Fig. 294.—Woodyates. ½
Another[867] (14½ inches) was thought to have the “loop-fashioned” handle for suspending the weapon to a thong or the belt. I think, however, that when the daggers were in use the handles were to all appearance solid. In one found in Dunshaughlin[868] crannoge, Co. Meath, there is a second oval hole at the end of the hilt, which may have been used for suspension.
There is a good example of this type of dagger in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.
A small dagger (7⅛ inches), found near Ballinamore,[869] Co. Leitrim, has an extension of the blade in the form of a thin plate with a button at the bottom so as to form the body of the handle. In this part are two rivet-holes for the attachment of the plates of wood or horn to form the handle.
Some handles of bronze knives found in Scandinavia and Switzerland[870] are formed with similar openings. Daggers with the blade and handle cast in one piece have been found in the Italian terramare.[871] I have a dagger of the same kind from Hungary.
I must now return, from this digression as to the hafting of daggers, to the thin blades or knife-daggers of which I was speaking.
Of those with four rivets but few can be cited. One of unusually large size is shown in Fig. 294. The original was found by Sir R. C. Hoare in a barrow at Woodyates.[872] It was protected by a wooden scabbard. A perforated ring and two buttons of jet, four barbed flint arrow-heads, and a bronze pin were found with the same skeleton. This blade, like many others, is described as having been gilt, but this can hardly have been the case. Dr. Thurnam[873] has tested such brilliantly polished surfaces for gold, but found no traces of that metal.
A blade of this form is engraved in the “Barrow Diggers,”[874] but is described as a stone celt split in two.