Fig. 77.—Saxon byrnie of leather. (Cott. MS., Cleop. C. 8.)
Fig. 78.—Leather armour, 10th century.
The Byrnie or Battle-Sark was at times made of leather. In the figure reproduced from a British Museum MS. ([Fig. 77]) the coat appears to be of hide with much of the hair apparently left upon it; its lower edges are dagged, and it defends the body and a part of the legs, whereas in [Fig. 78] the defensive covering appears only upon the upper part of the body. The byrnie was also made of padded stuff judging from the illustrations, but the earlier examples are so excessively crude and inartistic that it is rash to make authoritative statements. When a forest is indicated by four leaves and a twig, a mountain pass by a bulbous mole-hill, and elaborate Saxon embroidery by half-a-dozen scattered dots, it will readily be perceived that such a technical detail as body armour cannot be definitely settled by these rude drawings. Hence a controversy has arisen, which can by no means be considered as definitely decided, upon the question as to whether the Anglo-Saxons possessed byrnies of true interlinked chain mail. Hewitt in his “Ancient Armour” maintains the affirmative, and contends that the references in the poem of “Beowulf” to the “twisted breast-net,” the “hard battle-net,” the “locked battle-shirt,” the “byrnie twisted with hands,” the “war byrnie, hard and hand-locked,” can only mean chain-mail. He further refers to the Bayeux Tapestry where a body is being stripped, and the links show inside the hauberk as they are represented on the outside. These arguments certainly carry weight, but until a bonâ-fide example of Anglo-Saxon manufacture is brought to light the question must apparently be left in abeyance. One of the modes of defence concerning which there is no doubt was the sewing on of separate flat rings of iron to a tunic of woven material or leather, and also the covering of the same with metal or leather plates, either cut into the form of scales and overlapping, or square or oblong.
PLATE VII*
Milanese Salade, Fifteenth Century
A. F. Calvert