This is truly a sinister looking weapon Keith!! and powerfully exciting as it has clearly a SHOTLEY blade!!
This places this dirk solidly amidst the Jacobite events of the latter 17th century and the early uprisings and battles. That it was clearly assembled as an ersatz version of the dirk and distinctly for warfare says it all.
As you say, the history held within this weapon would most definitely fill volumes as these times were complicated to say the least ,and as you well know, mysterious . Your work has uncovered the truth behind much of all this and placed entirely new perspectives of our understanding of these periods in Scotland and Northern England in the Jacobite rebellions and the events around them.
This very well could be a weapon of the famed 'Border Reivers' , whose profound involvement in these conflicts is seldom notably represented.
|