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Updated: May 24, 2025
They are clean anither set frae the like o' huz; there's nae bailie-courts amang them nae magistrates that dinna bear the sword in vain, like the worthy deacon that's awa', and, I may say't, like mysell and other present magistrates in this city But it's just the laird's command, and the loon maun loup; and the never another law hae they but the length o' their dirks the broadsword's pursuer, or plaintiff, as you Englishers ca' it, and the target is defender; the stoutest head bears langest out; and there's a Hieland plea for ye."
"Dorothy will see to her," said Simon; "surprise and fear kill not; skenes and dirks do. And she is not more the daughter of my blood than thou, my dear Henry, art the son of my affections. Let me see the wound. The skene occle is an ugly weapon in a Highland hand."
Ancient Badahuennan forests of sanguinary Druids, the "wild wood without mercy" of Saxon savages, where, at a later period, sovereign Dirks and Florences, in long succession of centuries, had ridden abroad with lance in rest, or hawk on fist; or under whose boughs, in still nearer days, the gentle Jacqueline had pondered and wept over her sorrows, stretched out in every direction between the city and the neighbouring sea.
Then, after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us their heads making a show like a wood which being followed close by the tinkhelt, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were slain."
Blades rose again, stained red, fierce strangled cries came from men in the death-grips, helms were cracked, shields riven, dirks sank home, and men who once had drunk and jested with laughing looks over the same mead-board, now met fierce eye to eye, and never parted until one or both fell in the swaths of the death-harvest.
And sometimes the smugglers, when closely pressed and seeing no hope of rescue if taken, as their last resort, drew their dirks and pistols; and wo to the official who then persisted in attempting a seizure.
Here was a pole-axe, there a sword without a scabbard; here a gun without a lock, there a scythe set straight upon a pole; and some had only their dirks, and bludgeons or stakes pulled out of hedges.
He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome Highland friends, who were always flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was overtaken and induced to return; but this attempt, which was called 'The Start, did him just so much service, that they did not preach quite such long sermons at him afterwards as they had done before.
Listen, Timmendiquas, to what awaits us if we are shrewd enough and brave enough to take it: "One thousand rifles. "Six hundred muskets. "Six hundred best French bayonets. "Four hundred cavalry sabers. "Two hundred horse pistols, single-barreled. "Two hundred horse pistols, double-barreled. "Three hundred dirks. "Six brass eighteen-pounder field pieces. "Four brass twelve-pounder field pieces.
One day as we were talking over this and other kindred subjects, a friend of mine, a man of advanced and liberal views, wrote down his opinion, more Japonico, in a verse of poetry which ran as follows: "I would that all the swords and dirks in the country might be collected in one place and molten down, and that, from the metal so produced, one huge sword might be forged, which, being the only blade left, should be the girded sword of Great Japan."
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