The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.Evans, John
History
The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.
Evans, John
Bronze age -- Great Britain; Bronze age -- Ireland; Great Britain -- Antiquities
One from Oberwald-behrungen is in the Museum at Würzburg. Another is
at Hanover.
[Illustration: Fig. 377.—Isle of Harty. 1/1]
The fact that traces of wooden sheaths to daggers have been found in
the Wiltshire and other barrows has already been mentioned, but no
bronze fittings have been found with them. There are, however, some
objects which may have served either as the mouth-pieces of sheaths
for daggers or small knives, or as ferrules for their hilts.
One of these from the Harty hoard is shown full size in Fig. 377.
Another of identically the same character, but rather shorter, was
found, with a bronze knife or dagger and numerous other articles, at
Marden,[1165] Kent. It was regarded by Mr. Beale Poste as the mounting
of the top of a dagger sheath formed of leather.
Another was found with various other relics near Abergele,[1166]
Denbighshire.
Some elongated loops formed of jet are of a shape that would have
served for the mouth-pieces of sword scabbards, but whether so fragile
a substance was used for such a purpose may well be questioned. They
may have been merely ornamental. One about 3 inches long, found in
Scotland,[1167] has been regarded as a clasp for a belt. Possibly
these objects in bronze may, after all, be of the nature of slides or
clasps.
Another loop, more rounded at the ends, found in the peat at
Newbury,[1168] Berks, has been described as a slider for securing
some portion of the dress, or for passing over a belt. Not improbably
this is their true interpretation. Some outer slides are described at
p. 404.
Some bronze objects of nearly similar form, but about 3 inches in
length, found with late Celtic remains, have been regarded as the
cross-guards[1169] of daggers or knives.
In my own collection is a fine bronze sword from Denmark with broad
side flanges to the hilt plate, on the blade of which is a bronze loop
about ¼ inch wide, rebated for the reception of wood, but without
any rivet-holes. Each face presents four parallel headings. For some
time, in common with some Danish antiquaries, I regarded this loop as
the mouth-piece of a scabbard, for which it appears well adapted; but
I now find that such a view is erroneous, and that this loop is the
ferrule for receiving the ends of the plates of wood or horn which
formed the hilt. For in the barrow of Lydshöi,[1170] near Blidstrup,
Frederiksborg, was a bronze sword with a similar ferrule upon it, and
the remains of the plates of horn beneath it still in position. One of
these Danish ferrules is of gold.[1171] A sheath[1172] from a barrow
at Hvidegaard, made of birch wood with an outer and inner casing of
leather, has a leather band for the mouth-piece, and a leather eye for
receiving the belt. Some small sheaths for bronze knives and for a
flint dagger found at the same time are simply of leather.
CHAPTER XIV.
SPEAR-HEADS, LANCE-HEADS, ETC.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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