether it was really a saw.
Saws have been found both in Scandinavia and in France, in the latter country in hoards apparently belonging to the later portion of the Bronze Period. One from Ribiers,[653] Hautes Alpes, is about 5½ inches long and ¾ inch broad, slightly curved, and with a rivet-hole at one end for attachment to the handle. Two from the “Fonderie de Larnaud,”[654] Jura, are nearly one-half smaller. There were five specimens in that hoard, and M. Chantre enumerates sixteen altogether from various parts of France and Switzerland. A fine specimen, with a rivet-hole for the handle, was found at Mœrigen,[655] in the Lake of Bienne.
The Scandinavian[656] type is of much the same character, though some are more sickle-like in shape, with the teeth on the inner sweep.
A saw, found with celts, spear-heads, diadems, &c., at Lämmersdorf, near Prenzlau, is in the Berlin Museum. A short one, with a rivet-hole for the handle, found at Stade, is in that at Hanover.
A saw of pure copper was found in some excavations of dwellings of remote date at Santorin,[657] in the Grecian Archipelago, in company with various instruments formed of obsidian. Some fragments of saws occurred in the Bologna hoard. Part of one from Cyprus is in the British Museum. A copper(?) saw from Niebla, Spain, 9 inches long, also in the British Museum, has the teeth arranged to cut as it is drawn towards the workman, and not when pushed away from him.
The file is another tool of exceedingly rare occurrence in bronze, though not absolutely unknown in deposits belonging to the close of the Bronze Period. Sir William Wilde[658] mentions “a bronze circular file, straight, like a modelling tool,” as being in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, but I have not seen the original and am not confident as to its age. A file[659] was, however, found in the great hoard of the Fonderie de Larnaud, and another from the Lake-dwellings of the Lac du Bourget is in the museum at Chambéry.
The early form of file is indeed much the same as that of a very broad saw, the toothing being coarse and running at right angles across the blade. In the cemetery at Hallstatt,[660] in Upper Austria, files of this character were found, several in bronze and one in iron. The bronze files are from 5 to 10 inches long, and some which are flat for the greater part of their length are drawn down, for about 2 inches at the end, into tapering round files. In the Bologna hoard were several fragments of files, including one of a “half-round” file.
TONGS AND PUNCHES.
From our greater acquaintance with the working of iron than with that of bronze, there seems to us a sort of natural connection between the anvil, hammer, and tongs. It must, however, be borne in mind that bronze is a metal which instead of being, like iron, tough and ductile, becomes “short” and fragile when heated, so that all the hammering to which the tools and weapons of bronze were subjected in order to planish their faces, or to draw out and harden their edges, was probably administered to them when cold. At least one pair of bronze tongs has, however, been found, which is shown in Fig. 219. This instrument was discovered, with numerous other antiquities, in the cave at Heathery Burn,[661] near Stanhope in Weardale, Durham, and is now in the collection of Canon Greenwell. As half of a mould for socketed celts and some waste runners of bronze were found, it is evident that the practice of casting bronze was carried on in the cave, and these tongs were probably part of the founder’s apparatus. Whether they were used merely as fire-tongs, or for the purpose of lifting the crucible or melting-pot, is a question. They appear, however, much too light to be of service for the latter purpose.
In the museum of the Louvre at Paris are some Egyptian tongs of bronze, which are remarkably similar to those from Durham. A workman seated before a small fireplace, holding a blowpipe to his mouth with one hand and with a pair of tongs in the other, is shown in a painting at Thebes, published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson.[662]
What I have ventured to regard as another of the tools of the bronze-founder is a kind of pointed punch or pricker, of which an example is given in Fig. 220. This, as well as another which had lost its point, was found, with socketed celts, gouges, moulds, &c., forming the whole stock-in-trade of a bronze-founder, in the Isle of Harty, Kent. It seems to have been furnished with a wooden handle, into which the tang was driven as far as the projecting stop; and its purpose appears to have been the extraction of the cores of burnt clay from out of the sockets of the celts.
That these sockets were formed over a core of clay inserted into the mould is proved by numerous celts having been found with the cores still in them. The heat of the melted metal was sufficient to convert the clay into terracotta or brick, and in this condition the cores have been preserved. Some force was necessary to extract such hardened cores, and this could be well effected by driving in such a pointed instrument as that here figured. If the two prickers from the Harty hoard were originally of the same length, the broken one has lost a portion from its end exactly corresponding in length with the depth of the socket of the largest celts found with it; as if it had been driven home through the burnt clay quite to the bottom of the socket, and then had been broken off short at the mouth of the celt in the vain endeavour to extract it.
Some small punches, without any tang for insertion in a handle, were found with socketed celts and numerous other objects in the hoard from Reach Fen, already mentioned. One of these is shown in Fig. 221. No moulds were discovered in this case; and though the hoard has all the appearance of being the stock of an ancient bronze-founder, it is possible that these shorter punches may here have been used for some other purpose than that of extracting cores. The end of one is sharp, that of the other presents a small oblong face. It is possible that, like the instruments next to be described, these may have been punches used in the decoration of other articles of bronze. Mr. H. Prigg,[663] in his description of this hoard, has suggested such an use. The large end of the punch shown in the figure bears no mark of having been hammered; it may, however, have been struck with a wooden mallet. Punches, more chisel-shaped at the point, appear to have been in use for producing the incuse ornaments which occur on so many of the flat and flanged celts. I am not aware of any tools which were undoubtedly used for this purpose having been observed in Britain; but, as I have already remarked, there were found at Ebnall,[664] Salop, two short-edged tools, which may possibly be punches, and if so may have been applied to this use. One of these is shown in Fig. 222, the block for which has been kindly lent me by the Council of the Society of Antiquaries. The other is described as of similar form but of rather longer proportions. They were found in company with spear-heads, celts, gouges, and broad dagger-blades; but it does not appear that any of these were ornamented with punch-marked patterns. The tools may, therefore, have been merely some kind of strong chisels, possibly used for breaking off the jets and superfluous metal from the castings. The thickness of the tool is rather greater than the cut would lead one to imagine, being ½ inch. These two tools have been regarded as hammers, or possibly weights. I have now spoken of them as punches, or possibly chisels, but it may be that after all it was the broad end that was destined for use, in which case they might be regarded as anvils.
Whatever the purpose of these particular tools, there can be but little doubt that punches were in use for the ornamentation of the flat faces and the sides of celts; and it will be well to be on the look out for such tools when hoards belonging to the ancient bronze-founders are examined. For the most part, however, these seem to belong to a period posterior to that of the ornamented flat celts, though decorated spear-heads occur in them.
Some of the punches from the Fonderie de Larnaud and from the Lake-dwellings may have served for decorating other articles in bronze.
AWLS, DRILLS, OR PRICKERS.
Allied to the pointed tools last described, but considerably smaller, are the awls, drills, borers, or prickers of bronze which have so frequently been found accompanying interments in barrows. No doubt such instruments must have been in very extensive and general use; but it is only under favourable conditions that such small pieces of metal would be preserved, and when preserved it is only under conditions equally favourable that they would attract the attention of an ordinary labourer. It is, therefore, mainly to the barrow-digger that we are indebted for our knowledge of these little instruments. Many belong to a very early part of the Bronze Age, but the form continued in use through the whole period.
A somewhat detailed essay upon them has already appeared in the Archæologia[665] in the late Dr. Thurnam’s admirable and exhaustive paper on “Ancient British Barrows,” from which I am tempted largely to borrow. I am also, through the kindness of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries, enabled to make use of some of the woodcuts which illustrate Dr. Thurnam’s paper. He distinguishes three types of these instruments, which, as he points out, correspond to some extent with as many types or varieties of the bronze celt. They are as follows:—
I. That with a simply flattened end or tang for insertion into its handle.
II. That with a well-marked shoulder, where the stem and tang unite; the object being to prevent its passing too far into the handle.
III. That with a regular stop-ridge, or waist, almost as marked as that in a carpenter’s awl, as distinguished from that of a shoemaker.
One of the first type, from the Golden barrow at Upton Lovel, is engraved by Hoare,[666] and is shown in Fig. 223. With it were two cups, a necklace of amber beads, and a small bronze dagger. It is almost the longest of those found by Sir R. Colt Hoare, which were upwards of thirty in number. The only longer specimen was found in a barrow near Lake,[667] and there also some beads and a bronze dagger accompanied the interment. It is considerably thicker than Fig. 223, and the tang for insertion in the handle is broader and flatter. A smaller awl of the same character was found in a barrow on Upton Lovel Down,[668] opened by Mr. Cunnington. In this instance there were two interments in the same grave, and several flint celts and a perforated stone battle-axe were found, as well as numerous instruments of bone, and a necklace of beads of jet or lignite.
An awl of this kind (3-1/10 inches) found, with a spear-head, hammer, knife, and gouge of bronze, at Thorndon, Suffolk,[669] most of them already described, is now in the British Museum, and is shown in Fig. 224.
Several such instruments, some of them not more than an inch in length, were found by Canon Greenwell[670] in his exploration of the Yorkshire barrows. In nine cases awls or prickers accompanied interments of unburnt bodies, and in three cases they were found among burnt bones. In most instances instruments of flint were found with them. An aged woman in a barrow on Langton Wold[671] had three bronze awls or prickers, as well as an assemblage of bone instruments, animal teeth, marine shells, and other miscellaneous property, buried with her. Dr. Thurnam regarded these as drills used with a bow, but I think such an use is doubtful. Some of the awls from the Yorkshire barrows, instead of being flattened at one end, are drawn down to a point at both ends, leaving the middle of larger diameter so as to form a kind of shoulder. These, I presume, are included under Dr. Thurnam’s Type II. Sometimes this central part of the blade is square and sometimes the tang is square, like that described by Stukeley[672] from a barrow near Stonehenge as “a sharp bodkin round at one end, square at the other where it went into a handle.”
An awl, square at the centre, and round at each end in section, is shown in Fig. 225. It was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at Butterwick, Yorkshire, in company with the celt (Fig. 2), and other objects. The point has unfortunately been broken off.
A typical example of Dr. Thurnam’s second class from a barrow at Bulford,[673] Wilts, is shown in Fig. 226. Another was found at Beckhampton, and a small pricker of the same type was found with a burnt interment at Storrington,[674] Sussex. Like those found by Sir R. C. Hoare, this was regarded as the pin for fastening the cloth in which the bones were collected from the funeral pyre. The fact of several of them having been found still inserted in their hafts, as will subsequently be seen, will suffice to prove that this view is mistaken.
Several awls pointed at both ends were found by the late Mr. Bateman during his researches in the Derbyshire barrows. In Waggon Low[675] at the right shoulder of a contracted skeleton were three instruments of flint, and a small bronze awl 1½ inches long, tapering each way from the middle, which is square. Another, pointed at each end, lay with a drinking cup and a rude spear- or arrow-head of flint near the shoulder of a youthful skeleton in a barrow near Minning Low.[676] Another of the same kind was found in a barrow on Ilam Moor,[677] Staffordshire. Another was found with calcined bones in a barrow in Larks-Low,[678] Middleton.
In several instances there were traces of a wooden handle, as was the case with one, upwards of 3 inches long, which was found with a flint spear-head, a double-edged axe of basaltic stone, and objects of bone, among the calcined bones in a sepulchral urn from a barrow at Throwley.[679]
In a barrow at Haddon Field[680] there was a small drinking cup near the back of a contracted skeleton, and beneath this an arrow-head of flint, an instrument of stag’s-horn like a netting mesh, and a bronze awl showing traces of its wooden handle.
In another barrow near Gotam, Nottinghamshire,[681] there lay near the thigh of a contracted skeleton a neatly chipped spear-head of flint, and a small bronze pin which had been inserted into a wooden handle.
In a barrow near Fimber,[682] Yorkshire, opened by Messrs. Mortimer, there were found near the knee of a contracted female skeleton a knife-like chipped flint and the point of a bronze pricker or awl. With another female interment in the same barrow a bronze pricker was found inserted in a short wooden haft. The Britoness in this instance wore a necklace of jet discs with a triangular pendant of the same material.
A bronze pin, 1½ inches long, accompanied by a broken flint celt and some arrow-heads and flakes of flint, together with calcined bones, was found in an urn in Ravenshill barrow,[683] near Scarborough.
In some of the Wiltshire barrows more perfectly preserved handles have been found. One of these, copied from Hoare’s “Ancient Wiltshire,”[684] is shown in Fig. 227. It was found in the King barrow with what was probably a male skeleton buried in the hollowed trunk of an elm tree. With it was a curious urn of burnt clay and two bronze daggers, one near the breast and the other near the thigh. The handle is described as being of ivory, but I think Dr. Thurnam was right in regarding it as of bone. The awl in this instance is of the third type, having a well-marked collar round it. Another of the same character, but retaining only a small part of the haft, so that the shoulder is better shown, was found with burnt bones in an urn deposited in a barrow near Stonehenge.[685] No mention is made as to the nature of the material of which the haft was formed.
In the case of an awl of the first type, engraved by Dr. Thurnam, and here reproduced as Fig. 228, the handle is of wood, but the kind of wood is not mentioned.
One or two bronze or brass awls with square shoulders are in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.[686] Several awls with their original wooden handles have been found in the Lake-dwellings of Savoy,[687] and others in hafts of stag’s-horn in the Swiss Lake-dwellings.
Whether the twisted pins from the Wiltshire barrows are of the nature of gimlets, as suggested by Dr. Thurnam, is a difficult question. I shall, however, prefer to treat of them as personal ornaments rather than as tools. It is possible that they may to some extent have combined the two functions. As to the instruments which I have been describing being piercing tools or awls, there seems to be little doubt; and Mr. Bateman can hardly have been far wrong in regarding them as intended to pierce skins or leather. Though not curved like the cobbler’s awl of the present day, they are probably early members of the same family. In Scandinavia these instruments are of frequent occurrence, sometimes being provided with ornamental handles also made of bronze.[688] They are in that part of Europe often found in company with tweezers and small knives of bronze, and all were probably used together in sewing, the hole being bored by the awl and the thread drawn through by the tweezers and, when necessary, cut with the knife. Possibly the use of bristles as substitutes for needles dates back to very early times.
In one instance at least tweezers have been found in Britain in company with objects apparently belonging to the Bronze Age, though no doubt to a very late part of it. Those represented in Fig. 229 were discovered near Llangwyllog,[689] Anglesea, together with a two-edged razor, a bracelet, buttons, rings, &c., which are now in the British Museum.
A more highly ornamented pair of tweezers, with a broad end, found with a bone comb, a quern, spindle-whorls, &c., in a Picts’ house near Kettleburn,[690] Caithness, belongs to a considerably later period.
The needles of bronze found in the British Isles do not as a rule appear to belong to the Bronze Period, though some of those found on the Continent seem to date back to that age. Two are engraved by Wilde,[691] and there are altogether eighteen such articles in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. A broken specimen (1¼ inch) from the sand-hills near Glenluce,[692] Wigtonshire, has been figured.
Another useful article anciently formed of bronze—though perhaps not, strictly speaking, a tool—may as well be mentioned in this place; I mean the fish-hook, of which, however, I am able to cite but one example as having been found in the British Isles. This was found in Ireland, and is shown in Fig. 230,[693] kindly lent by the Royal Irish Academy.
Fish-hooks of bronze have been found in considerable abundance on the site of several of the Swiss Lake-dwellings; and it is not a little remarkable that in form many of them are almost identical with the steel fish-hooks of the present day. The barb, to prevent the fish from struggling off the hook, is in most instances present, and double hooks are occasionally found. The attachment to the line was, even in the single hooks, frequently made by a loop or eye, formed by flattening and turning back the upper part of the shank of the hook. Fish-hooks were found in the Fonderie de Larnaud (Jura),[694] and in the hoard of St. Pierre-en-Châtre (Oise).
