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]).
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.