Javanese machete??

[Billman]

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_..._and_mistletoe you really need to go back to Pliny's original latin text and see what he actually wrote ref the 'golden sickle' and how else it could be translated.....

"But he was a Roman, and scholars have always treated Roman descriptions of the world with caution" see: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...536402,00.html

[kronckew]

the latin was falce aurea, a golden sickle. rather than falce aurum, a gold sickle. like billman said, could have been polished bronze of a golden color, or even gold plated iron, which the romans did know about...

[Billman]

Originally Posted by kronckew

the latin was falce aurea, a golden sickle. rather than falce aurum, a gold sickle. like billman said, could have been polished bronze of a golden color, or even gold plated iron, which the romans did know about...

Many thanks for that - one of the great things about a forum such as this is the vast range of expertise available....

[fearn]

Agreed on the falce aurea, although I'd love to see more examples of bronze being called "golden."

To grind in the point, whether the falx was gold or gold-plated is irrelevant, because even gold will cut mistletoe. However that myth got started, it will work.

F

[kronckew]

i came across a reference to someone who actually made a gold sickle - 9 caret - and used it to cut mistletoe, they did say it worked, for a couple of cuts, before it deformed and needed resharpening & was in general not up to the job.

i do remember gathering mistletoe from my BIL guerney's farm in no. alabama a number of years ago. rather than a golden sickle, he used a browning 12ga. to shoot the infested branch off. we could easily peel it off the oak branch. the berries are rather gooey & sticky i recall.

one of the more constant threads in mythological and fantastic historical fiction is that iron poisons magic, and/or can weaken or kill magical creature like the fair folke (fairies) and elves. the more educated modern wiccans prefer bronze in their ceremonial items to avoid disturbing the magic.

iron IS strange and magical stuff.

iron is only produced by the exothermic decay of radioactive higher elements formed by fusion in high mass stars, every higher radioactive element eventually decays to iron, and it's very energy hungry if you try to make it from fusing lower elements. iron will not engage in either fusion or fission. the iron in our bodies was once in such a star that exploded and distributed it's iron long before the earth was formed. iron is the most common element forming our planet.

[tunggulametung]

Henk, I'm not sure about the correct name but I'm guessing an evolution of kudi (which is no longer a popular tool), the shape is somewhat (more popular) bendo-heavy chopping utility knife and arit/clurit-sickle combo in Java at present time. Both I mention later has variations and local names and this might fall in one or another. I attached some internet photo for reference.

[fearn]

Originally Posted by kronckew

i came across a reference to someone who actually made a gold sickle - 9 caret - and used it to cut mistletoe, they did say it worked, for a couple of cuts, before it deformed and needed resharpening & was in general not up to the job.

i do remember gathering mistletoe from my BIL guerney's farm in no. alabama a number of years ago. rather than a golden sickle, he used a browning 12ga. to shoot the infested branch off. we could easily peel it off the oak branch. the berries are rather gooey & sticky i recall.

one of the more constant threads in mythological and fantastic historical fiction is that iron poisons magic, and/or can weaken or kill magical creature like the fair folke (fairies) and elves. the more educated modern wiccans prefer bronze in their ceremonial items to avoid disturbing the magic.

iron IS strange and magical stuff.

Cool. A few years ago, a big "bush" of mistletoe came down near my house, and for the heck of it, I made a small knife with a mistletoe hilt. Mistletoe wood (this is North American mistletoe, not the European white mistletoe) is like brittle plastic. It's fairly easy to cut, but it tends to shatter, especially if one drills it. The knife is definitely an art piece, not a tool.

As for the iron myth, we do have to be careful. There were faery smiths after all (Wayland, etc.), and even within the Irish faery lore, one comes across stories where the faeries use iron--enchanting a plow into a horse, for instance (Meeting the Other Crowd, by Lenihan and Green). And there are certainly magical steel swords. Excalibur comes to mind. Conversely, I don't know of any stories of named bronze swords, even though bronze was always comparatively rarer than iron was.

Outside Europe, there are many iron-using fairies.

Best,

F

[kronckew]

the excalibur legend is so old, i suspect that it was actually based on a bronze sword, cast in a stone mold, hence the pulling of the sword from the stone. the legends just got converted to steel to fit the local technology as the ages pass. similarly the arthurian knights are generally shown in full plate armour in the medieval period tales, which was not an option at the post roman period arthur was supposed to inhabit....

throwing a sword into a lake, also part of the excalibur mythos, was a very bronze age thing to do. you were not judged on how many posessions you had, but on how many you gave away. the ultimate was to take a bronze sword, a very expensive and important named sword even better, and throw it in a lake or river as an offering to the gods. sometimes the sword would be 'killed', that is bent or broken, to ensure it could never be used again.

anyhow more on topic, the kudi/kujang, which is most definitely steel, is also a magical tool, more ceremonial these days.