Red stag handle dirk, and historical question(s)

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

I believe I was unclear...wasn't thinking of a suicide strap as would be applied to a modern combat pistol...more a wrist strap-but I do see your point. I have outfitted my hatchets/hawks with a lanyard feature, but for slightly different reasons.

A wrist strap, such as the sabre knot encountered on swords, would seem to me to be highly impractical, something the dirk-wielding Scots most certainly were not. For a wrist strap to be effective one has to thread their hand through the loop and then, using the other hand, slide the keeper up snug against the wrist. This is just far too fiddly to have any practical application, requiring, as it does, employing two hands to use a one handed weapon. Unlike a broadsword, which is primarily a cutting weapon (I'm temped to say "chopping" weapon) the dirk is intended to be used in battle as a thrusting weapon and therefore is less likely to be lost or dropped when used as intended. Had wrist straps been thought necessary at the time they most certainly would have been adopted, especially on swords. But we have simply no evidence, whatsoever, of their being used. So...

As with the lanyard, and quoting Dale Seago, "I've never, ever, seen or heard of one." And I doubt they ever existed.

Interesting. I would have attributed the absense of utinsels to the fact when dirks were banned, that the associated pieces were pressed into an unassociated service. Though scabbards would have given evidence of the "missing" pieces...

If you are referring to the disarming acts following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46, then I have to point out that the dirk not only survived this period, but actually increased in numbers as the superior steel of cut down sword blades became the choice of most dirk cutlers in Scotland. The dirk was considered a "tool" not an offensive weapon, and continued to be worn openly. It is at this time that the utensils, previously mounted side by side, generally come to be mounted one above the other.

[Mark E.]

If you are referring to the disarming acts following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46, then I have to point out that the dirk not only survived this period, but actually increased in numbers as the superior steel of cut down sword blades became the choice of most dirk cutlers in Scotland. The dirk was considered a "tool" not an offensive weapon, and continued to be worn openly. It is at this time that the utensils, previously mounted side by side, generally come to be mounted one above the other.

Hmmm...well, lucky for me I live in the 21st century, because the piece I am making could never be intrepeted as anything other than a "warlike weapon".