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These came under command of guild officers, to exhibit their productions. In turn came armorers and swordsmiths, makers of spears and axes, manufacturers of musical instruments, fifes, trumpets, drums, harps.
The curious attempt to distinguish smiths into good and useful swordsmiths and base and bad goldsmiths seems a merely modern explanation: Weland could both forge swords and make ornaments of metal. Starcad's loathing for a smith recalls the mockery with which the Homeric gods treat Hephaistos. Slavery.
The swordsmiths' craft is still, no less than it was in the Middle Ages, essentially a handicraft, and it requires a high order of skill. His rough material is a bar of cast and hammered steel, tapering from the centre to the ends; when this is cut in two each half is made into a sword.
His long travels to investigate the methods of other masters so as to assimilate their best features, are historically recorded, and at the head of the great trinity of Japanese swordsmiths his name is placed by universal acclaim, his companions being Go no Yoshihiro and Fujiwara Yoshimitsu.* In Muromachi days so much depended on the sword that military men thought it worthy of all honour.
"Every guide book," he continues, "mentions my Lord Iron's nickname 'The Wild Beast, and possibly the legend was invented by way of comment. He drove away all the Persian swordsmiths, and from his day no 'Damascus blade' has been made at Damascus. I have found these French colonies perfectly casual and futile. The men take months before making up their minds to do anything.
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