A curious variety of the war-knife is in the collection of Mr. Roach Smith, of which the single edge is straight, or nearly so, and the point formed by a diagonal cut at the back of the blade. It is believed, in its perfect state, to have measured upwards of thirty inches; is of steel; and has on both sides a double line of the channelling already noticed[91]. A weapon of similar form appears among the Livonian antiquities now in the British Museum, and is represented on Plate XIX. of Dr. Bähr's _Gräber der Liven_.
The LONG-BOW was another weapon of this era. Agathias, indeed, has told us that the Franks used neither bow nor sling. But arrows are expressly mentioned in the Salic Law; and, to reconcile these conflicting testimonies, it has been suggested that the archery of the Salic Law is that of the chase alone. _Poisoned_ arrows, however, are here named, and the hunter does not ply his art with poisoned shafts. "Si quis alterum de sagitta toxicata percutere voluerit[92]," &c. Further on, a fine is fixed for him who shall deprive another of his "second finger, with which he directs his arrow:"--secundum digitum, quo sagittatur. At a later period, the bow is especially commanded as a part of the soldier's equipment. One of the capitularies of Charlemagne directs--"that the Count be careful to have his contingent fully furnished for the field; that they have lance, shield, a bow with two strings and twelve arrows," &c. According to the testimony of Henry of Huntingdon, William the Conqueror reproached the English with their want of this weapon. The Bayeux tapestry, however, seems to authorize the belief that they were not entirely without it. (See the first group of Anglo-Saxons in Stothard's XIV^{ th}. plate.) The probability seems to be that, while the Normans employed archers in large bodies, the English merely interspersed them in small numbers among their men-at-arms. The bow, at all events, was in use among the Anglo-Saxons: it is frequently represented in manuscript illuminations, and arrow-heads have been found in the graves. Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 in our Plate are from Kentish interments. The first two form part of the Fausset collection; the others, figured in the _Nenia Britannica_, were found on Chatham Lines. The whole are of iron. Pictorial examples of the Anglo-Saxon bow, arrows, and quiver may be seen in Cotton MSS., Cleop., C. viii., Claudius, B. iv., Tiberius, C. vi., and in the fine _Prudentius_ of the Tenison Library. See also Strutt's _Horda_, vol. i. plate XVII. Arrow-heads of iron have also been found in France, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and Livonia. Figures 5 and 6 of our Plate are examples from the cemetery at Selzen in Rhenish Hesse; figs. 7 and 8 from Livonian graves. With the latter was also found part of a quiver. The Abbé Cochet[93] has engraved and described specimens found in France, and M. Troyon notices Swiss examples in his paper in the _Archæologia_, vol. xxxv., and Plate XVII. Compare also Archæological Journal, vol. iii. pp. 119, 120. In the Suabian graves at Oberflacht, bows also were found. See _Archæologia_, vol. xxxvi. Among the figures of the ivory carving forming the cover of the "Prayer-book of Charles the Bald" are two archers, each holding a leash of barbed arrows; the arrows very clearly represented. This curious sculpture, illustrating the lvii^{ th}. Psalm, (a favourite subject with the middle-age artists,) has been carefully engraved in the sixth volume of the _Revue Archéologique_. The original is in the Imperial Library at Paris.