Such are the principal forms of tools and instruments of bronze found in these islands. Some of them, such as the socketed gouges, hammers, and chisels, can only belong to the latter part of the Bronze Period, when the art of using cores in order to produce sockets or other hollow recesses in castings was well known. Others, like the simple awls so frequently found in company with instruments of flint in our barrows, appear to extend from the commencement of the Bronze Age to its close.
There still remains to be described a class of instruments in use by the husbandman, and not by the warrior; and as the present chapter has extended to such a length, it will be well to treat of these under a separate heading.
VIII. SICKLES
SICKLES are the only undoubtedly agricultural implements in bronze with which we are acquainted in this country. Already in the Stone Period the cultivation of cereals for food appears to have been practised, and I have elsewhere[695] pointed out a form of flint instrument which may possibly have supplied the place of sickles or reaping hooks in those early times. The rarity of bronze sickles in this country, as compared with their abundance in some parts of Southern Europe, is, however, somewhat striking, and may, perhaps, point to a considerably less cultivation of grain crops in Britain than in countries with a warmer climate, while the inhabitants were otherwise in much the same stage of civilisation.
The traditions of the use of bronze sickles survived to a comparatively late period in Greece and Italy, and Medea is described by Sophocles[696] as cutting her magic herbs with such instruments (Χαλκέοισιν ἤμα δρεπάνοις τομάς), and by Ovid[697] as doing it “curvamine falcis ahenæ.” Elissa is by Virgil[698] represented as using a bronze sickle for similar purposes—
“Falcibus et messæ ad lunam quæruntur aënis Pubentes herbæ nigri cum lacte veneni.”
When bronze sickles were used for reaping corn it seems to have been a common custom merely to cut the ears of corn from off the straw, after the manner of the Gaulish reaping machine described by Pliny,[699] and not to cut and carry away straw and ear together from the field. This practice will probably account for the small size of the sickles which have come down to us, unless we are to reverse the argument, and derive the custom of cutting off the ears only from the diminutive size of the instruments employed for reaping.
Bronze sickles were hafted in different ways, sometimes being fastened to the handle by a pin, either attached to the stem of the blade or passing through a hole in it, combined with some system of binding; and sometimes being provided with a socket into which the haft was driven, and then secured by a transverse pin or rivet.
The sickles with a socket to receive the handle appear to be peculiar to Britain and the North of France. The other form occurs over the greater part of Europe, including Scandinavia, and the blades, as has been observed by Dr. Keller, are always adapted for use in the right hand. Dr. Gross, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne, has been so fortunate as to discover at Mœrigen, the site of one of the ancient pile-villages on the lake, two or three handles for sickles of this kind. A figure showing three views of one of these handles has been published by the Royal Archæological Institute,[700] and is here by permission reproduced as Fig. 231. This handle is formed of yew, curiously carved so as to receive the thumb and fingers, and has a flat place at the end against which the blade was fastened. In this place there are two grooves to receive the slightly projecting ribs with which the stem of the sickle-blade is usually strengthened. Dr. Keller[701] has suggested that the blade of the sickle was made fast to the handle by means of a kind of ferrule which passed over it, and was secured in its place by two pins or nails.
The end of the handle forms a ridge, through which are two holes that would admit a small cord for the suspension of the sickle, and thus prevent its being lost either on land or water. We find this sailor-like habit prevailing among the Lake-dwellers in the case of their flint knives also, the handles of which were often perforated.
There is a remarkable resemblance in character between this handle and some of those in use among the Esquimaux[702] for their planes and knives, which are recessed in the same manner for the reception of the fingers and the thumb.
Some iron sickles, of nearly the same form as those in bronze with the flat stem, were present in the great Danish find of the Early Iron Age at Vimose,[703] described by Mr. C. Engelhardt. The chord of the curved blades is from 6 to 7 inches in length, and one of the instruments still retained its original wooden handle. This is between 9 and 10 inches long, and is curved at the part intended to receive the hand. The end is conical, like the head of a screw, and is evidently thus made in order to give a secure hold to the reaper when drawing the sickle towards him. Sickles with nearly similar handles were in use in Smaaland,[704] in the South of Sweden, until recent days.
Of sickles without a socket but few have been found in Britain, and those mostly in our Western Counties. In a remarkable hoard found in a turbary at Edington Burtle,[705] near Glastonbury, Somersetshire, were four of these flat sickles. One of these had never been finished, but had been left rough as it came from the mould, into which the metal had been run through a channel near the point of the sickle. A projection still marks the place where the jet was broken off. As will be seen from Fig. 232, this blade is provided with two projecting pins for the purpose of attaching it to the handle. In this respect it differs from the sickles of the ordinary continental type, which, when of this character, have usually but a single knob.
Another of the Edington sickles with a single projection is shown in Fig. 233. This blade is more highly ornamented, and has a rib along the middle in addition to that along the back, no doubt for the purpose of increasing stiffness while diminishing weight. Of the other two sickles found at Edington, one is imperfect and the other much worn. Both are provided with the two projecting pins.
Two other sickles found on Sparkford Hill,[706] also in Somersetshire, present the same peculiarity. One of these much resembles Fig. 233, though nearly straight along the back. The other is flat on both faces. Each has lost its point. A chisel-like tool was found with them.
With the Edington sickles were found a broad fluted penannular armlet and what may have been a finger-ring of the same pattern, a plain penannular armlet of square section, part of a light funicular torque like Fig. 467, part of a ribbon torque like Fig. 469, and four penannular rings, some of them apparently made from fragments of torques.
Two other sickles of the same character, each with two projecting pins, were found in Taunton[707] itself in association with twelve palstaves, a socketed celt, a hammer (Fig. 214), a fragment of a spear-head, a double-edged knife, a funicular torque (Fig. 468), a pin (Fig. 451), some fragments of other pins, and several penannular rings of various sizes.
All the objects found at Edington, Sparkford Hill, and Taunton are now in the museum in Taunton Castle.
A thinner form of flat sickle, if such it be, has been found in Kent. Among a number of bronze objects which were discovered at Marden,[708] near Staplehurst, there is a slightly curved blade with a rivet at one end, which appears to present a sickle-like character. I have not seen the original, and as it is described as a knife-blade it may prove to have been one, or possibly, what is of far rarer occurrence, a saw.
Of socketed sickles a few have at different times been dredged up from the Thames. One of these, found in 1859, is in my own collection, and is shown in Fig. 234. The blade, which is almost as sharp at the back as at the edge, is not quite central with the socket, but so placed as to make the instrument better adapted for use in the right hand than in the left. The socket tapers considerably, and is closed at the end.
In another sickle found in the Thames, near Bray, Berks[709] (Fig. 235), the socket dies into the blade instead of forming a distinct feature. A third, found near Windsor, and engraved in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries,[710] closely resembles Fig. 234, but the end of the socket, instead of being closed, is open. The blade of this also is sharp on both edges.
One from Stretham Fen, in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (about 5½ inches), is of the same character. It has two rivet-holes in the socket. Another from Downham Fen (5¾ inches) is sharp on both edges.
In the Norwich Museum is a sickle of somewhat the same character as Fig. 235, but the socket instead of being oval is oblong, and is placed at a less angle to the blade, which in this case also is double-edged. The socket is 11/16 by 7/16 inch, and has one rivet-hole through it. The curved knife from Wicken Fen, to be described in the next chapter, much resembles this Norwich example in outline. Another sickle from Norfolk[711] was exhibited to the Archæological Institute in 1851. Mr. Franks has shown me a sketch of another found at Dereham which has the external edge of the blade extending across the end of the socket. Both edges of the blade are sharp.
But few sickles have been found in Scotland. That shown in Fig. 236 was found in the Tay,[712] near Errol, Perthshire, in 1840, and has been described by Dr. J. Alexander Smith. The block, which has been kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, is engraved on the scale of two-thirds linear, instead of my usual scale of one-half. The main difference between this specimen and mine from the Thames (Fig. 234) consists in the blade being fluted. Another more rudely made sickle, found at Edengerach,[713] Premnay, Aberdeenshire, has also been engraved. This has a single central rib along the blade and no rivet-hole through the socket. Perhaps it is an unfinished casting.
In Sinclair’s “Statistical Account of Scotland”[714] it is stated that an instrument of this class was found at Ledbeg, Sutherlandshire, and was pronounced by the Earl of Bristol, then Bishop of Derry, to whom it was presented, to be a Druidical pruning hook similar to several found in England.
In Ireland these instruments are much more abundant. Eleven specimens are mentioned by Wilde[715] as being in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, and there are three in the British Museum, as well as one in that at Edinburgh.
That engraved as Fig. 237 is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., and was found at Garvagh, county Derry. The blade is fluted somewhat like that of the Tay specimen. In one of those engraved by Wilde (Fig. 405) it is more highly ornamented. In another the socket is not closed at the end, but resembles that of the Windsor example already mentioned. This appears to be the one engraved by Vallancey[716] who observes that it was “called by the Irish a Seare,” and that it was used “to cut herbs, acorns, misletoe, &c.” In another[717] the blade forms a direct continuation of the socket as in Fig. 238, which is engraved from a specimen in the British Museum, found near Athlone, county Westmeath.
Vallancey, in his “Collectanea,” has figured another. In the collection of Mr. J. Holmes is another example of this type. Another sickle of the same character as Fig. 237, found near Ballygawley,[718] Tyrone, has also been figured. This specimen is among those in the British Museum.
A socketed sickle, double-edged, and with a concavity on each side at the angle between the blade and the socket so deep as to meet and form a hole, was found in Alderney, and is engraved in the Archæological Association Journal.[719] With it were found socketed celts, spear-heads, and broken swords and daggers. This may be regarded as a French rather than an English example.
In my own collection is another, from the Seine at Paris, about 7 inches in length along the outer edge of the blade, which extends past the end of the socket. This still contains a part of the wooden handle, which has been secured in its place by two rivets, apparently of bronze. In general outline this sickle is much like Fig. 234, but the blade is narrower and more curved and the socket more flattened. In the museum at Amiens is another sickle, in form closely resembling Fig. 234, but with a loop at the back of the socket. M. Chantre in his magnificent work, “L’Age du Bronze,” does not specify this socketed type, though he divides the form without socket into five different varieties. The socketed form appears to be quite unknown in the South of France, as it also is in Switzerland.
These three are the only instances I can cite of socketed sickles having been found outside the British Isles, so that this type of instrument appears to be peculiarly our own. The existence of a socket shows that the form does not belong to an early period in the Bronze Age, and the same is to be inferred from the character of the other bronze objects with which the Alderney sickle was found associated.
Inasmuch as the continental forms are as a rule different from the British, and as they are, moreover, well known, it will suffice to indicate some few of the works in which descriptions of them will be found. Some from Camenz, in Saxony, have been engraved in illustration of a paper by myself in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries.[720]
Others from Germany, some of which are said to have Roman numerals upon them, have been figured by Lindenschmit.[721]
Examples from Italy have been given by Strobel,[722] Gastaldi,[723] Lindenschmit,[724] and others.
They have been found in great abundance in some of the settlements on the lakes of Switzerland and Savoy. It has been thought that the Lake-dwellers did not cut off merely the ears of their corn,[725] but “that the straw was taken with it, otherwise there would not have been the seeds of so many weeds in the corn.” Diodorus Siculus, however, who wrote in the first century B.C., tells us distinctly that the Britons gathered in their harvest by cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in subterraneous repositories. From these they picked the oldest day by day for their food. Whether for threshing they made use of the tribulum,[726] that “sharp threshing instrument having teeth,” before Roman times, is doubtful; but that so primitive an instrument, armed with flakes of flint or other stone, should have remained in use in some Mediterranean countries until the present day, is a remarkable instance of the power of survival of ancient customs. Such an instance of persistence in a primitive form much reduces the extreme improbability of the use of bronze sickles in Germany having lasted until a time when Roman numerals might appear upon them. If every St. Andrew’s cross and every straight line found upon ancient instruments is to be regarded as a Roman numeral, and the objects bearing them are to be referred to Roman times as their earliest possible date, the range of Roman antiquities will be much enlarged, and will be found to contain, among other objects, a large number of the bronze knives from the Swiss Lake-dwellings; for one of the most common ornaments on the backs of these knives consists of a repetition of the pattern XIIIIIXIIIIIXIIIII.
Even were it proved that in some part of Europe the use of bronze sickles survived to so late a date as supposed by Dr. Lindenschmit, their great scarcity in the British Isles affords a conclusive argument against their being assigned to the period of the Roman occupation, of which other remains have come down to us in such abundance.
IX. KNIVES, RAZORS, ETC
IT is a question whether, if in this work strict regard had been paid to the development of different forms of cutting implements, the knife ought not to have occupied the first place, rather than the hatchet or celt; for when bronze was first employed for cutting purposes it was no doubt extremely scarce, and would therefore hardly have been available for any but the smaller kinds of tools and weapons.
Both hatchets and knives, or rather knife-daggers, have been found with interments in barrows; but it seems better to include the majority of the latter class of instruments, which appear to occupy an intermediate place between tools and weapons, in the next chapter, which treats of daggers; rather than in this, which will be devoted to what appear to be forms of tools and implements. Some of these, however, like the celt or hatchet, may have been equally available both for peaceful and warlike uses; and though I have to some extent tried to keep tools and weapons under different headings, it appears impossible completely to carry out any such system of arrangement. Nor in treating of what I have regarded as knives does it seem convenient first to describe what appear to be the simpler and older forms, inasmuch as there are other forms which in all respects except the shape of the blade so closely resemble some of the socketed sickles described in the last chapter, that they seem almost of necessity to follow immediately in order. The first instrument which I shall cite has sometimes indeed been regarded as a sickle, though it is more properly speaking a curved knife.
It was found in Wicken Fen, and is now in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, the Council of which has kindly permitted me to engrave it as Fig. 239. It has already been figured, but not quite accurately, in the Archæological Journal,[727] the rib at the back of the blade being omitted. I am not aware of any other example of this form of knife having been found in the United Kingdom, but a double-edged socketed knife with a curved blade, found in Ireland, is in the Bateman Collection.
The ordinary form of socketed knife has a straight double-edged blade, extending from an oval or oblong socket, pierced by one or two holes, through which rivets or pins could pass to secure the haft. These holes are usually at right angles to the axis of the blade, but sometimes in the same plane with it.
Fig. 240 shows a knife with two rivet-holes, which was found at Thorndon, Suffolk, together with socketed celts, a spear-head, hammer, gouge, and an awl, several of which have been figured in preceding pages. Another (9 inches long), much like Fig. 240, but with the sides of the socket flat, and the blade more fluted, was found in the Thames, and is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[728] Another, of much the same size and general character, formed part of a hoard of bronze objects found in Reach Fen, near Burwell, of which mention has already frequently been made. It is in my own collection, and is shown in Fig. 241. I have another, 6½ inches long, found in Edmonton Marsh.
A fine blade of this kind, with two rivet-holes in the hilt (14½ inches), was found in the New Forest, Glamorganshire, and was formerly in the Meyrick Collection.[729] It is now in the British Museum. The blade has shallow flutings parallel with the edges.
A socketed knife of this kind (4½ inches) was found by General A. Pitt Rivers, F.R.S., in a pit at the foot of the interior slope of the rampart of Highdown Camp,[730] near Worthing, Sussex. It may possibly have accompanied a funereal deposit.
In some instances the two rivet-holes run lengthways of the oval of the socket. One such, discovered with other objects at Lanant, Cornwall (8¼ inches), is engraved in the Archæologia.[731] It is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. One like it was found on Holyhead Mountain,[732] Anglesea, and is now in the British Museum.
A fragment of a knife of this kind is in the museum at Amiens, and formed part of a hoard found near that town. It has a beading at the mouth of the socket, and also one about midway between the rivet-holes.
