[Illustration: FIG. 53.—WOODEN SABRE.] [Illustration: FIG. 54.—WOODEN CHOPPER.] [Illustration: FIG. 55.—KNIFE (WOOD), FROM VANNA LAVA.] [Heading: _THE WOODEN SWORD._] The fine Ethnological Museum of Herr Cesar Godeffroy[133] of Hamburg and Samoa, illustrating the ethnology of the Pacific Islands, contains many specimens of the knob-stick bevelled on one side of the head to an edge and gradually passing into the Sword. On the right-hand entrance-wall are, or were, two fine sabres (fig. 53) of Eucalyptus-wood, labelled ‘Schwert von Bowen (Queensland).’ The Sandwich Islanders, we see, still wield the Sword-club with sharp-cutting edges, like their neighbours of New Ireland. The savage Solomon Archipelago has supplied a two-handed sabre of light and bright-yellow wood; its longitudinal mid-rib shows direct derivation from the paddle-club. There is also a lozenge-shaped hand-club, which may readily have given a model to metal-workers. It is of hard, dark, and polished wood, and the handle is whipped round with coir (Tafel xx. p. 97): the length is seventy cent. by four of maximum breadth. The Swords are unfortunately not figured in the catalogue; but there is a fine wooden knife forty-nine cent. long by six cent. broad, with open handle and highly-worked grip (Tafel xxi. p. 135). It comes from Vanna Lava, Banks Group, New Hebrides, Polynesia (fig. 55).[134] [Illustration: FIG. 56.—IRISH SWORD.] [Illustration: FIG. 57.—WOODEN RAPIER-BLADE (Dublin Museum).] The wooden Sword extended deep into the Age of Metal. Articles of the kind have been brought from New Zealand, which are evident copies of modern European weapons. Wilde (p. 452) gives the wooden Sword, found five feet deep in Ballykilmunary near High Park, county Wicklow, with some bog-butter, but he finds no indications of its age. The length is twenty inches (fig. 56). Upon the side of the blade, and of a piece with it, stands a projection whose purpose is unknown: it is evidently inconvenient for a toy; but if the relic be a model for a sand-mould, the excrescence would have left an aperture by which to pour in the metal. This view is supported by the shape of the handle, which resembles the grips of the single-piece bronze Swords found in different parts of Europe. The Dublin Museum also contains[135] a blade apparently intended for thrusting, and labelled ‘Wooden Sword-shaped Object.’ The material is oak, blackened by burial in bog-earth: it has a mid-rib, a bevelled point, and no appearance of being a model (fig. 57). [Heading: _THE STONE-SWORD._]