Fig. 245.—Ireland. ½
One of the socketed knives in the Academy Museum at Dublin has two rivet-holes on the face. Of the others, about two-thirds have a single rivet-hole on the face, and the other third one on the side.
A long blade, somewhat differing in its details from Fig. 245, was found between Lurgan and Moira, Co. Down, and, it is stated, in company with the bronze hilt or pommel shown in Fig. 246. These objects formed part of the Wilshe Collection, and are now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Two objects, somewhat similar to Fig. 246, found with spear-heads in Cambridgeshire, will subsequently be mentioned. A piece of bronze of much the same form, found with a hoard of bronze objects at Marden,[739] in Kent, seems to be a jet or waste piece from a casting. It has, however, been regarded as part of a fibula.
The socketed form of knife is hardly known upon the Continent, though, as will have been observed, it has occasionally been found in the North of France. Among the fragments of metal forming part of the deposit of an ancient bronze-founder, and discovered at Dreuil, near Amiens, I have the fragments of two such knives. I have also a fine and entire specimen, 9¼ inches long, from the bed of the Seine at Charenton, near Paris. There is a transverse rib at each end and in the middle of the socket, through the face of which are two rivet-holes. A portion of the original wooden handle is still in the socket, secured in its place by two pins, also apparently of wood, which pass through the rivet-holes. Another knife (6⅝ inches), like Fig. 241, but with only one rivet-hole, was also found in the Seine at Paris, and is now in my collection.
Several socketed knives with curved blades have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings, and one such, found with the sickle already mentioned, is in the Amiens Museum.
There is another form of socketed knife which it will be well here to mention. The blade is sharp on both sides, but instead of being flat it is curved into a semicircle. For a typical example I am obliged to have recourse to a French specimen.
That shown in Fig. 247 is in my own collection, and was found with a gold torque and bracelet, a bronze anvil (Fig. 217), and other objects, at Fresné la Mère, near Falaise, Calvados. It seems well adapted for working out hollows in wood. With it was found a small, tanged, single-edged knife, the end of which is bent to a smaller curve.
