A Polearm for Christmas

[fernando]

It is called Roncone in its Country of origin (Italy); the English would call it Bill, but i rather call it Bisarma, the name we use over here.
It would in principle be an example from the XVI century. The 'sickle' front part is sharpened and all pointy ends, spike, beak and parrying bar, are rather reinforced.
It measures 97 cms + 37 cms for the langets. Weight 2,3 kg.
Would anyone care to give me some comments on this piece?
... or if anyone recognizes the maker's mark?
Thanks


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[fernando]

Anyone with Armi Bianche Italiane by Boccia & Coelho ?

[Matchlock]

Hi 'Nando,

Congrats on this Runka (the German word for it)!

I would date it to the early 16th c. The Gothic majuscule P mark is well known from various late 15th to early 16th c. weapons, mostly iron haquebut barrels. Some identify it as the workshop mark of Peter Pögl in Thörl, who worked for the Emperor Maximilian's army. Your wrought iron cannon ball comes most probably from that workshop. However, I believe there were other smiths as well who used that mark.

And: being foremost a man of earliest fireams, I do not own Armi bianche Italiane but other books on firearms by Boccia, as well as other great books on Italian arms of all kinds. I will do some research on roncones.

Best,
Michael

[Atlantia]

I think that has to be the most 'unfriendly' looking polearm I've seen!

[Jim McDougall]

I was glad to see Michael in on this and on the majescule 'P' which as he has noted was used quite widely. The crowned P was used in Spain and apparantly by a number of makers, as Sir James Mann (1962, "The Wallace Collection" p.345) notes, as the name Pedro was fairly common. Solingen swordsmiths, in thier well known application of spurious Spanish marks used this poincon considerably along with others.
The Gothic 'P' is seen without cartouche on the forte of a katzbalger c.1500-10.

I did check Boccia & Coelho and the exact match to this bill/ bisarma/roncone polearm is found in the silhouette plate of typology (tavola B, #8) which does mot specify term or date range. It does seem similar variants in Italy range c.1540-1610 with most variation in the vertical spike (dente) on the back mid-blade....some with a lunette style feature instead. Similar examples are in the Wallace Collection in London (A929, A930) listed as 'bills', both Italian one 16th c. the other c.1540.

The majescule P with crown is found in Gyngell (p.74) as Italian, 16th c.
It seems most of these are from North Italy, Venice especially, and more decorative used in ceremonial guard type weapons.

The P without cartouche might be from the Pogl workshop as Michael mentioned as the period is right.

[Billman]

In the York Castle Museum some 20 years ago I saw some bills (arms) that were obviously derived from bills (tools) - by the addition of spikes and hooks welded to the body. For information below is part of an essay I wrote on the derivation of the word billhook. (Note the Italian for billhook is roncola, although other words are used in different regions)

The origins of the word for billhook and those for other edge tools, allows us to trace their ancestry, or that of the peoples that make up the country where they are found. The word ‘billhook’ although frequently used today was not in common usage until the mid to late 19th century. It is used in Francis Blakie’s ‘A treatise on Hedges and the Management of Hedgerow Timber’ in 1828, but rarely in John Claudius Loudon’s ‘Encyclopaedia of Farming’ (1829) or Encyclopaedia of Gardening’ (1830), and not in Henry Stephens’ ‘The Book of The Farm’ (1852). Both these latter authors use the more common term hedge-bill or hedging bill, or just the word bill (also switching bill and cutting bill) as did Samuel Johnson in his 1773 ‘Dictionary of the English Language’. Early catalogues, such as Joseph Smith’s ‘Explanation or Key to the Manufactories of Sheffield’ (1816) also used the term ‘bill’ (and reserve ‘hook’ for reaping hooks, pruning hooks and furze hooks). Generally hedge-bill refers to a long handled bill, used with two hands (c.f. a slasher) and a bill for one-handed use is called a hand-bill.

The word billhook(1), sometimes and, in my opinion, erroneously written as two words, bill hook, or joined with a hyphen as bill-hook, is shown in OED the as having the following origin:

Bill-hook: (bi-l,huk) 1611 [f. bill sb.1 ] A heavy thick knife or chopper with a hooked end, used for pruning etc.

Bill: (bil) sb.1 [OE. bil = OS. bil, OHG bil (MHG. ; but G. bille fem., axe) :- WGme. bilja 1. A kind of sword mentioned in OE. poetry. 2. An obsolete weapon carried by soldiers and watchmen varying in form from a concave blade with a long handle, to a kind of concave axe with a spike at the back and its shaft ending in a spearhead; a halberd ME. 3. Short for BILLMAN 1495. 4. An implement having a long blade with a concave edge (cf. BILL-HOOK), used for pruning, cutting wood etc. OE. 5. A pickaxe - 1483.

The earliest known reference in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), above, is 1611, and for a synonym, hook-bill, it is 1613. Shakespeare ca 1580 to 1600 used bill (Richard 111 1,4; Romeo and Juliet 1,1 & As you like it 1,2), and his less well known contemporary Sir Philip Sidney in ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia’ ca 1580 also used bill; hedging bill and forest bill.

[fernando]

Thank you guys for your input on my 'unfriendly' looking specimen. I was glad to read your considerations woven around the gothic P mark. Hmmm, i love marks.
Billman, i appreciate your dissertation on the etymology of the billhook, as also your assumption that this term only appeared around the XIX century. I also notice that, in your attached paper, the 'multilanguage' charts in which you determine the translation of parts names do not contemplate portuguese.
But i guess i rather stick to the etymology of a much earlier nomenclature, that of Bisarma, a Portuguese name adopted from the French Guisarme (Old French Gisarme) attributed to a fusion of tool and pole weapon in use as from the XI century,
Naturaly a sturdy Bisarma used in the XVI century, like this one, although not denying its tool origins, certainly holds definite weapon features, as visibly having lost its abilities to prune tree branches or cleaning bushes.

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