CHAPTER VIII.
SICKLES.
Sickles are the only undoubtedly agricultural implements in bronze with which we are acquainted in this country. Already in the Stone Period the cultivation of cereals for food appears to have been practised, and I have elsewhere[695] pointed out a form of flint instrument which may possibly have supplied the place of sickles or reaping hooks in those early times. The rarity of bronze sickles in this country, as compared with their abundance in some parts of Southern Europe, is, however, somewhat striking, and may, perhaps, point to a considerably less cultivation of grain crops in Britain than in countries with a warmer climate, while the inhabitants were otherwise in much the same stage of civilisation.
The traditions of the use of bronze sickles survived to a comparatively late period in Greece and Italy, and Medea is described by Sophocles[696] as cutting her magic herbs with such instruments (Χαλκέοισιν ἤμα δρεπάνοις τομάς), and by Ovid[697] as doing it “curvamine falcis ahenæ.” Elissa is by Virgil[698] represented as using a bronze sickle for similar purposes—
“Falcibus et messæ ad lunam quæruntur aënis
Pubentes herbæ nigri cum lacte veneni.”
When bronze sickles were used for reaping corn it seems to have been a common custom merely to cut the ears of corn from off the straw, after the manner of the Gaulish reaping machine described by Pliny,[699] and not to cut and carry away straw and ear together from the field. This practice will probably account for the small size of the sickles which have come down to us, unless we are to reverse the argument, and derive the custom of cutting off the ears only from the diminutive size of the instruments employed for reaping.
Bronze sickles were hafted in different ways, sometimes being fastened to the handle by a pin, either attached to the stem of the blade or passing through a hole in it, combined with some system of binding; and sometimes being provided with a socket into which the haft was driven, and then secured by a transverse pin or rivet.
The sickles with a socket to receive the handle appear to be peculiar to Britain and the North of France. The other form occurs over the greater part of Europe, including Scandinavia, and the blades, as has been observed by Dr. Keller, are always adapted for use in the right hand. Dr. Gross, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne, has been so fortunate as to discover at Mœrigen, the site of one of the ancient pile-villages on the lake, two or three handles for sickles of this kind. A figure showing three views of one of these handles has been published by the Royal Archæological Institute,[700] and is here by permission reproduced as Fig. 231. This handle is formed of yew, curiously carved so as to receive the thumb and fingers, and has a flat place at the end against which the blade was fastened. In this place there are two grooves to receive the slightly projecting ribs with which the stem of the sickle-blade is usually strengthened. Dr. Keller[701] has suggested that the blade of the sickle was made fast to the handle by means of a kind of ferrule which passed over it, and was secured in its place by two pins or nails.