Commonly there is but a single hole through the socket, especially in the smaller specimens. That shown in Fig. 242 is of this kind, but presents the remarkable feature of having upon each face of the socket six small projecting bosses simulating rivet-heads. It was found in the Heathery Burn Cave,[733] Durham, with socketed celts, spear-heads, and numerous other articles. Another from the same cave (5⅛ inches) with a plain and rather larger socket is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
Of other specimens, but without the small bosses, the following may be mentioned:—One (6½ inches long) found with socketed celts, part of a sword blade, and a gouge, at Martlesham, Suffolk, and in the possession of Captain Brooke, of Ufford Hall. Two found in the Thames near Wallingford.[734] Another (5⅜ inches), from the same source, in my own collection. This was found with a socketed celt, gouge, chisel, and razor (Fig. 269). One from Llandysilio, Denbighshire, found with socketed celts and a spear-head, is in Canon Greenwell’s collection. A knife of this kind was among the relics found above the stalagmite in Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay.
I have a knife of this character (4¾ inches), but with the rivet-hole in a line with the edges of the blade, found in Dorsetshire.
In Scotland the socketed form of knife is very rare.
That shown in Fig. 243 was found at Kilgraston, Perthshire, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. It has a central rib along the blade and two shorter lateral ribs, and in some respects has more the appearance of being a spear-head than a knife.
Another, with the rivet-hole in the same plane as the blade, was found near Campbelton, Argyleshire, and has been engraved as a spear-head by Professor Daniel Wilson.[735] The discovery of a blade having its original handle, as subsequently mentioned, proves, however, that some of these are rightly regarded as knives, though another form (Fig. 328) has more the appearance of being a spear-head. The curved knife with a socket, figured by the same author,[736] can hardly, I think, be Scottish.
In Ireland the socketed form of knife is more abundant than in either England or Scotland. No less than thirty-three such knives[737] are recorded by Sir W. Wilde, as preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, of five of which he gives figures. Many specimens also exist in private collections.
That shown in Fig. 244 is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., and was found at Kells, Co. Meath. As will be observed, the blade is at the base somewhat wider than the socket. The indented lines upon it appear to have been produced in the casting, and not added by any subsequent process. A knife of the same kind, found in the Bog of Aughrane, near Athleague, Co. Galway, is still attached to the original handle, which, like many of those of the flint knives found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings, is formed of yew. It has been several times figured.[738]
I have a specimen of the same character, but in outline more like Fig. 240, 6 inches long, from the North of Ireland.
A knife of this kind, found in a hoard at St. Genouph, is in the Tours Museum.
In some instances the junction between the blade and the socket is made to resemble that between the hilt and blade of some of the bronze swords and daggers, such as Figs. 291 and 349.
The example shown in Fig. 245 is in my own collection. I do not, however, know in what part of Ireland it was found. The rivet-hole is at the side, and not on the face, in which, however, there is a slight flaw, which assumes the appearance of a hole in the figure. In Canon Greenwell’s collection is a nearly similar specimen (10¾ inches), found at Balteragh, Co. Derry, with two rivet-holes at the side and the socket somewhat ornamented by parallel grooves at the mouth and at the junction with the blade.
One of the socketed knives in the Academy Museum at Dublin has two rivet-holes on the face. Of the others, about two-thirds have a single rivet-hole on the face, and the other third one on the side.
A long blade, somewhat differing in its details from Fig. 245, was found between Lurgan and Moira, Co. Down, and, it is stated, in company with the bronze hilt or pommel shown in Fig. 246. These objects formed part of the Wilshe Collection, and are now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Two objects, somewhat similar to Fig. 246, found with spear-heads in Cambridgeshire, will subsequently be mentioned. A piece of bronze of much the same form, found with a hoard of bronze objects at Marden,[739] in Kent, seems to be a jet or waste piece from a casting. It has, however, been regarded as part of a fibula.
The socketed form of knife is hardly known upon the Continent, though, as will have been observed, it has occasionally been found in the North of France. Among the fragments of metal forming part of the deposit of an ancient bronze-founder, and discovered at Dreuil, near Amiens, I have the fragments of two such knives. I have also a fine and entire specimen, 9¼ inches long, from the bed of the Seine at Charenton, near Paris. There is a transverse rib at each end and in the middle of the socket, through the face of which are two rivet-holes. A portion of the original wooden handle is still in the socket, secured in its place by two pins, also apparently of wood, which pass through the rivet-holes. Another knife (6⅝ inches), like Fig. 241, but with only one rivet-hole, was also found in the Seine at Paris, and is now in my collection.
Several socketed knives with curved blades have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings, and one such, found with the sickle already mentioned, is in the Amiens Museum.
There is another form of socketed knife which it will be well here to mention. The blade is sharp on both sides, but instead of being flat it is curved into a semicircle. For a typical example I am obliged to have recourse to a French specimen.
That shown in Fig. 247 is in my own collection, and was found with a gold torque and bracelet, a bronze anvil (Fig. 217), and other objects, at Fresné la Mère, near Falaise, Calvados. It seems well adapted for working out hollows in wood. With it was found a small, tanged, single-edged knife, the end of which is bent to a smaller curve.
An instrument of much the same character (4 inches) was found, with a bronze sword, spear-heads, &c., in the Island of Skye, and is now in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. As Professor Daniel Wilson[740] observes, “in general appearance it resembles a bent spear-head, but it has a raised central ridge on the inside, while it is nearly plain and smooth on the outer side.—The most probable use for which it has been designed would seem to be for scraping out the interior of canoes and other large vessels made from the trunk of the oak.” It is shown as Fig. 248. Another instrument of the same kind (4½ inches), found at Wester Ord, Invergordon, Ross-shire, is engraved in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,[741] and is here by their permission reproduced as Fig. 249.
It seems by no means improbable that such instruments may have been mistaken for bent spear-heads, and that they are not quite so rare as would at present appear.
Two specimens of the socketed form have been found in the Lake settlement of the Eaux Vives, near Geneva, and are now in the museum of that town. Another, with a tang, is in the collection of M. Forel, of Morges, and was found among the pile-dwellings near that place.
A fragment of what appears to have been one of these curved knives, but with a solid handle, and not a socket, was found with gouges and various fragments at Hounslow, and is now in the British Museum.
What seems to be a tanged curved knife of this kind formed part of the great Bologna hoard.
Another form of knife, which appears to be intermediate between those with sockets and those with merely a flat tang, is shown in Fig. 250. In this there are loops extending across the blade on either side, which would receive the ends of the two pieces of wood or horn destined to form the handle, so that a single rivet sufficed to bind them and the blade between them firmly together.
The original was found in Reach Fen, Cambridgeshire, and is now in my own collection. The blade has the appearance of having been originally longer, but of being now worn away by use. I know of no other specimen of the kind. The power to cast such loops upon the blade is a proof of no ordinary skill in the founder.
A palstave with a loop of this kind instead of a stop or side-flanges was found at Donsard,[742] Haute Savoie.
Another form of knife or dagger has merely a flat tang, in some cases provided with rivets by which it could be fastened to a handle, in others without rivets, as if it had been simply driven into a handle.
The blade shown in Fig. 251 was found in the same hoard as that engraved as Fig. 241. The rivets are fast attached to the blade, and the handle through which they passed was probably of some perishable material, such as wood, horn, or bone.
Another blade (5¼ inches), with a broad tang and two rivet-holes, was found in the Thames.[743]
In the British Museum is a knife much like the figure, 8 inches long, and showing three facets on the blade, found in the Thames at Kingston.
The knife-blades with broad tangs, which were not riveted to their handles, were in some instances provided with a central ridge upon the tang, which served to steady them in their handles, and in others the stem or tang was left plain.
One of the former class, from the Heathery Burn Cave, is shown in Fig. 252. It is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
An imperfect knife of the same kind, found in Yorkshire, is in the Scarborough Museum.
Another, with the edges more ogival, like Fig. 241, was found in the neighbourhood of Nottingham,[744] with socketed celts and numerous other objects in bronze.
Another, broader at the base and more like a dagger in character, was found with various other articles at Marden,[745] Kent.
More leaf-shaped and sharply pointed blades of this kind, probably daggers rather than knives, have been often found in Ireland. One[746] (10½ inches) has been figured by Wilde. Another was in the Dowris hoard.
In the Isle of Harty hoard, already more than once cited, was a knife with a plain tang, shown in Fig. 253. It has rather the appearance of having been made from the point of a broken sword, as the edges of the tang have been “upset” by hammering. The blade itself is now narrower than the tang, the result probably of much wear and use.
The end of a broken sword in the Dowris hoard has been converted into a knife in a similar manner. In the collection of the late Lord Braybrooke is what appears to be part of a tanged knife, sharpened at the broken end so as to form a chisel.
In the Reach Fen hoard was a knife (4⅛ inches) of much the same character, but not so broad in the tang.
A flat blade with a tang for insertion in a haft must have been a very early form of metal tool. Among the Assyrian relics from Tel Sifr, in South Babylonia, such blades were found, of which there are examples in the British Museum.
Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., has two leaf-shaped blades of copper, with tangs set in handles of bone rather longer than the blades, which were lately in use among the Esquimaux. In form they resemble Fig. 257.
It will now be well to mention some of the other Irish specimens of this class.
The knives with the projecting rib upon the tang are by no means uncommon, and there are several in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy and elsewhere. Canon Greenwell has one (6⅜ inches) from Ballynascreen, Co. Tyrone, much like that from the Heathery Burn Cave (Fig. 252).
The knife or dagger with a plain tang and an ornamented blade engraved as Fig. 254 is in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Another, simply ridged and with a single rivet-hole in the tang, found at Craigs,[747] Co. Antrim, is in the collection of Mr. R. Day, F.S.A. It is less round-ended than the blade with a central rib along it and one rivet-hole in the tang, shown in Fig. 255. This is in my own collection, and was found at Ballyclare, Co. Antrim.
A mould for blades of this character will subsequently be mentioned.
Another form of knife, unless possibly it was intended for a lance-head, is shown in Fig. 256. This specimen is also from the Reach Fen hoard, but is of yellower metal and differently patinated from the objects found with it. Canon Greenwell has a knife of the same form (4¾ inches), found at Seamer Carr, Yorkshire. Another, smaller (3⅜ inches), is in the British Museum, but its place of finding is not known. A nearly similar blade, found near Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, is shown in Fig. 257.
Another example of this form (5⅜ inches) is in the British Museum.
Sir W. Wilde[748] has figured some other examples of the same kind, from 3 to 4 inches long, which he regarded as arrow-heads. They appear to me, however, too large for such a purpose.
In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy is yet another variety, with the blade pierced in the centre (Fig. 258).
Before proceeding to describe some other symmetrical double-edged blades, it will be well to notice such, few examples as have been found of single-edged blades, like the ordinary knives of the present day. Abundant as these are, not only in the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, but in France and other continental countries, they are of extremely rare occurrence in the British Isles.
In Fig. 259 I have engraved a small instrument of this kind, found at Wigginton, near Tring, Herts, the handle of which terminates in the head of an animal. It was therefore not intended for insertion into a haft of some other material.
I have another bronze knife, rather longer and narrower, and with a pointed tang, which is said to have been found in London; but of this I am by no means certain.
The rude knife found with the Isle of Harty hoard, and shown full size as Fig. 260, is the only other English specimen with which I am acquainted, but no doubt more exist.
The only specimen mentioned in the Catalogue of the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is in all 14 inches long, with a thick back and notched tang, and of this the place of finding is unknown. Professor Daniel Wilson[749] speaks of it as having been found in Ayrshire, and regards it as a reaping instrument. He also figures a socketed knife of much the same size from the collection of Sir John Clerk at Penicuick House, in which are also some tanged specimens. I cannot help suspecting that these are of foreign origin.
In Ireland the form appears to be at present unknown.
In Fig. 261 is shown a knife of a form which is of extremely rare occurrence in this country; though, as will be seen, it has frequently been found in France.
The specimen here figured has been kindly lent me by Mr. Humphrey Wickham, of Strood, and was found with a hoard of bronze objects at Allhallows, Hoo,[750] Kent. The hoard contained socketed celts, gouges, a spear-head, fragments of swords, and the object engraved as Fig. 286. One more crescent-like in form was found with a hoard of bronze objects near Meldreth, Cambridgeshire, and is in the British Museum.
Knives of this kind were associated with celts, gouges, &c., in the hoard of Notre-Dame d’Or, now in the museum at Poitiers. Two also were present in the Alderney hoard found near the Pierre du Villain.[751]
Some knives of this character were found with a hoard of bronze tools and weapons at Questembert, Brittany, and are now in the museum at Vannes. A broken one was in the hoard of the Jardin des Plantes, Nantes.[752] One from La Manche is engraved in the Memoirs of the Society of Antiquaries of Normandy, 1827-8, pl. xvi. 20. A knife of this character of rectangular form, each side being brought to an edge, was found with other bronze relics at Plonéour, Brittany, and is engraved in the Archæologia Cambrensis.[753] In character this knife closely resembles some of those in flint.[754] A kind of triangular knife of the same character was found at Briatexte[755] (Tarn). One from the station of Eaux Vives, in the Lake of Geneva, has the face ornamented at the blunt margin with a vandyke of hatched triangles. In some French varieties there are rings at the top of the blade instead of holes through it. In a curious specimen from St. Jullien, Chapleuil, in the collection of M. Aymard, at Le Puy, the edge is nearly semicircular, and there are eight round holes through the blade as well as two rings at the back. Some of the razors from the Lake-dwellings of Savoy and Switzerland are of much the same character as these knives. I have a knife of this class with a rather large triangular opening in it and two circular loops, found at Bernissart, Hainault.[756] Another somewhat different was found at Lavène[757] (Tarn).
A Danish[758] knife of this character has five circular loops along the hollowed back. A Mecklenburg[759] knife has three such loops and corded festoons of bronze between.
The bronze knife or razor, shown full size in Fig. 262, was found at Cottle,[760] near Abingdon, and is now in the British Museum. It is of a peculiar and distinct type, but somewhat resembles in character the oblong bronze cutting instrument found at Plonéour, Brittany, already mentioned. It is thinner and flatter than would appear from the figure. A Mecklenburg[761] knife or razor figured by Lisch is analogous in form.
I have a rough and imperfect blade of somewhat the same character as that from Cottle, but thinner and more curved. It has no hole through it, but thickens out at one end into a short boat-shaped projection about ½ inch long. It was found near Londonderry.
A diminutive pointed blade which appears to be too small to have been in use as a dagger, and which from the rivet-hole through the tang can hardly have served as an arrow or lance head, is shown in Fig. 263. This specimen formed part of the Reach Fen hoard. A very small example of this kind of blade, from a barrow near Robin Hood’s Ball, Wilts, has been figured by the late Dr. Thurnam, F.S.A., in his second exhaustive paper on “Ancient British Barrows,” published in the Archæologia,[762] from which I have derived much useful information.
A small blade with the sides more curved is shown in Fig. 264, which I have copied from Dr. Thurnam’s engraving.[763] The original was found in Lady Low, Staffordshire.
A smaller example, with a longer and imperforated tang, found in an urn at Broughton,[764] Lincolnshire, and now in the British Museum, has been thought to be an arrow-head; but I agree with Dr. Thurnam in regarding both it and the small blades described by Hoare[765] as arrow-heads, as being more probably small double-edged knives.
Some remarks as to the almost if not absolutely entire absence of bronze arrow-heads in this country will be found in a subsequent page.
The larger specimens of these tanged blades of somewhat triangular outline I have described as daggers, but I must confess that the distinction between knives and daggers is in such cases purely arbitrary. The more rounded forms which now follow seem rather of the nature of tools or toilet instruments than weapons.
Fig. 265, copied from Dr. Thurnam’s plate,[766] represents what has been regarded as a razor blade. It was found in a barrow at Winterslow, Wilts, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Its resemblance to the leaf of rib-wort (Plantago media) has been pointed out by Dr. Thurnam, who records that it was found in an urn with burnt bones and a set of beautiful amber buttons or studs. He has also figured one of nearly the same size, but with fewer ribs, from a barrow at Priddy, Somerset. This also has been regarded as an arrow-head, though it is 3 inches long and 1½ inches broad. It has a small rivet-hole through the tang. The original is now in the Bristol Museum, and its edge is described as sharp enough to mend a pen.[767] I have reproduced it in Fig. 266. A blade of much the same kind was found in an urn, with an axe-hammer of stone and a whetstone, at Broughton-in-Craven,[768] in 1675.
