382 Mr. Frederick Pollock [June 1, 



new significance and importance to such customs as that of swearing 

 by the sword — itself a widely spread one, and of extreme antiquity.* 

 I think that other though not dissimilar influences also came into 

 play. In the Old Testament the sword is much oftener mentioned 

 than the sjiear, and is a recognised symbol of war and warlike power. 

 Thus, to take one of the best kno-un passages, we read in the forty-fifth 

 Psalm, " Gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most 

 mighty : " in the Vulgate, Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, 

 potentissime. Now it is no matter of conjecture that such a passage 

 deeply affected the mediaeval imagination. These words are quoted 

 by a man of peace, our own Bracton, writing in the thirteenth century, 

 when bespeaks of the king's power, and of the counsellors and barons 

 who are his companions, girt with swords, assisting him to do judgment 

 and justice. It seems hardly too fanciful to think that the fascination 

 and pre-eminence of tlie sword which were at their height in Bracton's 

 time, and are not extinct yet, were in some measure derived from that 

 one triumphant note of the Psalmist. Not that others were wanting ; 

 there is the two-edged sword in the hands of the saints : Exaltationes 

 Dei in gutture eorum, et gladii ancipites in manihus eorum, a verse that 

 was in time to serve the Puritans as it had served the Crusaders. 



But to follow out the associations of the sword with knighthood, 

 semi-religious military vows and enterprises, and military honour in 

 general, would be matter for a discourse of itself. Let us return to 

 the fashion and development of the weapon. There was little varia- 

 tion from tlie eleventh to the sixteenth century, save that the 

 decoration of the scabbard and mountings (of which I do not propose 

 to speak) grew more elaborate with the growth of art and luxury, and 

 that the average length tended to increase. After the twelfth century 

 the sword is generally j)ointed as well as two-edged, and the point 

 was sometimes used with efi*ect. In a fourteenth century MS. in the 

 British Museum, engraved in Hewitt's ' Ancient Armour and 

 Weapons,' a mounted knight is delivering a thrust in quarte (as we 

 now say), which completely pierces his adversary's shield. In the 



* It is common among the Eajpvlts, and is met with, in conjunction with 

 peculiar formalities, among certain hill tribes. Wilbraham Egerton, ' Handbook 

 of Indian Arms' (published by the India Office, 1880), pp. 77, 105-6. It is 

 also a very old Teutonic custom. Grimm, ' Deutsche Rechtsalterthiimer,' pp. 165, 

 896, cf. Ducange, s.v. Juramentum (super arma). The implied imprecation was 

 probabl)', "May the god of war abandon me in fight if I sw'ear falsely," hardly 

 " May I perish by the sword," for it was held disgraceful to a free man to die 

 otherwise than in battle. In the sixteenth century Spanish fencing-masters, on 

 their admission to the guild, took an oath " super signum sanetse crucis factum 

 de pluribus ensibus," 'Revue nrche'ologique,' vi. 589. Not unfrequently the sword 

 itself was the object of worship ; the feeling is more easily revived in fighting 

 times, even now, than men of peace are apt to think, as Korner's well-known 

 sword-song shows. Compare General Pitt-Rivers's Catalogue of his collection 

 (Stationery Office, 1877), p. 102. Some of the formulas in Ducange suggest the 

 meaning, " What I assert or promise I am ready to make good with the sword ; " 

 but this I suspect is a later rationalising of the original ceremony. 



