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51

what he had seen and done before. Hcnce the fre-quent misspellings, such as (a mild case) NINOMINE instcad of INNOMINE, or in morę acute examples, we find sequences like INNONIIOMNI and so on.

Having cut his pattern, he took lengths of iron wire, cut to fit the slots he had madę. The blade would then have been heated to welding beat, and the bits of wire white-hot, hammered into the slots prepared for them. Then the blade would have been tempered and fin-ished by filing and, finally, burnishing.

Quite different was the technique ofinlaying gold, silver or latten. These metals had to be inlaid into the tempered, fmished blade, or they would melt in the tempering process and be torn out in the finish-ing. The letters had to be cut into the hard surface with a burin or a diamond and the wires hammered in to secure them, rather in the manner of Indian Koftgari work or true damascening. And from the quality of elegance of the letters, as well as from the often intelli-gible and corrcctly spelled legends, we have to assume that the engravcr was not only familiar with letters, but was himself a trained calligrapher - he must have been, in fact, one who was accustomed to producing the beautiful writing in manuscripts. Maybe he did not hammer the metal wires into his engraved letters; it seems probable that this would have been done by a goldsmirh, though it is possible that, in many cases, the bladesmith may have done it.

Thus, we have not only two totallv different styl es of inscription, we have two totally different tech-niques by which the inscriptions are produced, and while for obvious reasons we cannot identify style, or handwriting, in the iron inlays, we most certainly can in the gold or silver ones.

Figurę 51 shows a sword of very much the same type as the previous ones here. According to the typology of medieval swords which I produced in my Swords in the Ąge of Chimlry, 1 called swords like those in Figs. 43 and 45 Type XA and those in Figs. 47 and 51 Type XI. The sword in Fig. 51 was found about 150 years ago, in a ditch near the town of Bury St. Fdmunds in Suffolk. In 1171, a battle was fought in this area, near two villages called Fornham--Fornham St. Martin and Fornham Ali Saints--and because the sword was found near them, it has always been assumed that it must be a relic of that battle. But consider: there is now no record of the exact spot where the sword was found and no

Figurę 51. Sword ofType XI found in a ditch near Fornham. The form of the letters in the inscription may be comparcd with that of the letters shown in Fig. 49, c. 1050-1100. (Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk). BL: 91.4cm