Canon Greenwell records the finding of an oval knife (2⅞ inches) with burnt bones in an urn at Nether Swell,[769] Gloucestershire.
A flat blade, almost circular, with a somewhat longer tang than any here figured, formed part of the great Bologna hoard.
These instruments are occasionally found in Scotland. Some of them are of rather larger size, and ornamented in a different manner upon the face.
A small plain oval blade, which has possibly lost its tang, was found in a tumulus at Lieraboll,[770] Kildonan, Sutherland, and has been figured. Two oval blades were found with burnt bones in urns near St. Andrews.[771]
Another, found in a large cinerary urn at Balblair,[772] Sutherlandshire, is shown full size in Fig. 267. The edges are very thin and sharp, and the central rib shown in the section is ornamented with incised lines.
Another blade of the same character, but ornamented with a lozenge pattern, and with the midrib less pronounced, is shown in Fig. 268, also of the actual size. It was found in a tumulus at Rogart,[773] Sutherland.
Another, apparently more perfect, and with many more lozenges in the pattern, is engraved in Gordon’s “Itinerarium Septentrionale.”[774] He describes it as “the end of a spear or Hasta Pura of old mixt brass, finely chequered.” It was in Baron Clerk’s collection.
The only English example which I can adduce was found with some sickles, a torque, and numerous other objects at Taunton. It is of nearly the same size and shape as Fig. 267, but the centre plate is fluted with a slight ridge along the middle and one on either side, and is not ornamented. It is described as a lance-head in the Archæological Journal.[775]
I am not aware of any such blades having ever been found in Ireland, in which country the plainer forms of oval razors also seem to be extremely rare.
In Canon Greenwell’s Collection is an oval blade (4 inches) with a flat central rib, tapering to a point, running along it. It has no tang, but there is a rivet-hole through the broad end of the rib. It was found in an urn with burnt bones at Killyless, Co. Antrim.
The form most commonly known under the name of razor is that shown in Fig. 269, from a specimen in my own collection, found in the Thames, with a socketed knife and other objects, near Wallingford. One of almost identical character was found at Llangwyllog,[776] Anglesea.
Another, without midrib, from the Heathery Burn Cave, is, by the permission of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., shown as Fig. 270.
An example from Wiltshire[777] in the Stourhead Museum (now at Devizes) is more barbed at the base and rounded at the top, in which there is neither notch nor perforation.
It is difficult to assign a use for the small hole usually to be seen in these blades. It may possibly be by way of precaution against the fissure in the blade extending too far, though in most cases the notch in the end of the blade does not extend to the hole.
Razors of this character have been discovered in Scotland. Three which are believed to have been found together in a tumulus at Bowerhouses, near Dunbar,[778] Haddingtonshire, about 1825, are shown in Figs. 271, 272, and 273. They are all in the Antiquarian Museum, at Edinburgh, together with a socketed celt found with them.
Razors of the class last described have been found in Ireland, and three are mentioned in Wilde’s Catalogue[779] of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, to the Council of which body I am indebted for the use of Fig. 274. The midrib of the specimen here shown is decorated with ring ornaments formed of incised concentric circles, an ornament of frequent use in early times, though but rarely occurring on objects of bronze in Britain. There is a large razor of this kind in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. Several unornamented blades of this character were present in the Dowris hoard. Two which were found in a crannoge[780] in the county of Monaghan were regarded as bifid arrow-heads. One of these (2⅝ inches) is in the British Museum.
A blade of this kind, but with a loop instead of a tang, and a hole at the base of the blade as well as one near the bottom at the notch, was found at Deurne,[781] Guelderland, and is in the Leyden Museum.
The only remaining form of razor which has to be noticed is that of which a representation is given of the actual size in Fig. 275.
This instrument was found at Kinleith,[782] near Currie, Edinburgh, and has been described and commented on by Dr. John Alexander Smith. The blade, besides being perforated in an artistic manner and having a ring at the end of the handle, is of larger dimensions than usual with instruments of this kind. The metal of which it is composed consists of copper 92·97 per cent., tin 7·03 (with a trace of lead).
It affords the only instance of a razor of this shape having been found in the British Isles. The form much more nearly approaches one of not uncommon occurrence on the Continent than any other British example, and Dr. Smith has illustrated this by the accompanying figure of a razor from the Steinberg, near Nidau,[783] on the Lake of Bienne (Fig. 276). I have a razor of nearly the same form from the Seine at Paris, and others have been found in various parts of France.[784]
The nearest in character to Fig. 275 is perhaps one found in the hoard of Notre-Dame d’Or,[785] and preserved in the museum at Poitiers. Instead of the blade being a single crescent, it consists of two penannular concentric blades with a plain midrib connecting them, which has a ring at the external end. An instrument with the blade formed of a single crescent was found at the same time.
A German example is in the Museum of the Deutsche Gesellschaft, at Leipzig.
In the next chapter I shall treat of those blades which appear to be weapons rather than tools.
X. DAGGERS AND THEIR HILTS.—RAPIER-SHAPED BLADES
AMONG all uncivilised, if not indeed among all civilised nations, arms of offence take a far higher rank than mere tools and implements; and on the first introduction of the use of metal into any country, there is great antecedent probability that the primary service to which it was applied was for the manufacture of weapons. So far as there are means of judging, a small knife or knife-dagger appears to have been among the earliest objects to which bronze was applied in Britain. Possibly, like the Highland dirk, the early form may have served for both peaceful and warlike purposes; but there are other and apparently later forms made for piercing rather than for cutting, and which are unmistakably weapons. The distinction which can be drawn between knives, such as some of those described in the last chapter, and the daggers to be described in this, is no doubt to a great extent arbitrary, and mainly dependent upon size. In the same way the distinction between a large dagger and a small sword, such as some of those to be described in the next chapter, is one for which no hard and fast rule can be laid down.
Nor in treating of daggers can any trustworthy chronological arrangement be adopted, though it is probable, as already observed, that the thin flat blades are earliest in date. The late Dr. Thurnam, in the paper already frequently cited, has pointed out that of bronze blades without sockets there are two distinct types. These are the tanged, which he regards as perhaps the more modern, and those provided with rivet-holes in the base of the blade, which seem to be the most ancient. I purpose mainly to follow this classification; and, inasmuch as the tanged blades are most closely connected with the smaller examples of the same character, described in the last chapter, I take them first in order, though possibly they are not the earliest in date.
But for its size, the blade shown in Fig. 277 might have been regarded as a knife for ordinary use. The original was found in a barrow at Roundway,[786] Wilts, covered with a layer of black powder, probably the remains of a wooden sheath and handle, the upper outline of which latter is marked upon the blade. It lay near the left hand of a contracted skeleton, with its point towards the feet. Between the bones of the left fore-arm was a bracer,[787] or arm-guard, of chlorite slate, and part of the blade and the tang of some small instrument, perhaps a knife. Near the head was a barbed flint arrow-head.
A smaller blade[788] (5½ inches), of nearly the same shape and character, was found in one of the barrows near Winterslow, Wilts, as well as one more tapering in form.
Another, from Sutton Courtney, Berks (6¼ inches by 1⅝ inches), is in the British Museum.
Another (5½ inches) was found by Mr. Fenton in a barrow at Mere Down,[789] Wilts. In this case also there was a stone bracer near the left side of the contracted skeleton. Another, imperfect, and narrower in the tang, was found at Bryn Crûg,[790] Carnarvon, with interments. The double-looped celt (Fig. 88) was found at the same place.
Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., has what appears to be a tanged dagger (6 inches) from Sherburn Wold, Yorkshire.
A blade of this character (10 inches) was found by M. Cazalis de Fondouce in the cave of Bounias,[791] near Fonvielle (Bouches du Rhône), associated with instruments of flint.
Smaller tanged blades, of which it is hard to say whether they are knives or daggers, are not uncommon in France. Two are engraved in the “Matériaux.”[792] I have specimens from Lyons, and also from Brittany.
Another form, which appears to be a dagger rather than a knife, has the tang nearly as wide as the blade, and towards its base there is a single rivet-hole. A dagger of this kind was found with a contracted interment in a barrow near Driffield, Yorkshire, and an engraving of it is given in the Archæologia[793] from which Fig. 278 is reproduced. It had a wooden sheath as well as the wooden handle, of which a part is shown. On the arm of the skeleton was a stone bracer.
Another, rather narrower in the tang and about 4¼ inches long, was found, with a stone axe-hammer, and bones, in an urn within a barrow at Winwick,[794] near Warrington, Lancashire. One (2⅛ inches) with a rivet-hole in its broad tang was found in an urn on Lancaster Moor.[795]
A dagger of nearly the same form but having two rivet-holes was found by the late Rev. R. Kirwan in a barrow at Upton Pyne,[796] Devon.
One, only 3¼ inches long, and much like Fig. 278 in form, was found in an urn with burnt bones in Moot Low,[797] near Middleton, Derbyshire.
Another was found with burnt bones in a barrow at Lady Low,[798] near Blore, Staffordshire. The end of the handle in this instance was straight, and not hollowed. One (5⅜ inches) with a broad tang, through which passes a single rivet, was found in the Thames.[799] It is now in the British Museum.
What Sir R. C. Hoare terms a lance-head (3 inches), found with amber beads in the Golden Barrow,[800] Upton Lovel, appears to have been a knife-dagger of this character.
A knife, 1 inch wide, which had been fastened to its haft of ox-horn by a single rivet, was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at Rudstone, Yorkshire.[801] With the same interment was an axe-hammer of stone and a flint tool. A blade like Fig. 278 (3 inches), from the sand-hills near Glenluce,[802] Wigtonshire, has been figured.
Daggers, or possibly spear-heads, with a broad tang, as well as the moulds in which they were cast, were discovered by Dr. Schliemann on the presumed site of Troy.[803]
The more ordinary form of instrument is that of which the blade was secured to the handle by two or more rivets at its broad base. These may be subdivided into knife-daggers with thin flat blades, and daggers which as a rule have a thick midrib and more or less ornamentation on the surface of the blade. The former variety is now generally accepted as being the more ancient of the two, and may probably have served as a cutting instrument for all purposes, and not have been intended for a weapon.
Fig. 279, representing a knife-dagger from a barrow at Butterwick,[804] Yorkshire, E.R., explored by Canon Greenwell, will give a good idea of the usual form, though these instruments are not unfrequently more acutely pointed. This specimen was found with the body of a young man, and had been encased in a wooden sheath. The haft had been of ox-horn, which has perished, though leaving marks of its texture on the oxidized blade. In the same grave were a flat bronze celt (Fig. 2), a bronze pricker or awl (Fig. 225), a flint knife, and some jet buttons. Another blade of the same character, but rather narrower in its proportions, was found in a barrow at Rudstone,[805] Yorkshire. The handle had in this instance also been of ox-horn. In the same grave were a whetstone, a ring and an ornamental button of jet, and a half-nodule of pyrites and a flint for striking a light. Of the shape of the handles I shall subsequently speak; I will only here remark that at their upper part, where they clasped the blade, there was usually a semicircular or horseshoe-shaped notch, in some instances very wide and in others but narrow. This notch is more rarely somewhat V-shaped in form.
A blade of nearly the same form as Fig. 279, but with only two rivet holes, found in a barrow at Blewbury,[806] Berks, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Another, also with two rivets, was found by the late Mr. Bateman in a barrow near Minning Low,[807] Derbyshire. Its handle appears to have been of horn. Its owner, wrapped in a skin, had been buried enveloped in fern-leaves, and with him was also a flat bronze celt, a flat bead of jet, and a flint scraper. Dr. Thurnam mentions eighteen[808] other blades, varying from 2½ inches to 6¾ inches in length, as having been found during the Bateman excavations, as well as one 7¾ inches long and sharply pointed, found at Lett Low,[809] near Warslow, Staffordshire. Of these twenty, sixteen were found with unburnt bodies and four with burnt. Some of these were, however, of the tanged variety, and some fluted or ribbed. At Carder Low a small axe-hammer of basalt, as well as a knife-dagger of this kind, with the edges worn hollow by use, had been placed with the body. The same was the case in a barrow at Parcelly Hay, near Hartington, Derbyshire.
At End Low, near Hartington, there was a rudely formed “spear-head” of flint beside the knife-dagger, and at Thorncliff,[810] on Calton Moor, Staffordshire, “a neat instrument of flint.”
In some cases, though there were holes in the blade, there were no rivets[811] in them, which led Mr. Bateman to think that they were attached to their handles by ligatures. In a barrow in Yorkshire,[812] Mr. Harland found, with remains of a burnt body, a small bronze knife which still had adhering to it some portions of cord partly charred, apparently the remains of what had formed the attachment to the handle. Pins of wood, bone, or horn were no doubt frequently used instead of metal rivets. Such pins seem to have been commonly employed for securing spear-heads to their shafts. “An instrument of brass,[813] formed like a spear-head, but flat and thin,” was found in a barrow on Bincombe Down, Dorsetshire. “It had been fixed to a shaft by means of three wooden pegs, one of which remained in the perforation when found, but on being exposed to the air fell immediately into dust.” In certain dagger blades with four or more rivet-holes some are devoid of rivets, while there are metal rivets in the others.
A remarkably small blade, only 1¾ inches long, with two rivet-holes, was found in a tumulus in Dorsetshire.[814] Another (4⅛ inches) lay with burnt bones, in what was regarded as a cleft and hollowed trunk of a tree, in a barrow near Yatesbury,[815] Wilts. Another, more triangular in shape, and also with two rivet-holes, was found in a barrow near Stonehenge.[816]
Another (2½ inches) of the same character was found with burnt bones, a needle of wood, and a broken flint pebble, in an urn at Tomen-y-Mur,[817] near Festiniog, Merionethshire.
Of knife-daggers with three rivet-holes found in our southern counties, may be mentioned one (5½ inches) found with a drinking cup and a perforated stone axe, accompanying an unburnt interment, in a barrow at East Kennett,[818] Wilts. Another (4¼ inches), also accompanied by a stone axe-hammer, was found in a barrow called Jack’s Castle,[819] near Stourton. The body had in this instance been burnt. Another knife-dagger, also with burnt bones, in a barrow at Wilsford,[820] was accompanied by two flint arrow-heads, some whetstones, and some instruments of stag’s-horn. Another, protected by a wooden scabbard, was found in a barrow at Brigmilston.[821]
What appear to have been blades of the same kind were found with burnt bones in the barrows near Priddy,[822] Somerset, and Ashey Down,[823] Isle of Wight (6 inches). The latter is tapering in form. One (7⅜ inches) which shows no rivets was found at Culter,[824] Lanarkshire.
An unfinished blade without rivet-holes was also found, with castings of palstaves and flanged celts, at Rhosnesney,[825] near Wrexham.
From Derbyshire may be cited that from Carder Low,[826] already described, and one from Brier Low.[827] Another from Lett Low,[828] Staffordshire, has already been mentioned, as have been others described by Bateman.[829] One from a barrow at Middleton[830] was regarded by Pegge as a spear-head.
From Yorkshire Mr. Bateman describes one (4½ inches) with a crescent-shaped mark showing the form of the handle, found with an extended skeleton at Cawthorn.[831] Another (6 or 7 inches), from a barrow near Pickering,[832] had a V-shaped notch in the handle, to which had been attached a small bone pommel. One from Bishop Wilton,[833] belonging to Mr. Mortimer, has been engraved by Dr. Thurnam.
The mention of this pommel suggests that it is time to consider the manner in which these blades were hafted, as to which the discoveries of Sir Richard Colt Hoare in the Wiltshire barrows, and of Canon Greenwell in those of Yorkshire, leave no doubt. The hafts appear in nearly all cases to have consisted of ox-horn, bone, or wood, sometimes in a single piece with a notch for receiving the blade, and sometimes formed of a pair of similar pieces riveted together, one on each side of the blade. The lower end of the haft was often inserted in a hollow pommel usually of bone.
