Daggers and Rapiers
image Fig. 55.—Stone celt, Bronze dagger with gold band, and Urn found in Topped Mountain Cairn, Co. Fermanagh.
As has been mentioned, as well as being parent to the spear-head, the small weak knife-dagger frequently found in early Bronze-Age burials also developed into the true dagger-blade, and in course of time into the sword. Bronze daggers have often been found in Ireland; there are about forty in the National Collection. Among the most interesting finds of these early daggers may be mentioned that discovered in 1897 at an interment at Topped Mountain Cairn, County Fermanagh. This dagger measures 5? inches, and is covered with a beautiful blue patina. It is decorated with raised lines on each side of the blade, and has two small rivets. It was discovered in a cist in the cairn lying at the right side of the skull of an uncremated body, and in the same place was a small band of gold which appears to have been half of a band of that metal which was probably round the handle of the dagger (fig. 55). Another interesting find is the small bronze dagger discovered with urns and cremated bones in a cist at Annaghkeen Cairn, County Galway, in 1908.
image Fig. 56.—Dagger and Rapier blades.
In course of time the length of the dagger-blade was increased; and later examples are wonderful specimens of casting. The earlier daggers were either attached to the handle by rivets, or else notches were left in the base of the blade for the attachment. The manner of hafting them is quite clear, as a few hafted examples have been found. Some had bronze handles cast separately (fig. 56); others had handles of horn or wood (fig. 57); but the hilts for the most part were made of some perishable substance, and they have consequently not been recovered. The scolloped mark left by the hilt is often quite plainly to be seen on the blade. In later times the handle was sometimes cast in one piece with the blade; but the division between the handle and the blade is always quite clearly marked. The decoration of the later dagger-blades takes the form of a number of triangles at the base of the blade, and the extreme similarity in decoration between the Italian and the early northern and western daggers has led Montelius to consider the latter as derived from the former; and this is enforced in the case of the Irish examples by the series of small hatched-triangles which have been found at the base of two well-known Irish examples (fig. 56).
The rapiers were evolved quite naturally by lengthening the dagger-blade; and this form was probably influenced also, as will be mentioned later, by contemporary weapons in use in the Mediterranean lands.
The longest rapier ever found in Western Europe is the splendid weapon found at Lissane, Co. Derry, in 1867, which measures 30¼ inches in length (fig. 59). Another very remarkable Irish example is the short rapier found in Upper Lough Erne, and obtained by Mr. Thomas Plunkett, m.r.i.a., from the finder. This weapon is a wonderfully fine piece of casting. It measures 16¾ inches in length (fig. 58).
image
Fig. 57.—Dagger with
horn handle found at
Ballymoney, Co. Antrim.
Fig. 58.—Rapier found
in Upper Lough Erne.
Fig. 59.—Rapier found at
Lissane, Co. Derry.
image Fig. 60.—Rapiers and Daggers found in Ireland.
The rapiers belong to the middle and later portions of the Bronze Age. This type of weapon is common in France, and is described by M. DÉchelette as widely spread in the British Islands and the north of France, and as having been introduced from there into South Germany and the region of the Middle Rhine.[16] The rapiers of advanced type he places in the third division of the Bronze Age, as they have been found in Bronze-Age tumuli of that period, as at Staadorf, Haut Palatinat (1600-1300 b.c.). Montelius places the rapiers in his fourth period dated at the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the twelfth century b.c.,[17] so that his dating of these objects practically coincides with that of M. DÉchelette. It is now well recognized that the swords of the Ægean-MycenÆan area were developed on parallel lines to those of Western Europe. We find that the long rapiers or thrusting swords are developed from the tanged Cypriote dagger, and that the true sword is a later evolution from the rapier. It is hardly to be doubted that some of the western forms of daggers and rapiers were influenced by MycenÆan types; and the discovery in Sicily of rapiers of MycenÆan type with pottery dated as recent Minoan III, establishes a direct bond between the Ægean and Western Europe.[18]
