As I had noted, the Burton reference was one of my earliest, and as such of course always held a great deal of reverence (?) in my thinking, but after many years and learning, I began to suspect that that alone must not restrict my recognizing newer evidence and thought. Clearly it is obvious that many others have also seen this.
I can think of numerous examples of course, but these are not salient to this discussion. I was just reading through "The Smallsword in England" (Aylward, 1945) and here is an author who was a stickler on detail, as well as describing blade decoration and features remarkably. But throughout his descriptions of the often religious motif and inscriptions , there is no mention of these kinds of feature on blades which might pertain to rosary or paternosters.
While this does not suggest that such practice or decoration did not exist, it does not seem to be part of the broader spectrum of such application on blades.
It does seem that these kinds of observations toward certain features and elements on swords extend into those of other ethnic groups as well, such as beaded strings on the hilts of some Islamic swords which are deemed to represent the Family of the Prophet. In other cases the channels with sliding orbs inserted in blades which are termed 'tears of the wounded' and other such names. In many cases such associations become somewhat fanciful and it is held that their validity is mostly a matter of the perspective of the person observing.
It would seem likely this applies here as well.
Still, to see examples of actual blades with groupings of these dots would be interesting, so the search continues.
|