The nature of the arrangement of the haft when formed of two pieces will be readily understood on reference to Fig. 280, in which the presumed outline of the original ox-horn haft is shown by dotted lines, and the rivets by which the two plates of horn were bound together are in the position they originally occupied along the centre of the haft. The outline of the upper part of this handle, where it was secured by two rivets to the blade, is still visible, and is shown by darker shading. The pommel at the lower end was attached by pins of horn or of wood, and not by metal rivets. A separate view and section of the pommel is shown in Fig. 281. The original was found by Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., with a contracted interment in a barrow at Helperthorpe,[834] Yorkshire, at the opening of which I was present. As will be seen, the blade has all the appearance of having been much worn by use and repeated whetting.
Bone pommels of the same kind have been frequently met with in barrows, but their purpose was not known to some of the earlier explorers. One from a barrow on Brassington Moor[835] is described by Mr. Bateman as a bone stud perforated with six holes, and was thought to have been intended for being sown on to some article of dress or ornament. Another was found in a barrow at Narrowdale Hill,[836] near Alstonefield, and is also described as a bone button. In both these instances the dagger itself seems to have entirely perished.
In a barrow subsequently opened by Mr. Ruddock near Pickering,[837] the butt end of a dagger handle was recognised in one of these objects. In this instance the pommel was made of three pieces of bone fastened together by two bronze rivets, and having two holes for the pegs by which it was secured to the handle.
Two others in solid bone from barrows at Garton[838] and Bishop Wilton, Yorkshire, have been figured by Dr. Thurnam. The former is here by permission reproduced. That from the well-known Gristhorpe tumulus,[839] near Scarborough, in which the body lay in the hollowed trunk of an oak-tree, is more neatly made, being of oval outline with a projecting bead round the base. It has holes for three pins.
Another pommel of an ornamental character was found with burnt bones in an urn at Wilmslow, Cheshire, and is engraved in the Journal of the British Archæological Association,[840] from which Fig. 283 is here reproduced. The receptacle is so small that the haft to which it was attached probably consisted of but a single piece of ox-horn or wood. It appears as if the mortise had been made by drilling three holes side by side.
A very remarkable and beautiful hilt of a sword or dagger, formed of amber of a rich red colour and inlaid with pins of gold, was found in a barrow on Hammeldon Down,[841] Devonshire. By the kindness of the Committee of the Plymouth Athenæum I am enabled to give two views and a section of this unique object in Fig. 284. Instead of a socket or mortise, there is in this instance a tenon, or projection, which entered into a mortise or hole in the handle. On each side of this tenon is a small mortise of the same length, and through the tenon have been drilled two small holes, one from each side, for pins to attach the pommel to the handle. A small part of the pommel which was broken off in old times seems to have been united to the main body by a series of minute gold rivets or clips, but this piece has again been severed, though the pins round the margin of the fracture remain. This pommel seems disproportionately large for the slightly fluted blade, of which a fragment was found in the same barrow.
A small object of amber, apparently the pommel of a diminutive dagger, was found in a barrow at Winterbourn Stoke,[842] Wilts. A small knife or scraper, mounted in a handle formed of two pieces of amber, secured by two rivets and bound with four strips of gold, is also preserved at Stourhead.[843] The blade is at the side like that of a hatchet.
Amber was used for inlaying some of the ivory hilts of iron swords at Hallstatt.
The bronze object shown full size in Fig. 285 may not improbably be the pommel of the hilt of a dagger or sword. The hole through the base is irregular in form, and may be accidental. It was found in the hoard at Reach Fen, Cambridge, in which were also the tip of a scabbard and some fragments of swords, as well as two large double-edged knives.
A somewhat similar object is in the Musée de l’Oratoire, at Nantes. Another, found at Grésine,[844] Savoy, has been regarded as the tip for a scabbard. Another was found in the department of La Manche.[845]
What appears to be the hilt of either a sword or dagger was found in a hoard of bronze objects at Allhallows,[846] Hoo, Kent. By the kindness of Mr. Humphrey Wickham I am able to engrave it as Fig. 286. It consisted originally of a rectangular socketed ferrule with a rivet-hole through it, and attached to a semicircular end like the half of a grooved pulley. The socket itself extends for some distance into this semicircular part. From portions of a sword having been found with it, Mr. Wickham has regarded it as a kind of pommel. It may, however, have been the end of a scabbard or a chape, and, if so, should have been described in Chapter XIII. The knife, Fig. 261, was found in the same hoard.
To return, however, to undoubted examples. The most remarkable of all dagger handles discovered in the British Isles are those obtained by Sir R. Colt Hoare from the barrows of Wiltshire.
One of these, from a barrow at Brigmilston,[847] is here reproduced in Fig. 287, taken from the engraving in “Ancient Wiltshire.” It is thus described by the late Dr. Thurnam: “It is of the thin broad-bladed variety. The handle is of wood, held together by thirty rivets of bronze, and strengthened at the end by an oblong bone pommel fastened with two pegs. It is decorated by dots incised in the surface of the wood, forming a border of double lines and circles between the heads of the rivets.” He goes on to say that a similar dagger of the broad variety, having exactly the same number of rivets, was found in one of the Derbyshire[848] barrows. Two buttons of polished shale accompanied this interment. Another, from Garton,[849] Yorkshire, in the collection of Mr. Mortimer, has thirty-seven rivets and two strips of bronze at the sides of the handle, in addition to the four rivets for securing the blade. The bone pommel is shown in Fig. 282.
Another dagger, of somewhat the same character, was found at Leicester, and is preserved in the museum of that town. For the sketch from which Fig. 288 is engraved I am indebted to Mr. C. Read. In this instance the pommel consists of two pieces of bone riveted on either side of a bronze plate, which, however, does not appear to have been continuous with the blade. From the length of the rivets remaining in the blade, the handle appears to have been somewhat thicker in the middle than at the sides.
In the British Museum is a dagger from a barrow at Standlow, Derbyshire, with a bone pommel of nearly the same character as that from Leicester.
Perhaps the most highly ornamented dagger handle ever discovered is that which was found by Sir R. Colt Hoare in the Bush Barrow,[850] near Normanton, the lower part of which, copied from the engraving in “Ancient Wiltshire,” is shown in Fig. 289. A drawing of the whole dagger with its handle restored has been published by Dr. Thurnam.[851] The blade is 10½ inches long and slightly fluted at the sides, so that it is not, strictly speaking, a knife-dagger such as those hitherto described. It appears, however, best to call attention to it in this place. It lay with a skeleton placed north and south, with which were some rivets and thin plates of bronze, supposed to be traces of a shield.
At the shoulders was a flanged bronze celt, like Fig. 9. Near the right arm was the dagger and “a spear-head” of bronze. These were accompanied by a nearly square plate of thin gold, with a projecting flat tongue or hook, which was thought to have decorated the sheath of the dagger. Over the breast lay another lozenge-shaped plate of gold, 7 inches by 6 inches, the edges lapped over a piece of wood. On the right side of the skeleton was a stone hammer,[852] some articles of bone, many small rings of the same material, and another gold lozenge much smaller than that on the breast. As to the handle, I may repeat Sir Richard’s words: “It exceeds anything we have yet seen, both in design and execution, and could not be surpassed (if, indeed, equalled) by the most able workman of modern times. By the annexed engraving you will immediately recognise the British zigzag or the modern Vandyke pattern, which was formed, with a labour and exactness almost unaccountable, by thousands of gold rivets smaller than the smallest pin. The head of the handle, though exhibiting no variety of pattern, was also formed by the same kind of studding.
So very minute, indeed, were these pins, that our labourers had thrown out thousands of them with their shovels and scattered them in every direction before, by the necessary aid of a magnifying glass, we could discover what they were, but fortunately enough remained attached to the wood to enable us to develop the pattern.” Some of the pins are shown in the figure below the hilt.
As Dr. Thurnam has pointed out, the ornamentation on a thin piece of metal (said to have been gilt), which apparently decorated the hilt of a bronze dagger, found in a barrow in Dorsetshire,[853] is of the same character, though produced in a different manner. This dagger is said by Douglas to have been “incisted” into wood. It is uncertain whether this refers to the hilt or to the sheath; but in several instances remains of sheaths have been found upon the blades of daggers, some of which have been already adduced, and others will hereafter be mentioned. Sir R. Colt Hoare, in a barrow near Amesbury,[854] found an interment of burnt bones, and with it a bronze dagger which had been “secured by a sheath of wood lined with linen cloth.” A small lance-head, a pair of ivory nippers, and an ivory pin accompanied the interment. In one instance the wood of the sheath was “apparently willow.”[855]
I am unable to guarantee the accuracy of the representation of a large dagger with its handle given in Fig. 290, the original having unfortunately been destroyed in a fire. I have, however, copied it from Dr. Thurnam’s[856] engraving, which was taken from a drawing by the late Mr. S. Solly, F.S.A.[857] It was found in 1845, in a barrow on Roke Down, near Blandford, Dorsetshire, and is thus described by Mr. Shipp:[858] “The blade is exquisitely finished, and the handle, which is ivory, as perfect and as highly polished as any of more recent date. It was found with two small bronze spear-heads at the bottom of a cist cut in the chalk, and covered with burnt bones and ashes; and over it was an inverted urn of the coarsest make, unburnt and unornamented.” In Mr. Shipp’s drawing the handle expands gradually to the base like the mouth of a trumpet. In a subsequent communication[859] Mr. Shipp describes the two spear-heads as of iron.
Mr. Solly[860] says that with it was a second small blade, also of bronze, which may have been a knife, and makes no mention of iron spear-heads. He also says that it lay beneath a stone more than a ton in weight. Mr. C. Warne, F.S.A., has informed me that the spear-heads—if, indeed, such they were—were of bronze and not of iron. He has engraved the dagger in his Plate X.,[861] not from the original, but from the figure in the Journal of the Archæological Association.
Hilts made of bronze, though of frequent occurrence in Scandinavia, the South of France, and Italy, are rarely discovered in England or Scotland. That said to have been found at Bere Hill, near Andover, cast in one piece with the blade and with a raised rim round the margin, and studs like rivet-heads in the middle, has been kindly submitted to me by Mr. Samuel Shaw, its owner, and I believe it to be of Eastern and probably Chinese origin. Near Little Wenlock,[862] however, a portion of a dagger was found with part of the handle, in form like that of the sword from Lincoln (Fig. 350), attached by four rivets. With it were a socketed celt, some spear-heads, and whetstones.
A beautiful Egyptian[863] bronze dagger from Thebes is in the Berlin Museum. It has a narrow rapier-like blade and a broad flat hilt of ivory.
Others of nearly the same character are in the British Museum. The end of the hilt is often hollowed, like that of Fig. 277, and the attachment to the blade is by means of three rivets.
In Ireland a few daggers have been found with bronze hilts still attached.
In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy is a fine example, which has frequently been published, and which I have here reproduced as Fig. 291, from the engraving given by Wilde,[864] but on the scale of one-half. Both blade and handle are “highly ornamented, both in casting and also by the punch or graver.”
A portion of a blade with a bronze hilt still attached was found near Belleek, Co. Fermanagh, and has been engraved in the Proceedings of the Royal Historical and Archæological Association of Ireland.[865] The cut is by their kindness here reproduced as Fig. 292. The handle is hollow, and the blade appears to have been originally attached by four pins or rivets, of which but two now remain. Possibly the other two were of horn.
Another Irish form of hafted dagger has also been frequently published.[866] It is shown in Fig. 293. Vallancey describes this specimen as cast in one piece, the rivets being either ornamental or intended to stop against the top of the scabbard. No doubt these imitation rivets are mere “survivals” from those of the daggers, which were thus fastened to their handles before it was found that it saved trouble to cast the whole in one piece. The hole in the handle, the sides of which are left rough, was probably filled by two slightly overlapping plates of wood or horn riveted together.
Another[867] (14½ inches) was thought to have the “loop-fashioned” handle for suspending the weapon to a thong or the belt. I think, however, that when the daggers were in use the handles were to all appearance solid. In one found in Dunshaughlin[868] crannoge, Co. Meath, there is a second oval hole at the end of the hilt, which may have been used for suspension.
There is a good example of this type of dagger in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
A small dagger (7⅛ inches), found near Ballinamore,[869] Co. Leitrim, has an extension of the blade in the form of a thin plate with a button at the bottom so as to form the body of the handle. In this part are two rivet-holes for the attachment of the plates of wood or horn to form the handle.
Some handles of bronze knives found in Scandinavia and Switzerland[870] are formed with similar openings. Daggers with the blade and handle cast in one piece have been found in the Italian terramare.[871] I have a dagger of the same kind from Hungary.
I must now return, from this digression as to the hafting of daggers, to the thin blades or knife-daggers of which I was speaking.
Of those with four rivets but few can be cited. One of unusually large size is shown in Fig. 294. The original was found by Sir R. C. Hoare in a barrow at Woodyates.[872] It was protected by a wooden scabbard. A perforated ring and two buttons of jet, four barbed flint arrow-heads, and a bronze pin were found with the same skeleton. This blade, like many others, is described as having been gilt, but this can hardly have been the case. Dr. Thurnam[873] has tested such brilliantly polished surfaces for gold, but found no traces of that metal.
A blade of this form is engraved in the “Barrow Diggers,”[874] but is described as a stone celt split in two.
A nearly similar blade from Oefeli[875] (Lac de Bienne) is said to be of copper.
In Fig. 295 is shown a blade with, five rivets, from an interment at Homington,[876] near Salisbury, which, is now in the British Museum. One side is still highly polished, with an almost mirror-like lustre. The mark of the hilt is very distinct upon it.
One of more pointed form, and with a more V-shaped notch in the hilt, was found with an unburnt body in a cairn at North Charlton, Northumberland, and is in the Greenwell Collection in the British Museum. The portion is broken off in which were the rivets.
Occasionally the surface of these thin blades is ornamented by engraved or punched patterns. The decoration usually consists of converging bands of parallel lines. The example given as Fig. 296 was found in a barrow at Idmiston, near Salisbury, and is now preserved in the Blackmore Museum. In one found in Dow Low,[877] Derbyshire, shown in Fig. 297, there are three parallel lines on either side which meet in chevron. This blade has two rivets.
In a barrow near Maiden Castle,[878] Dorchester, opened by Mr. Sydenham, there lay in the midst of the ashes two bronze daggers. One (4 inches) has two lines engraved on it, forming a chevron parallel with the edges; the other (5½ inches) is described as “curiously wrought, chased, and gilt.” This latter, to judge from Mr. Warne’s engraving, has a slight projecting rib along the middle of the blade, between two others converging to meet it near the point. The space on each side of the central rib appears to be decorated by small circular indentations.
One from another barrow in Dorsetshire[879] has a treble chevron on the blade and a straight transverse groove between two ridges just above the hilt.
A small blade found in an urn at Wilmslow,[880] Cheshire, seems to have a single chevron upon it.
A dagger from a tumulus at Hewelinghen (Pas de Calais), and now in the museum at Boulogne, is of this character. It has double lines to the chevron and four rivet-holes.
Another was found with an interment at Rame[881] (Hautes Alpes) in company with other articles of bronze. It has six rivet-holes. A narrower blade and more of the rapier shape, with four rivet-holes, was found in the Marais de Donges[882] (Loire Inférieure).
A dagger much like Fig. 296, but with a double row of rivets, has been found at Mœrigen,[883] in the Lac de Bienne.
A dagger with a pointed blade having two parallel grooves just within each edge was found with other dagger blades, flat celts, flint arrow-heads, &c., in the tumulus of Kerhué-Bras, Finistère.[884] It has a plain wooden handle, to which the blade is attached by six rivets. The character of some of the other blades is peculiar.
A beautifully patinated dagger (7¼ inches) from the Seine at Paris, now in my own collection, has six rivet-holes at the base, as in Fig. 296, and is of nearly the same shape, though rather more sharply pointed. One of the rivets which remains is ⅝ inch long. The blade has upon it a small low rib on either side running parallel with the edge. On the inner side of the rib there is a groove, on the outer side the blade is flat. The edge itself is fluted.
