There is more variety in the extremities of cutting-blades. The falchion of Ashanti, Dahome, and Benin, the murderous despotisms of western intertropical Africa, terminates in a whorl. This is also the shape of the Chinese sabre-knife, with which criminals were despatched. The old Persian Sword, often called by mistake the Turkish Sword, ends in a point beyond a broadening of the blade. The effect is to add force to the cut; the weapon becomes top-heavy, but that is of little consequence when only a single slash, and no guarding, is required of it. This peculiarity was curiously developed in the true Turkish scymitar, which we see in every picture of the sixteenth century, and which has now become so rare in our museums. The end gradually developed to a monstrous size; the length was cut down for the sake of handiness and the guard was almost abolished, because parrying was the work of the shield. This exceptional form extended far eastwards and westwards. Some of the Nepaul Swords have a double wave at the end. It was adopted by the Chinese, who, as usual in their arms, reduced it to its simplest expression: the pommel is cap-shaped, the handle corded, and the guard a small oval of metal insufficient to protect the hand (fig. 145). Another good specimen of the ‘Turanian blade’ is the formidable Dáo[443] of the Nágá tribe, south-east of Assam. It is a thick, heavy backsword, eighteen inches long, with a bevel where the point should be, worn at the waist in a half-scabbard of wood, and used for digging as well as killing. The Turkish form also extended to Europe and America, where it became one of the multitudinous varieties of the ‘mariner’s cutlass,’ from ‘curtle-axe’—curtus and axe. The ‘Turanian blade’ is well shown in Eastern scutcheons.[444] Its shape resembles that of a hunter’s horn with a Sword-knot hanging in two ribbons, a survival from remote antiquity. The tincts are purpure, gules and sable, upon a fasce tenné (‘on a fess’ or bar) or, vert and argent. The descriptions are very precise and technical; for instance, Abu el-Mahásin thus notices the Rank (armorial badges) of Anuk, son of Abdullah el-Ashraty: ‘The coat was composed of a circle argent cut by a bar vert, upon which was charged a Sword gules.... This Rank was very pleasing, and the women of the town had it tattooed upon their wrists.’ The Rank was given when a subject was raised to the dignity of Amir.

Before ending the subject of the point I must briefly notice the forked or swallow-tailed blade, a curious subject deserving an exhaustive monograph. The Greeks evidently derived their χελιδὼν or χελιδόνιος ξίφος,[445] and the Latins their bidens, from the two-ended chisels so common in Egypt. As will be seen, there was a true forked Sword in Assyria, and the form is commonly found in Indian daggers.

The Chelidonian sabre has two distinct shapes. In one the plates are welded together, and separate at the third or the fourth section near the end. Mr. Latham (Wilkinson’s) has a good specimen; the length of the fork, however, is greater than the united part. In the Prince of Wales Collection (Kensington) there is a two-bladed Sword, the fork only eight inches long, with the additional peculiarity of being saw-edged. In the other form, the Chelidonian proper, the fork is vertical, one prong being above the other. What use it could have supplied in cutting is hard to divine, but the Sword is essentially personal and eccentric. I know only one historical blade of this form, Zú’l-Fikár (Lord of Cleaving), the weapon given by the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed, and by the latter to his son-in-law Ali bin Ali Tálib, who cleft with it the skull of Marhab, the giant Jew warrior of Khaybar Fort. It appears upon the arms of the Zeydi princes, lords of Sana’á in El-Yemen, Southern Arabia[446]: nearer home it may be seen upon the Turkish standard, some twenty feet long, taken by Don John of Austria from the Turk at Lepanto.[447] The weapon probably owes this honour to having been mentioned amongst the Ahádís, or traditional sayings of the Apostle of El-Islam, ‘la Sayfa illa Zú’l-Fikár wa lá Fatá illa Ali’ (there is no Sword to be compared, for doing damage to the foe, with Zú’l-Fikár, and no valiant youth but Ali).

Amongst the Chelidonian blades proper I do not include the double blade. A fair specimen of the latter is the Orissa Sword[448]: two slightly oval forms spring from the same hilt, but separate throughout their length. Another shape is found upon the Gold Coast: the blades are disposed like the astronomical sign of Aries, and its only use is to slice off noses and ears.[449] The offending member is placed at the commissure, and an upward shear effects the mutilation. I reserve for a future page the ‘split Swords,’ two blades in one scabbard, which were used in mediæval Europe, and which have been preserved in China.

To conclude this long and technical chapter. The Sword should be tightly mounted and well shouldered-up before and behind, leaving no interval between hilt and blade. The grip must be firm, and the tang secured either by rivets or, better still, by a screw at the pommel: if this be neglected, the weapon will not deliver a true edge. In trials both back and edge should be repeatedly struck with force upon a wooden post. Should the handle show no sign of loosening, and the blade ring with the right sound, it is a sign that the mounting is satisfactory: the reverse is the case if the blow jars or stings the hand: this suggests that the cut will not prove efficient.

Note.—The type and model of the straight blade is the form of Rapier which we call the Toledo. It is probably derived from the Spatha or long Sword of the Roman cavalryman; but it assumed its present perfect shape during the reign of Charles Quint (a.d. 1493–1519). The exemplar of the curved blade is the so-called ‘Damascus’ sabre, dating probably from the early days of El-Islam (seventh century), when Eastern armies were chiefly composed of light Bedawi horsemen. Of these in Part II.