In the Royal Irish Academy Museum is another blade of the same character, 33 inches long and nearly square in section, but having the faces fluted. With it was a ferrule, 3¾ inches long, having four ribs at the base, with hollows between. It has one rivet-hole through it. This specimen was found in a bog near Glenarm, Co. Antrim.
From the ferrules and general form of the blades it is probable that they were lance or pike heads rather than of the nature of swords or daggers. The “javelin with loop” found in Monaghan, and engraved in the Archæological Journal[958] seems to be somewhat of the same nature.
It may possibly be the case that some of the other blades described in this chapter have served as the points of spear-like weapons, though, from the hilts being discovered with so many of them, there can be no doubt that the majority must be regarded as having been the blades of daggers or rapiers. Among modern weapons we have, however, some which, like the sword-bayonet, are intended to serve a double purpose; and though there can be little doubt as to the true character of the knife-daggers, it is hardly safe to assert that all the dagger-like blades were without exception mounted with short hilts as poniards, and that none were provided with straight shafts as pikes, or placed transversely on a handle to serve as halberds or battle-axes.
The weapons described in this chapter probably range over the whole of the Bronze Period of Britain. The knife-daggers, which have almost exclusively been found in barrows, often associated with other weapons formed of stone, may be regarded as among the earliest of our bronze antiquities; while the rapier-shaped blades, though of rare occurrence in hoards, appear to belong to a period when socketed celts were already in use. Of the dagger-like blades, in whatever manner they were mounted, a considerable number belong to an early period. The analogies of the different forms with those found upon the Continent have already from time to time been noted in the preceding pages.
CHAPTER XI.
TANGED AND SOCKETED DAGGERS, OR SPEAR-HEADS, HALBERDS, AND MACES.
Before passing to the leaf-shaped swords, which would seem naturally to follow in order after the blades last described, it will be well to notice two sets of weapons which, though in many respects identical with daggers, may in the one case have served as spear-heads, and in the other most probably as the blades of battle-axes or halberds. To the first of these two classes the term “Arreton Down type” has been conventionally applied, as it was in the hoard found at that place that the largest proportion of such weapons occurred; and, indeed, until that discovery the type appears to have been unknown.
The tanged blades are still rare, but have now been found in several other places besides the Isle of Wight. The centre of the blade is usually thick and strong, showing a central ridge and having the sides more or less decorated with flutings or lines where the metal is reduced in thickness. The tang, unlike that of the daggers described at the beginning of the last chapter, is long and narrow, and tapers away from the blade. At its end is a hole for a rivet or pin. In one instance a ferrule was found upon the blade, as will be seen in Fig. 324. This figure is copied from that in the Archæologia[959] which is taken from a drawing made in 1737 by Sir Charles Frederick. Upon the ferrule are a number of raised bosses in imitation of rivets, but there seems to be no rivet-hole in the ferrule itself, though there is one in the end of the tang of the blade with the rivet still in it.