I have a small thin blade (4⅝ inches), like Fig. 298, found in the Palatinate, which has four rivet-holes at the base. There is a band of five parallel lines running along each edge, and in the centre of the blade a chevron with the sides slightly curved inwards formed of two similar bands. The lines seem to have been punched in. The mark left by the hilt is like that on Fig. 296.
What appear to be knife-daggers, some of them with notches at the side for the reception of rivets, have been found with interments in Spain, and have been described by Don Gongora y Martinez[885] as lance-heads.
Knife-daggers of much the same character as the English have occasionally been found in Scotland.
That shown in Fig. 298 was found in a stone cist in a cairn at Cleigh,[886] Loch Nell, Argyleshire. Along the margin of the original handle is a line of small indentations made with a pointed punch.
Another (4¼ inches) was found in a cairn at Linlathen,[887] Forfarshire, together with a “drinking cup.” Particulars of the finding of several others, with interments in sepulchral cairns, have been given by Mr. Joseph Anderson[888] in an interesting paper, to which the reader is referred.
Three others, from Drumlanrick,[889] near Callander, Perth (4½ inches, two rivets), Crossmichael, Kirkcudbrightshire, and Callachally, Island of Mull, are in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. Another, apparently of the same type, was found in a cairn at Collessie,[890] Fife, the handle of which appears to have been encircled by the gold fillet shown in Fig. 299. The sheath seems to have been of wood covered with cow-hide, the hairs on the outside.
In Ireland the thin flat blades are of rare occurrence. Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., has one from Co. Antrim (4¾ inches) with three rivet-holes, and with a V-shaped notch in the mark of the handle.
There is a form of blade which appears to be intermediate between the flat knife-daggers and those to which the name of dagger may more properly be applied, which are either considerably thicker at the centre than towards the edges, or else have a certain number of strengthening ribs running along the blade. This intermediate form has a single narrow rounded rib running along the centre of the blade. That shown in Fig. 300 is an example of the short and broad variety of this kind. It was found in a barrow at Musdin,[891] Staffordshire, and has a splendid patina, rivalling malachite in colour. The relation of the dagger to any interment is uncertain.
A dagger of this class, but more pointed and with two parallel lines engraved on each side of the midrib, was found by Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., in one of the barrows called the Three Tremblers,[892] Yorkshire. It showed traces of both its handle and sheath. With it was a beautifully flaked large flint knife.
A more pointed blade, with the central rib much less pronounced, and the notch in the hilt more distinct, was found with a skeleton in a cist near Cheswick,[893] Northumberland, and is now in the Greenwell Collection in the British Museum. It has been carefully polished.
Another, with a small, well-defined central midrib and two rivets, was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at Aldbourn, Wilts. It accompanied a burnt body.
Some of the Italian dagger blades are provided with similar midribs.
Of the English weapons just described some closely resemble in character the much larger blades of which I shall subsequently have to speak, and which not improbably were those of some form of halberd or battle-axe.
A much longer and narrower form, in which the central rib is partly the result of two long lateral grooves along the sides of the blade, is shown in Fig. 301. This was found with two others at Plymstock,[894] Devon, in company with flanged celts, a chisel, and a tanged spear-head or dagger, Fig. 327, and is now in the British Museum.
I have a much smaller blade, of somewhat the same character (4⅞ inches), but imperfect at the base, found in a barrow near Cirencester; and one smaller still (4¼ inches), from a small barrow near Ablington, Cirencester, Gloucestershire. This latter appears to have had two rivet-holes.
A beautiful example of the form of dagger of which Sir Richard C. Hoare found numerous examples in the Wiltshire barrows is shown in Fig. 302. It lay with burnt bones in a wooden cist in a barrow near Winterbourn Stoke.[895] With it was another, which was, however, broken, an ivory pin and tweezers, and two small pieces of ivory with bronze rivets, which were supposed to have appertained to the tips of a bow. They may more probably have formed part of the hilt of the dagger. The blade is ornamented with parallel lines as usual, but it also has a series of fine dotted lines.
Two other blades (8½ and 8 inches), less highly ornamented, and one of them straighter at the edges, were found with a skeleton buried in the hollowed trunk of an elm-tree in the King Barrow,[896] Winterbourn Stoke. With one of these at the breast of the skeleton were traces of a wooden scabbard, with indentations which were thought to have been gilt. The handle is described as having been of box-wood, and rounded somewhat like that of a large knife. The other dagger was at the thigh. On the breast was also a bronze awl with what is said to have been an ivory handle (Fig. 227).
Dr. Thurnam[897] thinks it not improbable that one of the blades may have been a spear-head for use in the chase. In writing of these blades he observes, “Where two are found with the same interment they are not exactly of one type, but one is light and thin and of greater breadth, the other strengthened by a stout midrib relatively heavier and of more pointed or leaf-like form; the rivets also are larger. In such cases the former may, perhaps, be supposed to be the dagger, the latter the spear.” Sir Richard Hoare in some cases discriminates between the spear and the dagger when two blades were found; and Mr. Cunnington observed in a barrow at Roundway,[898] Wilts, that a pointed blade only 3 inches long with three rivets had a wooden shaft about a foot in length, which, as Dr. Thurnam remarks, could not have been the haft of a dagger.
The fact that many of these blades bore traces of having had a sheath is in favour of their being daggers rather than spear-heads, though it must not be forgotten that Homer[899] describes Achilles as drawing the spear which had belonged to his father from its sheath—
Ἐκ δ̓ ἄρα σύριγγος πατρώϊον ἐσπάσατ̓ ἔγχος
Though Sir Richard Colt Hoare at first regarded all these blades as spear-heads, he observes, about two-thirds of the way through his first volume,[900] “daily experience convinces me that those implements we supposed to be spear-heads, may more properly be denominated daggers, or knives, worn by the side, or in a girdle, and not affixed to long shafts like the modern lance.” Further on, however, he mentions a “spear-head” from a barrow near Fovant,[901] having the greater part of the wooden handle adhering to it, so that the mode by which it was fastened was clearly seen. From the figure given in the Archæologia, and in an unpublished plate of Hoare, this seems, however, to have been a dagger rather than a spear.
Other blades of much the same character, found at Everley and Lake, Wilts, and West Cranmore, Somerset, are figured by Dr. Thurnam.[902] This latter was found by my friend the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S. It is straight at the bottom of the blade, which went only ¼ inch into the handle at the part where the usual semicircular notch was formed. There was a single rivet on either side. The one preserved is ½ inch long. Another, from Lake,[903] is given by Hoare. It was found with burnt bones and was accompanied by a whetstone.
Others have been found in a barrow at Ablington,[904] near Amesbury, Wilts, and at Rowcroft,[905] Yattendon, Berks (7½ inches).
A fine blade of this character (9¼ inches long), with three rivets, was found near Leeds. The midrib ends in a square base. It is not unlike the blade of a halberd.
A hafted blade of the same kind,[906] from Bere Regis, Dorsetshire, has already been mentioned; as well as the decoration of the hilt of one of the same form. One (9 inches) was found in a barrow at Came,[907] and exhibited to the Archæological Institute. Mr. Warne,[908] however, records the finding of two at that place. One seems to have the midrib dotted over with small indentations.
That shown in Fig. 303 (which is copied from Dr. Thurnam’s[909] engraving) is from Camerton, Somerset. It is remarkable as having a kind of second midrib beyond the parallel grooves which border the first. As usual it has but two rivets.
A bronze dagger (5½ inches) of the Wiltshire type was found in the well-known barrow at Hove,[910] near Brighton, in which the interment had been made in an oak coffin. An amber cup, a perforated stone axe-hammer, and a whetstone had also been deposited with the body.
In a blade of this class (7 inches), found with burnt bones and chippings of flint in a barrow at Teddington,[911] the midrib appears to be formed of three beads.
Another (9 inches) formed part of the Arreton Down[912] find, of which more will hereafter be said. The blade is ornamented with delicate flutings and curves, and the midrib ends in a crescented hollow exactly opposite to the usual notch in the handle. This specimen is now in the British Museum.
A bronze dagger (6¾ inches) with three rivets, of which the blade has much suffered from decomposition, was found with a lump of iron pyrites within an urn in a barrow at Angrowse Mullion,[913] Cornwall. A dagger blade of nearly the same kind, but with six rivets, found in a barrow at Carnöel,[914] Finistère, is in the museum at the Hôtel Cluny, Paris.
I have a dagger (9 inches) much like Fig. 302, only somewhat more taper, found in the Seine at Paris. It has had three rivet-holes, and on the blade are two bands of four lines parallel with the edge.
The strengthening of the blade is sometimes effected by forming it with three or more projecting ribs instead of a single midrib. In Fig. 304 is shown a dagger blade in my own collection, found not far from Cambridge. On either side of the central rib and along the outer margin of the two other ribs are lines of minute punctures by way of ornament.
A somewhat larger blade (8⅝ inches), from Little Cressingham,[915] Norfolk, has two deep furrows, one on each side of the broad central midrib, and beyond these again two lateral ribs. This was secured to its hilt by six rivets, three on each side. It was found with a contracted male skeleton, accompanied by a necklace of amber beads and some articles made of thin gold plate.
A dagger with a central rounded midrib, and apparently two lateral ribs like those on Fig. 304, was found in a barrow near Torrington,[916] Devon. It has three rivets, by which it was attached to a wooden handle, and the blade showed traces of a wooden sheath, which like the handle had perished.
A very small dagger or knife, with apparently a well-marked central rib, found near Magherafelt,[917] Co. Londonderry, is shown in Fig. 305. It has a haft of oak attached, which is thought to be original. Any pins or rivets that may have existed are now lost, and possibly what were used may have been formed of wood or horn. Some thin wedges of oak appear to have been used for steadying the blade in the haft, the upper part of which has somewhat suffered from fire.
One of the daggers from the great find at Arreton Down,[918] Isle of Wight (9⅝ inches), has the blade strengthened by three raised ribs. It is shown in Fig. 306. It was found with several tanged blades like Fig. 324, some flanged celts, and other objects. In a blade (9 inches) in Canon Greenwell’s collection, and found at Ford, Northumberland, there are two slight ribs about ⅜ inch from the edges and parallel to them. There are punctures along the sides of the ribs.
Possibly some of these weapons may have been halberd blades, such as those hereafter described.
Another form of dagger widens out considerably at the base, so as to give the edges an ogival outline, and this form passes into what have been termed rapier-like blades. As is the case with the leaf-shaped blades, which will presently be described, some of these latter are so long that it is hard to say whether they ought to be classed as swords or as daggers.
The example engraved as Fig. 307 is from Scotland, and not England, the original being in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. It was found in 1828 upon the farm of Kilrie, near Kinghorn, Fifeshire. The blade, as is usually the case, shows a central ridge upon it, but is also ornamented with parallel lines engraved on either side, which is a feature of far less common occurrence.
A plain blade of the same character (7½ inches), but narrower in its proportions, was found at Bracklesham,[919] Sussex. It has as usual two rivets only.
I have another (7⅛ inches), showing four facets on the blade, from Soham Fen; the two rivet-holes cut through the margin of the base, as in Fig. 304.
I have seen others from the Cambridge Fens.
Another (13½ inches) with four rivets, and more nearly approaching the rapier form, was found in the Thames at Ditton,[920] Surrey, and was presented to the British Museum by the Earl of Lovelace. Another of the same character (7 inches) was found in the Thames near Maidenhead,[921] and another (8 inches) at Battersea.[922]
One (9¾ inches) with two rivets, and the base forming half a hexagon, was found at New Bilton,[923] near Rugby. I have another of nearly the same form (7¾ inches) from Waterbeach Fen, Cambridge.
In some the blade is ornamented by ribs cast in relief and by engraving. A good example of the kind from the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A., is shown in Fig. 308. It was found in the old castle of Colloony,[924] Co. Sligo. One of much the same form as the Wiltshire dagger (Fig. 302), found in the Thames,[925] near Richmond (7-9/10 inches), has at the base a vandyke border and hatched diagonal bands. The blade is slightly ridged but not otherwise ornamented. It is now in the British Museum. One (5½ inches), ornamented at the base in a similar manner, but with a short broad tang and one rivet-hole, was found on Helsington Peat Moss,[926] Westmoreland.
A blade (7 inches) also ornamented at the base with a vandyke pattern was found at Pitkaithly, Perthshire, and is now in the museum at Edinburgh.
Many blades of daggers from Germany are ornamented. One of the most beautiful that I have seen is that in the museum at Laibach, Carniola. Another (11½ inches), with the hilt complete, and the blade and pommel-plate beautifully ornamented, was found near Vienna.[927] Von Sacken points out that from the shortness of the hilt it is probable that these daggers were held in the same manner as among the Peruvians of the present day, with the two first fingers not round the hilt, but stretched along the blade.
In the museum of the Royal Irish Academy[928] is a broad dagger blade 6⅝ inches long, and engraved with a kind of vandyke pattern at the base. The ornamented portion is shown full size in Fig. 309, kindly lent me by the Academy. It is rather remarkable that the ornaments should extend to so near the base, as they must have been intended to be free of the hilt, in which, in consequence, it would appear that only a small part of the blade can have been inserted. The sides of the socket in the hilt may, however, have extended some distance up the sloping part of the base of the blade.
An ornamented blade of more elongated form (16½ inches) is engraved on the scale of one-fourth in Fig. 310. It was found at Kilrea, Co. Sligo, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S. There is a vandyke pattern near the base, which is not shown in the cut.
I have a plain blade (14 inches) with merely a central ridge, and with two rivet-holes, which is also from Ireland, and of much the same form.
In a small English blade (5 inches) of the same character there are no rivet-holes at the base.
A blade from the Thames[929] of an ordinary rapier shape is shown on the scale of one-fourth in Fig. 311. It is provided with two rivets, and there are notches at the side of the base as if to allow of two others being passed through the hilt to steady the blade.
A blade of the same form (10 inches), but with only two rivet-holes at the base, was found at the foot of “the Castle Tump,” Newchurch,[930] Radnorshire.
Rapier-shaped blades from 8½ inches to 12½ inches long, found at Auchtermuchty, Fife; at Fairholm, Dumfriesshire; and near Ardoch, Perthshire, are preserved in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh.
Fig. 312 represents a small blade of this character dredged up from the Kennet and Avon Canal, between Theale and Thatcham, Berks, and given me by Mr. W. Whitaker, F.G.S. The two little notches at the side of the base are peculiar.
A number of blades of this character, but without these small notches, have been found in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Mr. Fisher, of Ely, has four, varying in length from 8 inches to 9 inches, about 2 inches wide at the base and 1 inch in the middle of the blade. They all have two rivet-holes, in some of which are rivets ⅝ inch long.
Two blades found at South Kyme,[931] Lincolnshire, seem to have been of this character. Another (13½ inches) was found at Corbridge,[932] Northumberland, in company with a leaf-shaped spear-head. One from Burwell Fen, in my own collection, has three rivet-holes, in which are still two of the rivets, of which one is formed from a nearly square piece of metal. A long blade of this kind (16½ inches), but with the blade tapering more gradually from a rounded base, was dredged from the Thames[933] near Vauxhall. Other rapier-shaped blades (18⅝ inches and 14-3/10 inches) have been found in the Thames near Kingston.[934]
The base of these blades appears sometimes to be disproportionately broad with regard to the blades themselves. An example from Coveney, near Downham Hithe, Cambridgeshire, is in the collection of Mr. Fisher, of Ely, and is shown in Fig. 313. This widening was no doubt intended to aid in steadying the blade in its hilt.
I have a dagger of the same form (8 inches), but with a more tapering blade, found in Waterbeach Fen, Cambridge. Another (11½ inches), from Harlech, Merionethshire, is even narrower in the blade than the Coveney example, but it has lost its edges by corrosion.
