Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/80

 Williams' Collection at St. Donat's Castle. It has a hilt of bone or ivory, hollow and of a twisted form, showing in the grooves of the spirals, which are à jour, the tang of the blade encased in gilded copper. This specimen must date within the third quarter of the XVth century, and is, in all probability, Flemish, having been found, together with a sword now in the same collection, in the river Scheldt. A variation of the "kidney" dagger is also to be met with in Mr. Godfrey Williams' Collection, where a fine and complete specimen of the trilobed kind can be seen, which has also three small quillons. The Reubell Collection contains two similar daggers, and the Keasby Collection one, the blade of which has an inscription inlaid in gold (Fig. 807). All these specimens are smaller in their general proportions than the ordinary kidney type.

It is a fact worthy of comment that, despite the careful research and close observation which distinguish every page of his great work, Sir Samuel Meyrick never appears to have attempted any scientific classification by which armour or weapons could be grouped together under heads according to their types; in place of this arrangement he treated each piece individually. Thus he makes a general mention of daggers and illustrates a wooden-hilted one describing it as a Scottish dirk, and alludes quite briefly to a second—which is really a most interesting specimen—without any comment on the way in which the latter departs from the common type. The second Meyrick dagger is, as a matter of fact, a peculiar example, in which the characteristic (kidney) lobes do not form part of the grip, but are of metal and in one piece with the quillons. It is interesting to note that when it was in Sir Samuel Meyrick's Collection, the quillons and fine XVth century blade were then associated with the grip and pommel cap of an early XVIIIth century hunting sword, and that these incongruous additions, with its XVIIIth century decorations, were accepted by Meyrick without demur. This dagger is now in the collection of Mr. Henry G. Keasby; but since Meyrick's time these unsuitable restorations have been removed, and a grip and pommel cap of the period substituted (Fig. 808). It should be noted that the upper portion of the blade is thickly overlaid with brass. This has been engraved, and the remains of an inscription are apparent, which, however, is now too much obliterated by over-cleaning to be decipherable. By a curious coincidence, Mr. Keasby has in his collection a second dagger, which is almost the duplicate of the Meyrick specimen, though generally smaller in its proportions (Fig. 809). This variety of the lobed type is indeed very rare; we are only able to furnish illustrations of these two