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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
At a sale at Sotheby's on 24th February 1943 of miscellaneous antiquities belonging to Dr. Hugh A. Fawcett, the Christy Trustees purchased on behalf of the British Museum two objects described under lot 117 as ‘an interesting Viking spearhead’ and ‘a long sword with straight quillons and flattened spherical pommel ornamented with bronze, the long blade with parallel grooves running up into the ricasso, 37 in., possibly Viking or later; both from the River Bann, Northern Ireland’.
The spearhead is certainly Viking, but the qualifying words ‘or later’ were a wise proviso in the case of the sword, because a second glance shows that it is very much later in date (pls. XIII and XX, b). In fact it is as near to our own day in point of time as it is to the Vikings. That it happens to belong to an extremely rare and interesting class that has hitherto received little recognition is my excuse for the length of this notice.
page 94 note 1 The pommel is hollow and consists of two convex sides with flattened centres joined by brazing to a circular band. There are also traces of bronze in the centres suggesting that the whole surface was originally coated with it, and there are considerable remains of copper coating on the ‘cocked hat’ mount.
page 94 note 2 Record of European Armour and Arms, 1920–2, ii, figs. 687 and 688. The sword illustrated by him in fig. 686 is a modern composition. The quillons were found near the Bank of England and are the only part in any way resembling a claymore.
page 95 note 1 Length of blade 32 in., tongue 4¼ in., tang 7¼ in., collar 2¼ in., quillons (overall) 8¾ in.
page 95 note 2 Exhibited in the Bishop's Castle, Glasgow, 1888 (lent by R. Slen), illustrated in Scottish National Memorials, 1890, no. 1497.
page 95 note 3 Otto Smith, ‘Herleitung des Claymore vom Wikingerschwert’, Z.H.W.K., xv, 25–31.
page 96 note 1 The armed figures on the tomb of King Felim O'Connor appear to wear swords with normal quillons, curved at the ends, not straight and sloping. The quillons of the sword of the weeper on the O'Cahan tomb at Dungiven are not sufficiently clearly shown. The three sixteenth-century effigies in Kilkenny Cathedral have swords with curved quillons.
page 96 note 2 Old Irish and Highland Dress, Dundalk, 1943.
page 96 note 3 Op. cit. v, fig. 1464.
page 97 note 1 G. A. Hayes-McCoy, A Sixteenth Century Irish Sword, Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. xx. Nos. 3 & 4, published since the above was in proof.
page 97 note 2 Edmund Spenser in A View of the State of Ireland, compiled in 1596, speaks of swords ‘a handful broad’.
page 98 note 1 Length of blade remaining 4½ in., length of quillon 5⅖ in., length of grip 5¼ in., overall length of double pommel 3⅕ in.
page 98 note 2 Cf. also Laking, op. cit. ii, figs. 671 and 672, the sword of Ferdinand the Catholic in the Real Armería at Madrid (G 31). The ricasso is the part of the blade with blunt, squared edges near the hilt and does not occur before the second half of the fifteenth century.