Some blades, from 12½ inches to 15½ inches long, and rapier-like in character, from Maentwrog in the same county, are engraved in the Archæologia,[935] and are now in the British Museum. The rivet arrangements vary. A spear-head, with loops attached to the blade, was found with them. One of them has notches at the sides of the base, as in Fig. 311.
One 14¾ inches long, and of much the same outline, but flat in the centre instead of ridged, was found at Fisherton,[936] near Salisbury, and is in the Blackmore Museum. Another of the same character, but broad in the blade (16½ inches), was found in the Thames.[937]
Canon Greenwell has two rapier-like blades from the Thames, 17½ inches and 15⅝ inches long, from Sandford. With the latter was found a leaf-shaped blade (19 inches) with two rivet-holes in the base.
Such blades are almost long enough to be regarded as swords.
A weapon of this form (16⅞ inches), with the blade reduced in thickness towards the edges, and with two large rivets, one of them still in situ, was found in the Thames, and is now in the British Museum. Another in the same collection (12⅞ inches), from the Thames at Kingston, is much narrower at the base.
A blade of this character from Blair Drummond Moss was exhibited in the museum at Edinburgh, and is preserved at Blair Drummond House.
The type occurs in France. One found at Auxonne,[938] Haute Saône, is in the St. Germain Museum.
Another, rather shorter and broader, with two rivets and two notches in the sides of the base, was found in the bay of Penhouët[939] (Loire Inférieure).
I have examples from the Seine at Paris, and also from the neighbourhood of Amiens.
In some cases the rivet-holes cut through the margin of the metal as in Fig. 304.
Blades appear sometimes to have been cast with deep rounded notches in the base to receive the rivets instead of having holes drilled or cast in them. That shown in Fig. 314 is of this character, and was found in the Thames at London. It was given to me by Mr. C. Roach Smith, F.S.A. Others of the same character have also been found in the Thames. One of these (16⅝ inches), of nearly the same type but more rounded at the lower part of the wings, is in the British Museum.
Canon Greenwell has a blade of this type (8¾ inches), found near Methwold, Norfolk.
A specimen of this form (11 inches) from Edington Burtle, Somerset, is in the Museum at Taunton.
A blade from Inchigecla,[940] Co. Cork, figured in the Archæological Journal, seems to be notched in a similar manner. Another of different form, but apparently notched after the same fashion, is engraved by Vallancey.[941]
Some of the rapier-shaped blades, and especially those of larger size, such as seem intermediate between swords and daggers, are ornamented as well as strengthened by a projecting midrib, while their weight is diminished by flutings along either side. A beautiful example of this kind, found at the bottom of an old canoe, between the peat and clay, near Chatteris, Cambs, is shown one-quarter size in Fig. 315. I have another (14 inches) with the midrib not quite so prominent, and with the rivet-holes cutting the margin of the base, found at Aston Ingham, Herefordshire. A portion of another was found near Waterbeach,[942] Cambs.
A broader blade of the same character (12¾ inches), with two very large rivets, was found in the Thames at Kingston, and is now in the British Museum. A narrower blade (12 inches) with the rivet-holes cutting through the base, was found at Cæsar’s Camp, Farnham, Surrey, and is in the same collection.
A long blade of this character from the Thames (21 inches long and 2⅜ inches wide at the base), with central ridge and slight flutings at the edges, may more properly be regarded as a sword. It is in the British Museum.
Six blades, all of the rapier character, but varying in details, and from 12 inches to 22 inches in length, were found at Talaton, Devonshire.[943] Some moulds of stone for blades of the same kind were found at Hennock in the same county, and will subsequently be described. Another blade (17 inches) was found at Winkleigh,[944] near Crediton, Devon.
A blade of the same character from Ireland is given by Vallancey.[945] A fine specimen from the same country (18 inches) is in the British Museum.[946] What appears to be a part of a blade[947] of the same kind has been regarded as a kind of “steel” for sharpening other blades.
A rapier-shaped blade (21 inches) with two rivet-holes was found, with socketed celts and a palstave, at Mawgan,[948] Cornwall.
Blades of this character are also found in France. Two from the departments of Aisne and Somme,[949] have been figured. One (20 inches long) is in the Museum at Nantes.
A rapier blade from the Chaussée Brunehault, and now in the Boulogne Museum, is almost like a trefoil in outline at the hilt end.
A still longer blade of this character, which perhaps ought with greater propriety to have been classed among swords, is shown in Fig. 316 on the scale of one-fourth. It has unfortunately lost its point, but is still 17¾ inches long. It would appear to have been originally about 20½ inches long, as shown in the figure. The blade in this case has three projecting ribs between which and again towards the edges it is fluted. It was found in the River Ouse, near Thetford. The imperfect rivet-holes at the base appear to have been cast in the blade, and the means of steadying it in its hilt must have been but inadequate. Such weapons, however, can only have been intended for stabbing, and not for striking.
Another blade of similar form, but with perfect rivet-holes, was found in the fine earthwork of Badbury, Dorsetshire, and is in the collection of Mr. Durden, of Blandford. It is 23½ inches long and 2-9/16 inches wide at the base above the rivet-holes.
Blades of this kind are occasionally found in Ireland. In the British Museum is one (9 inches) with deep notches for the rivets, found in Rathkennan Bog, Co. Tipperary.
Nearly all the rapier-shaped blades which have still to be noticed may be regarded as probably those of swords rather than of daggers. That shown in Fig. 317 is in my own collection, and was found near Londonderry. The method of attachment to the hilt by two rivets fitting into notches at the sides of the base of the blade is the same as in some of the shorter weapons already mentioned.
Another (19 inches), found at Killeshandra,[950] Co. Cavan, has similar notches at the sides, but the base is somewhat differently shaped. Many of these rapier-shaped blades have been found in Ireland, and Canon Greenwell has one (27¼ inches) which was bought in Scotland, and probably found in that country.
A blade (14 inches) found in the Loire, and now in the Nantes Museum, has side notches of nearly the same character as those in Fig. 317.
The finest example of the rapier kind ever found in Ireland is that shown in Fig. 318, which by the kindness of the Royal Irish Academy I here reproduce from Sir W. Wilde’s Catalogue. It is no less than 30¼ inches long, and is only ⅝ inch in width at the centre of the blade, which has a strong midrib. It was found in a bog at Lissane, Co. Derry. I have a blade, found at Noailles, near Beauvais, Oise, France, identical in form and character, but only 23¼ inches long. Were it not that the rivets are wanting, Fig. 318 might have been taken from the French instead of the Irish specimen.
Another narrow blade, with a heavy rounded midrib (22⅝ inches long and 1¾ inch broad at the base), was found in a bog at Galbally, Co. Tyrone, and had at the time of its discovery the original hilt attached. There also appear to have been some remains of a scabbard, but this is uncertain. The hilt has been engraved in the Proceedings of the Royal Historical and Archæological Society of Ireland,[951] and is here by their kindness reproduced as Fig. 319.
Mr. Wakeman, of Enniskillen, in his interesting account of the discovery, describes the material of which the hilt is formed as bone, or rather whalebone. Both blade and haft are, however, now in my own collection, and I think there can be no doubt that the material of the hilt is in reality a dark-coloured ox-horn. On some Danish blades I have seen the fibrous texture of this substance still shown by the oxide or salt of the metal, forming as it were a cast of its surface, which has outlasted the horn against which it was originally formed. There are no traces of the rivets in the Galbally hilt, so that probably pins of hard wood served to secure it to the blade.
Some Scandinavian daggers have been found with their handles of horn still attached. One from a barrow in Hasslöf,[952] South Halland, Sweden, had its leather sheath with a long rectangular end of bronze still preserved. The length of the sheath is about twice that of the blade of the dagger.
The bronze hilts for the long rapier-like blades are rare, but not unknown.
One of these blades, found in the Co. Tipperary,[953] has its hilt still attached by metal rivets, as shown in Fig. 320. The hilt is hollow and is now open at the end, though probably, as Wilde suggests, originally closed by a bone stud.
The hilt of a sword in the museum at Tours is joined to the blade in much the same fashion, but has a mere indentation instead of the central semicircular notch. The body of the hilt is engraved with bands of triangles and circles.
A rapier-shaped blade, with a bronze hilt of nearly the same form, but with six rivets, is in the museum at Narbonne.[954] Another nearly similar was found at Cheylounet,[955] Haute Loire.
Some Egyptian bronze daggers have the hilts formed in the same style.
In another form, the blade of which is more leaf-shaped, like the ordinary bronze sword, the means of attachment to the haft are merely slight notches at the sides. That shown in Fig. 321 is only 11 inches long, but the edge has been removed for about 1½ inch from the base, showing the portion which presumably was inserted in the hilt. The original was found near Ely, and is in the collection of Mr. M. Fisher, of that town.
I have a small specimen of the same kind (6¾ inches) from Fordham, Cambs.
A more leaf-shaped blade (14 inches), with rivet notches at the side of the base, was found, with leaf-shaped spear-heads, at Worth,[956] Washfield, Devon. Possibly this, as suggested by Mr. Tucker, F.S.A., was originally a sword from which the hilt was broken.
A blade more like Fig. 321 (15¼ inches long and 1 inch broad) was found in the Mardyke, near Grays Thurrock,[957] Essex. Some of the weapons of this kind, like one from the Thames at Kingston (11½ inches), appear to have been made from broken sword or rapier-like blades.
A long-tanged form, of which it is sometimes difficult to say whether it is a sword, a knife, or a dagger, is of not unfrequent occurrence in Ireland. That shown in Fig. 322 is in my own collection.
I have another found near Armagh (8½ inches), which is rather broader in its proportions. It has a diagonal row of circular indentations across each side of the blade just above the shoulders. Not improbably these and other specimens originally existed in a somewhat different form, but having been injured at their base were refitted with a tang for attachment to the haft instead of being secured by rivets at the sides like those last mentioned.
Some Danish daggers are provided with merely a slight tang like that of a modern chisel.
Another form of blade is more of the nature of a bayonet than of a rapier, yet this would appear to be the proper place in which to notice it. The example shown in Fig. 323 is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., and was found at Raphoe, Co. Donegal.
The section of the blade is nearly square, and the faces are ornamented with parallel engraved lines. It ends in a tang with a single hole through it, and with it was found a ferrule of bronze for receiving the end of the handle.
In the Royal Irish Academy Museum is another blade of the same character, 33 inches long and nearly square in section, but having the faces fluted. With it was a ferrule, 3¾ inches long, having four ribs at the base, with hollows between. It has one rivet-hole through it. This specimen was found in a bog near Glenarm, Co. Antrim.
From the ferrules and general form of the blades it is probable that they were lance or pike heads rather than of the nature of swords or daggers. The “javelin with loop” found in Monaghan, and engraved in the Archæological Journal[958] seems to be somewhat of the same nature.
It may possibly be the case that some of the other blades described in this chapter have served as the points of spear-like weapons, though, from the hilts being discovered with so many of them, there can be no doubt that the majority must be regarded as having been the blades of daggers or rapiers. Among modern weapons we have, however, some which, like the sword-bayonet, are intended to serve a double purpose; and though there can be little doubt as to the true character of the knife-daggers, it is hardly safe to assert that all the dagger-like blades were without exception mounted with short hilts as poniards, and that none were provided with straight shafts as pikes, or placed transversely on a handle to serve as halberds or battle-axes.
The weapons described in this chapter probably range over the whole of the Bronze Period of Britain. The knife-daggers, which have almost exclusively been found in barrows, often associated with other weapons formed of stone, may be regarded as among the earliest of our bronze antiquities; while the rapier-shaped blades, though of rare occurrence in hoards, appear to belong to a period when socketed celts were already in use. Of the dagger-like blades, in whatever manner they were mounted, a considerable number belong to an early period. The analogies of the different forms with those found upon the Continent have already from time to time been noted in the preceding pages.
Chapter XI
TANGED AND SOCKETED DAGGERS, OR SPEAR-HEADS, HALBERDS, AND MACES.
BEFORE passing to the leaf-shaped swords, which would seem naturally to follow in order after the blades last described, it will be well to notice two sets of weapons which, though in many respects identical with daggers, may in the one case have served as spear-heads, and in the other most probably as the blades of battle-axes or halberds. To the first of these two classes the term “Arreton Down type” has been conventionally applied, as it was in the hoard found at that place that the largest proportion of such weapons occurred; and, indeed, until that discovery the type appears to have been unknown.
The tanged blades are still rare, but have now been found in several other places besides the Isle of Wight. The centre of the blade is usually thick and strong, showing a central ridge and having the sides more or less decorated with flutings or lines where the metal is reduced in thickness. The tang, unlike that of the daggers described at the beginning of the last chapter, is long and narrow, and tapers away from the blade. At its end is a hole for a rivet or pin. In one instance a ferrule was found upon the blade, as will be seen in Fig. 324. This figure is copied from that in the Archæologia[959] which is taken from a drawing made in 1737 by Sir Charles Frederick. Upon the ferrule are a number of raised bosses in imitation of rivets, but there seems to be no rivet-hole in the ferrule itself, though there is one in the end of the tang of the blade with the rivet still in it.
Accounts of the discovery of this and other weapons at Arreton Down, near Newport, in the Isle of Wight, were communicated to the Society of Antiquaries in the years 1735 and 1737, and the latter has been printed by Mr. A. W. Franks, F.R.S.[960] At least sixteen articles were found in a marl-pit, and they are said to have been arranged in a regular order. Of these, nine were of this tanged type, but varying in details.
One (Fig. 328) was provided with a socket; two were dagger blades, already mentioned (one of which is given in Fig. 306), and four were flanged celts, like Fig. 8, but varying in size. Six specimens from this hoard are now in the British Museum. Mr. Franks, in the paper already mentioned, regards these tanged weapons as spear-heads, and is I think right in so doing; the blades, however, present such close analogies with the daggers from the Wiltshire barrows, and the socketed variety (Fig. 328) is so dagger-like in character, that it is hard to speak with any degree of confidence upon this point.
In 1855 Mr. Franks observed that the type was quite new to him, but since that time several other specimens have been found besides those from Arreton Down. One of these, discovered in the River Lea at Stratford-le-Bow, Essex, is now in the British Museum, and is shown in Fig. 325. As will be seen, it has a rounded midrib, with several parallel grooves on each side of it engraved or punched on the blade.
Some of the weapons from[961] Arreton Down are of nearly the same description, but the midrib is more ridged, and is ornamented with rows of engraved or punched dots. One has a double crescent-shaped line of dots punched in at the base of the blade.
I have a blade (10 inches) of the same form and character, but without any engraved dots upon it, from Burwell Fen, Cambridge. The parallel flutings on the blade appear to have been produced in the casting, and not by engraving or punching. The hole in the tang was also made in the casting, being irregular in form. It is nowhere less than ¼ inch in diameter. Another weapon (7⅛ inches) of the same character, but apparently without any fluting, was found near Newbury,[962] Berks.
Such blades are of extremely rare occurrence in Ireland, but one (9 inches) closely resembling Fig. 325 was found in the county of West Meath, and is now in the collection of Mr. Robert Day, F.S.A., of Cork.
A slightly different variety of blade is shown in Fig. 326. It is ridged along the centre, and has a groove on each side running parallel to the edge, such as would afford facility for sharpening the edge by hammering it out. The end of the tang has been broken off at the hole. This specimen is said to have been found near Matlock, Derbyshire, and is in my own collection.
One with much broader and deeper grooves on each side of the midrib (10 inches), found in Swaffham Fen, is in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
A nearly similar blade, but with four slight channels on either side instead of one, is in the museum at Copenhagen, and is said to have been found in Italy.[963]
Another of these blades, but without any lateral flutings, and in character similar to Fig. 324, was found near Preston,[964] in the parish of Plymstock, Devon, and is shown in Fig. 327. It is now in the British Museum. In this instance, as at Arreton Down, the accompanying articles were flanged celts like Fig. 9, of which there were sixteen, and three dagger blades (see Fig. 301). There was also a narrow chisel (Fig. 190).
