——— Fig. 79.—Ross. ½ ——————— Fig. 80.—Honington. ½
That with the shield-shaped ornament below the stop-ridge, shown in Fig. 79, is in my own collection, and was found near Ross. The central rib runs only part of the way up the shield. In a specimen from the Cambridge Fens (5⅝ inches) it stops short on joining the ridge forming the shield.
In others it forms a heraldic pale running through the shield, as in five found at Waldron,[330] Sussex.
A smaller variety, in which the vertical rib does not extend into the shield, is shown in Fig. 80. This specimen was found at Honington, Suffolk.
In some the shield-shaped ornament consists of merely two triangular depressions. A palstave of this class, rather narrow at the stop-ridge, and with almost triangular blade, is shown in Fig. 81. The original, which is of more yellow metal than ordinary, was found in the neighbourhood of Ely, and is in the collection of Mr. Marshall Fisher, who has kindly allowed me to figure it. In one such from Downton, near Salisbury, in the Blackmore Museum, the faces of the diaphragm between the recesses for the handle have raised ridges or ribs running along nearly the whole length, five on one face and six on the other. These are longer than in the Nottingham specimen shortly to be mentioned.
In one found at Hotham Carr (5¾ inches), Yorkshire, and now in Canon Greenwell’s collection, there is a bead running down the blade between the two depressions.
———— Fig. 81.—Ely. ½ —————— Fig. 82.—Bottisham. ½
This shield-shaped ornament below the stop-ridge is well shown in a palstave from Bottisham Lode, Cambridge, engraved as Fig. 82. What may be called the field of the shield is on one face nearly flat; on the other there are indentations on either side of the central ridge. As will be seen, the extremities of the cutting edge are recurved, both in this and the specimen from Ross shown in Fig. 79. It does not, however, appear that the instruments were originally cast in this form, but the wide segmental edge, together with the recurved ends, seem to be the result of a constant hammering out of the blade, in order to renew or harden the edge. Though the hammer was thus freely used, the whetstone was employed both to polish the sides of the blade and to perfect the cutting edge.
I have a French palstave found near Abbeville, almost identical with this in size and form. The shield ornament is, however, replaced by two triangular depressions with a rib left between them, like that on Fig. 81.