This knife of Bill's is a very nice, and quite elderly piece, but I do not believe that it can be named as either a dirk or a sgian dubh.
The Scottish dirk seems to owe its origin to the ballock knife and dudgeon dagger, the first distinctively Scottish variation of this form probably occurred in the 16th century, but the earliest dated examples of the Scottish variation only date from the early 17th century. One of the distinctive features of dudgeon daggers and ballock knives is the blade, which is not offset from the hilt, but continues in a straight line with it. The blades of even early dirks appear to be uniformly symmetrical, however, even though this blade symmetry is not always present in the sgian dubh, the hilt of the sgian dubh is invariably not offset from the blade.
The sgian dubh appeared later than the dirk, and the first appearance of it in a work of art appears to be in an 1806 portrait by Reaburn. The fore-runner of the sgian dubh was very possibly the oxter knife, or sgian achlais, which was worn inside the jacket, under the left armpit. It was only when the sgian achlis moved from the left armpit, to the right stocking that it became known as the sgian dubh. In fact, the sgian dubh is not a part of the old Highland inheritance, but rather a product of the romantic Celtic era of the early 19th century.
Another theory for the origin of the sgian dubh is that it was an adaptation of the smaller of the two knives used for field dressing of game. These knives were purely work knives, used by the lord's gamekeeper, and were known as gralloch knives.
As to whether the name sgian dubh refers to the supposedly dark nature of the knife, or to its colour, it seems that historians of Scottish weaponry have not yet reached agreement.
As noted above, one of the identifying features of both dirk and sgian dubh is that the hilt is centrally mounted to the blade.
Bill's knife has an offset blade, thus it cannot be either a small dirk, nor a large sgian dubh.
It is too small to be the larger of a set of gralloch knives, and of an inconvenient form to serve as a skinning knife, which was the function of the smaller of the gralloch knives.
In my opinion it is a good quality 19th century knife by a Scottish maker, probably intended as a general purpose field knife.
I am not expert in the field of Scottish weaponry, and in fact know almost nothing about it, however, some years ago I made a number of sgian dubh, and to ensure accuracy of what I made I researched this little knife. Before writing the above I referenced my source again:- Forman---The Scottish Dirk---ISBN 0-919316-26-3.
Incidentally, yes, dark boxwood was known as "dudgeon", and was the most popular wood used for the hilt of the ballock dagger. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson began using the term "dudgeon dagger" to refer to ballock knives.
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