Magical Morphological Connection
Hi Alan 62, inglered, and Valjhun,
Alan 62 the pichok site you posted is much appreciated (I copied it out for my library immediately). Thanks also to ingelred for the information on the Germanic forms. Given the morphological similarities between the pichok and the trudenmesser, what is most intriguing is the link between the protective magical qualities attributed to both. Could it be that the pichok and trudenmesser represent a reinterpretation of the same blade across ethnic and religious barriers? If we further consider the Turkish bichak, the Greek machiara, and the Coorg pichangati to be related, the geographical scope of this blade type is impressive indeed. To go even further, the Canary Isle (aka Mediterranian) knife bears more than a little similarity to this group. If the Gaucho facon and the Brazilian faca da ponta are considered new world offspring of those Mediterranian blades then the lineage of this knife stretches from Malabar to Uzbekestan to the former Yugoslavia to the Mediterranian to western Europe to the new world. Whew! Could the above conjecture be correct? If it is, even the jambiya can't lay claim to a greater geographical range and it certainly can't claim an equal cross cultural/religious acceptance. On a more mundane level, I understand that messer means knife but what does truden (druden), neunkreuzer and schneid mean?
Sincerely,
RobT
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