Two specimens from Suffolk (8 inches and 10½ inches), one of them from Hintlesham,[965] formed part of the collection of the late Mr. Whincopp, and are now in the British Museum.
One of the Arreton Down[966] specimens, without a ferrule, is also much of this type.
In the Arreton Down hoard there was a single example of a weapon of this kind which was provided with a socket for the insertion of a handle or shaft, instead of having a tang. Fig. 328 is copied from the engraving published in the Archæologia.[967] As will be observed, the socket part is made to abut on the blade, much after the manner of a dagger handle, and has cast upon it two bosses in imitation of the heads of rivets for securing the blade. A weapon (8¼ inches), which there can hardly be a doubt is the original from which Sir Charles Frederick made his drawing for the Society of Antiquaries, is now in Canon Greenwell’s collection, and I know of no other example. It differs from the socketed knives in the character of the blade, which is thicker and more highly ornamented, like some of the daggers from the Wiltshire barrows. Whether it was itself intended to be a dagger, or whether it was the head of a spear or lance, I will not attempt to determine.
What has somewhat the appearance of being a weapon of the same character was found in a moss near Campbeltown,[968] Argyleshire, together with a bronze sword. It may, however, as already suggested, be merely a socketed knife.
A very beautiful weapon of this kind is in the museum at Lausanne. The blade is ornamented somewhat in the same manner as that of Fig. 328. The socket is shorter and ornamented with parallel rings and bands of triangles, alternately hatched and plain. There appear to be six rivets, and what may be termed the hilt has a deep half-oval notch in it, like that which is common on swords and daggers. The margin of this notch is decorated with punctured dots. It was, I believe, found near Sion, Valais, with portions of what may have been the ornaments of a sheath, and also with a long narrow celt, flanged at the upper part. The general resemblance between the Swiss and the English specimens is very remarkable.
An Egyptian[969] blade, with the side edges slightly curved inwards, and with the socket rather shorter than in Fig. 328, is in the museum at Boulaq. It is attached to the socket by three rivets.
The second series of blades of which it is proposed to treat in this chapter are usually from six to sixteen inches long, rather broad at the base, and not unfrequently curved longitudinally. This latter circumstance, as well as their shape and weight, proves that some of these broad blades were not intended for use as daggers; and this being admitted, it seems to follow that others, which resemble the curved blades in all respects except their curvature, must be regarded as belonging to the same class of weapons. What these weapons were may I think be best shown by some examples from Scandinavia and Northern Germany, which also show the manner in which similar blades were attached to their shafts so as to form a kind of halberd or battle-axe.
That which I have selected by way of illustration is one that is engraved in Dr. Oscar Montelius’ “Sveriges Forntid,”[970] who has kindly lent me the block of Fig. 329. In this instance the scale adopted is one-third linear measure. In A is given a view of the upper end, seen from above, and in B a view from behind the blade, showing the great projection of the rivet-like knobs. The handle as well as the blade is in bronze. This specimen was found at Årup, in Scania. Another is engraved in Lisch’s “Frederico-Francisceum.”[971] It was found, with two others, at Blengow, near Buckow, Mecklenburg Schwerin, and is regarded by Lisch as a kind of battle-axe, or possibly as a “commander’s staff” or bâton of honour. Good examples of the same kind are in the museums at Malmoe and Kiel, and others have been described by Klemm.[972] Two have been found near Neu Ruppin. Others are in the Schwerin Museum. Another, with a separate socket, having three rivet-like bosses upon it, is in the Berlin Museum.[973] There can be little doubt that this last-mentioned weapon is a representative of an earlier form, when the shaft was merely of wood and the transverse blade was secured in it by means of three rivets. An intermediate form, in which the blade fits into a kind of open-work bronze socket for receiving a shaft, is preserved in the Berlin Museum.[974]
An instance of the use of an analogous form of weapon in another part of the world is afforded by some bronze blades from China, of which one is represented in Fig. 330. For the loan of the original of this figure I am indebted to Mr. A. W. Franks, F.R.S. As will be readily seen, the blade is adapted for being attached at nearly a right angle to a shaft, into which the flat tang behind the stop-ridge would be inserted, and the blade would then be secured in its position by laces or straps passing through the slots at the base of the blade. The antiquity of such weapons in China it is hard to ascertain, but they probably date back to a period many centuries remote from the present day.
Several of them are engraved in a Chinese work on antiquities, “The Golden Study,” to which Mr. H. N. Moseley, F.R.S., has kindly called my attention. What appear to be bronze spear-heads and swords are figured in the same work.
A bronze weapon of the same kind, but with a socket, which, like the blade, is highly ornamented, was found on the Yenissei,[975] in Siberia. There is the figure of a kind of antelope projecting from the socket opposite the blade. Another, from Viatka, in Russia, has the head of an animal in the same position.
An iron weapon with a socket at right angles to the blade, from the Inwa,[976] Perm, appears to be a halberd of much the same kind.
This form of weapon closely approximates to the Australian “malga”[977] and to some other wooden weapons in use in New Caledonia.
As it is in Ireland and Scotland that the most characteristic of the halberd blades have been discovered, it will be well to commence with the examples from those countries rather than with those from England.
In Fig. 331 is represented a fine specimen of a form not unusual in Ireland, though the central rib is somewhat more ornamented than is generally the case. The rivets, as usual, are three in number, and are still preserved in the blade. In this case they are about ⅜ inch in diameter and ¾ inch between the heads, which are about ⅝ inch in diameter and have been carefully hammered into an almost hemispherical form. The midrib ends abruptly in a straight line where it abutted on the shaft. The metal appears to have a considerably less proportion of tin to copper than is usual with bronze weapons. It looks in fact almost like pure copper.
This coppery appearance is by no means uncommon in these blades. I have another specimen of the same form (9¾ inches), but without the bead on the midrib. It was found at Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. A specimen much like Fig. 331 is termed by Vallancey,[978] “the brass head of a Tuagh catha, a general name for the war-axe.” “The large rivets of this weapon show it was mounted on a very strong shaft.”
Sir W. Wilde has described, under the two distinct headings of “Broad scythe-shaped Swords,” and “Battle-axes,” the weapons which I have here classed together. Of the former he mentions forty-one specimens in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, of the latter but two or three. The “swords”[979] he describes as thick, heavy, and round-pointed, averaging about 12 inches in length by about 2½ inches in breadth at the base; twenty-two of the blades being curved. With the strong blades, however, he classes some which are quite thin and flat, and which have more the appearance of having been intended for daggers. The curved shape is much against their having been attached to staves “spear-ways;” so that Wilde’s other suggestion of the scythe-shaped swords having been mounted like axes, or “affixed to long handles like modern halberds,” seems much more reasonable. As to the shorter and broader blades, whether curved or not, he appears to have had no doubt of their being a kind of battle-axes.
Wilde has inferred from the large size of the rivets, some being 1½ inches in length and nearly 1 inch across the burr or head, that they must have been attached to massive metal handles, of which, however, no fragments have been preserved. If this view had been correct, the disappearance of the handles would be a remarkable circumstance; but the large rivets appear rather intended for securing the blades to wooden shafts, the disappearance of which from ordinary decay is exactly what might be expected. In one instance there are large conical washers or broad rings of bronze 1¼ inches in diameter beneath the rivet-heads, and these in the case of a metal handle would have been superfluous.
Wilde appears to me to have fallen into another error with respect to the antiquity of this form of weapon.[980] Arguing from the fact that many of the specimens are formed either of red bronze or of pure copper, he thinks it probable that, like the celts of that material, they are of immense antiquity. And in another place he says that their antiquity may be gathered from the fact of many being of copper, the use of which metal invariably preceded that of bronze. As I have already had occasion to observe, it is perfectly true that many of these blades have the appearance of being made of copper, but the absence of tin in their composition has not as yet been proved. Even were they of pure copper the form and character of the blades show them to be derivatives from the dagger, as the dagger itself sprang from the simpler knife; and the cause for using a less proportion of tin, or indeed none of that metal in them, appears to me to have been the wish to make them less brittle than if they had been of bronze. A weapon used as a battle-axe would not be less deadly from having a somewhat duller cutting edge than if formed of bronze, and should it get bent in an encounter, the straightening of it might quickly be effected, while the loss of a blade by its breaking would be irreparable. I have elsewhere contended that the Hungarian perforated double-ended axes (like pick-axes) of copper, with but little or no tin in them, were made of this material, not because tin was unknown, but because the ductile and malleable copper was found better adapted for certain purposes than the more fragile bronze. In the same manner copper rather than brass sets or punches are in use among engineers at the present day, when an intermediate piece of metal is required to convey the blows of a hammer to an iron key or other object which would be injured by receiving the blows direct.
Sir William Wilde, in his Fig. 360, has shown a hollow tube of bronze as forming the handle of a wide halberd blade; but this juxtaposition of the two objects has been questioned. Not only are the projecting spikes upon the tube somewhat inconsistent with its use as a handle, but from a comparison with some similar objects since discovered there can be no doubt of the presumed halberd shaft being in reality a portion of a trumpet.
The blade which is figured in connection with this handle was found near Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, and closely resembles Fig. 332 both in form and size, being 7⅜ inches long and 8⅝ inches wide at the base, in which are two rivet-holes and also two notches in the margin. It has a kind of treble midrib. The blade shown in Fig. 332 has but a single midrib, but near the edges and following the same curve is a minor ridge. A section is given at the side of the figure. The original was found near Cavan, and is in my own collection. From the absence of rivet-holes it seems doubtful whether it was ever mounted on a shaft so as to form a complete weapon, unless, indeed, the sharp base was merely driven into the wood. The metal appears to have a larger admixture of tin in it than is usual in the scythe-like blades. I am not aware of the existence of any other specimens of this very broad form besides the two now mentioned.
A curved blade, of much the same section as Fig. 332, but 15½ inches long and 3¼ inches broad at the base, found at the foot of Slieve Kileta Hill, Co. Wexford, is in the British Museum. It has three stout rivets.
The long and narrow blade shown in Fig. 333 seems also to belong to the category of halberds, though the rivet-holes are smaller than usual, and the blade itself thinner. It is strengthened by a number of small converging ribs formed in the casting, instead of by a broad midrib, and is also straight and not curved. The original was found near Newtown Limavady, Co. Derry, and is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
The shorter and much more massive blade shown in Fig. 334 is also in Canon Greenwell’s collection, and was found at Ballygawley, Co. Tyrone. It has probably seen much service, as what appear to have been the original three rivet-holes have in two cases been partly closed by hammering, while in the third the base of the blade has broken away. In order to make use of the weapon, three fresh holes have been drilled rather farther from the base, in which the rivets are still preserved.
Some of the Irish[981] blades are more rounded than this at the point, and have been secured to the shafts by four rivets arranged as in Fig. 336. There is also occasionally a shoulder between the blade and the part let into the handle, as in that from Stranraer.
In Fig. 335 is shown another blade much like that from Ballygawley, but found near Falkland, Fifeshire. The metal appears to be nearly pure copper, and it is doubtful whether it ever had more than one rivet-hole, though there are notches for the reception of two besides the rivet still left in the blade. It would, however, be fairly secured in its handle by a second rivet in the notch on the left, while a third at the back of the midrib would prevent the blade from being driven into its handle by a blow.
In the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh are several of these halberd-like blades, some of them curved. One from Sluie,[982] Edinkillie, Elginshire, is 11 by 3½ inches, and has four rivet-holes arranged in a semicircle. It was found with two flat celts. Three others, from 10 to 13½ inches by 3 inches, were found together at Kingarth,[983] Bute. They are described as of reddish bronze.
The original of Fig. 336 was found near Stranraer,[984] Wigtonshire, and is now in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. It is 12½ inches long and 4½ broad, and weighs nearly 1¾ lbs., so that if mounted as a halberd, it must have been a formidable weapon. The rivets are an inch in length.
In England and Wales the blades which can with any degree of confidence be regarded as those of halberds are by no means common. I think, however, that the example from Harbyrnrigge,[985] Crosby Ravensworth, Westmoreland, shown in Fig. 337, must be looked upon as a halberd rather than as a dagger. It is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.
Another blade of much the same character is shown on the scale of one-fourth in Fig. 338. It was found in Shropshire,[986] but the exact locality is not known. Another (11¼ by 4 inches), bearing much resemblance to that from Shropshire, was found near Manea,[987] Cambridgeshire. It is provided with four rivets, and has a small rib running down the thickened centre of the blade. It is now in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
The late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., bequeathed to me a blade of this character (9¾ by 3½ inches) thickened out in the middle like Fig. 334, and with three large rivet-holes in the base, which is somewhat of a trefoil form. It was found with broken sword-blades and spear-heads at Stoke Ferry, Norfolk, and appears to be formed of copper.
The only Welsh example which I have to mention was found in the parish of Llansanffraid,[988] Cwm Deuddwr, Radnorshire. It is 9 inches long and 4 inches wide, and weighs 15 oz. In form and character it closely resembles the Irish and Scotch specimens (Figs. 334 and 335), having a plain midrib, bevelled edges, and three rivet-holes.
A large blade, with a strong midrib and three rivets, found in Zealand, and engraved by Madsen,[989] may have belonged to a halberd of this class.
I have already mentioned the halberd blades from Scandinavia and North Germany, and have seen but one example from any of the western countries of Europe. This is from Spain, and was found near Ciudad Real. It is about 8¼ inches long, and more T-shaped at the base than any British specimen, the blade suddenly expanding from 2 inches in width to 5. In this expanded part are the usual three rivets, each about 1 inch in length. The discovery of a weapon of this type in Spain seems to lend support to those who maintain that there was some connection between the Iberians and the early inhabitants of Ireland. The curious similarity of some of the Portuguese forms of flint arrow- and javelin-heads to those of Ireland is also worthy of notice.
Besides the battle-axe or halberd there is another form of weapon for hand-to-hand encounters—the mace—of which it will be well to say a few words; for though I do not for a moment believe that the bronze mace-heads so frequently found in this and other European countries belong to the Bronze Age, yet by many they have been classed among the antiquities of that period. These weapons vary considerably in size and weight, but the cuts will show the more common forms.
That shown in Fig. 339 is in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, and is stated to have been found at Lidgate,[990] Suffolk. In the Meyrick[991] Collection is one precisely similar, which was brought from Italy. The mace to which these dentated rings were attached is thought to have been a kind of “morning star” or flail. Others from Lanarkshire[992] are of similar character. Professor Daniel Wilson refers these to the time of the Roman occupation.
I have three heavy rings with four long and eight short spikes each, from Hungary.
Another form is provided with a socket, and is evidently intended for mounting on a straight staff. That shown in Fig. 340 was found in a well at Great Bedwin,[993] Wilts, and is now in the British Museum. Another of the same class, with a longer socket, is in the Museum[994] of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society; and two are in the collection of Mr. M. Fisher, at Ely. Others have been found in London,[995] and at Stroud,[996] Gloucestershire.
An Irish example from Wilde[997] is shown in Fig. 341. There are three such in the Museum of the Academy, varying in length from 2 to 5 inches. One from Tipperary[998] (4 inches) is of the same kind.
I have specimens of this kind from Hungary, one (4⅝ inches) with three rows of four spikes, and one (4⅞ inches) with five rows of five spikes. I have another from the Seine at Paris (4⅜ inches) with six longitudinal ribs instead of spikes.
Lindenschmit[999] has figured seven examples, from various parts of Germany and Italy, some more or less similar to each of the three figures I have given. Some of these are decorated with spirals in relief. Lisch[1000] has also engraved some specimens.
In the British Museum[1001] are some foreign specimens decorated with patterns of a decidedly mediæval character.
An instrument of this kind, with eight lateral spikes and a long iron spike coming out from the end, was found with numerous mediæval relics in the ruins of Söborg,[1002] in North Zealand. Such a discovery seems to me conclusive as to the date to be assigned to this class of weapons.
I must apologise to the reader for this digression, and now proceed to the consideration of the leaf-shaped bronze swords, which are far more closely allied to the arms described in Chapter X. than to the objects which have been discussed in the present chapter.