"Their javelins piled together stood, The seamen's arms, of ashen wood."--_Line_ 654.
"Thus I the Hring-danes for many a year governed under heaven and secured them with war from many tribes throughout this earth with spears and swords." (_Æscum and ecgum._)
In this passage, _æscum_, ash, is put for the spear itself. Mr. Roach Smith has collected several other instances of a similar kind. "In Cædmon, the term _æsc-berend_, or spear-bearer, is applied to a soldier." In the fragment of the poetical "History of Judith" we have _æsc-plega_, the play of spears, as a poetic term for a battle. So we have _æsc-bora_, a spear-bearer; and in the Codex Exoniensis, _æsc-stede_, a field of battle. And again, in "Beowulf:"--
"_Eald Æsc-wiga._" Some old spear-warrior[53].
In the eleventh century we find the ashen spear again mentioned. Robert of Aix, describing the knights his companions in the First Crusade, says: "Hastæ _fraxineæ_ in manibus eorum ferro acutissimo præfixæ sunt, quasi grandes perticæ[54]." The Abbé Cochet, however, describes the remains of a lance-shaft found at Envermeu as being of oak; black with age, and of an extreme hardness[55].
The staves were sometimes of a rich and costly character. The heriot of the Anglo-Saxon Wulfsige consisted of two horses, one helmet, one byrnie, one sword, and a spear twined with gold[56].
The spear-staves deposited in the graves are necessarily of the shorter kind: the length of the entire weapon being about six feet; a fact easily ascertained by measuring the distance from the blade to the iron shoe, where that is found. This iron shoe is generally a hollow spike, into which the wood was fitted; as in that of the "Fairford Graves," Plate XI.; the one from Northfleet, (figured in the Journal of the Archæological Association, vol. iii.); and another in the Faussett Collection, found at Ash-by-Sandwich. Sometimes it was a button, to be driven into the shaft by means of a nail issuing from its centre. An example of this variety is engraved in the _Nenia Britannica_ of Douglas.
Those who used the shorter spear or javelin were provided with several of these weapons, which they hurled successively at the enemy. In Harleian MS., No. 603, folio 30[57], may be seen a spearman holding three lozenge-headed javelins. Cædmon's Paraphrase (Archæologia, vol. xxiv. Plate LV.) has a figure carrying three barbed javelins (_angones_). In Harl. MS., 603, folio 56^b, the Destroying Angel has three barbed spears, one of which is represented in its flight, another poised in the right hand, ready to follow, while the third is held in the left hand, to be employed in its turn. This curious example has been figured by Mr. Akerman, to illustrate his paper, "On some of the Weapons of the Celtic and Teutonic Races," in vol. xxxiv. of the Archæologia.