The bronze helmet has also been discovered in Scotland. Dr. Wilson tells us that "part of a rudely-adorned helmet of bronze was found in Argyleshire[116]." Another bronze headpiece is preserved in the Copenhagen Museum, and Professor Thomsen mentions similar ones, "overlaid with gold." (Manual.)
A helmet of wood is mentioned by Wace as being worn by one of the Anglo-Saxon combatants at the battle of Hastings:--
"Un helme aveit tot fait de _fust_, Ke colp[117] el chief ne recéust. A sez dras[118] l'aveit atachié, Et envirun son col lacié."
"Sor li helme l'Engleiz féri, De suz les oils[119] li abati, Sor li viare[120] li pendi, E li Engleiz sa main tendi, Li helme voleit[121] suz lever, E son viaire delivrer; E cil li a un colp doné, E sa hache à terre chaï[122]."
In book-illuminations of this period the helmet is frequently coloured yellow, which may either signify bronze or gilding. A crown is sometimes added, not in the case of kings alone, but of distinguished personages generally. One of the crowned figures in our woodcut, No. 13, represents the patriarch Abraham. The nasal appears to have been given to the helmet about the end of the tenth century: of which an early example is furnished in the figure of a warrior in Cotton MS., Tiberius, C. vi. fol. 9, a work of this period. By the middle of the next century, its adoption has become general, and in the Bayeux Tapestry it is worn equally by Norman and Saxon.
To a soldiery with whom body-armour appears to have been a secondary consideration, the SHIELD would be of the first consequence. We find, therefore, the Northern warrior seldom unaccompanied by this useful defence. Leader and retainer, horseman and foot-soldier,--all are equipped with the target. Its form was usually round, though in the pictures, being seen in profile, it often has the appearance of an oval. And, as the plump-cheeked houris of the East were called "moon-faced damsels," so the round targets of the Teutons were named by the poets "moony shields." They were convex, and in the centre was a boss of metal, generally terminating in a button or in a spike, but sometimes without either. The spiked shield was no doubt used as an offensive arm. The buttons are sometimes plated with silver, or tinned, as are the heads of the rivets remaining in the edge of the umbo. Across the hollow of the boss was fixed a handle of wood covered with iron; and by this handle the shield was held at arm's length, the hand entering the hollow of the boss: see woodcut, No. 13. In the Wilbraham Cemetery was found the umbo of a shield to which the handle was still attached by its rivets. (See fig. 10 of our XXth plate.) The shield was sometimes strengthened with strips of iron fixed across the inside; these strips being prolongations of the handle just described. Such a shield-handle was found at Envermeu by the Abbé Cochet, and is figured on Plate XVI. of his work. In this example the handle has a _single_ strip on each side, running towards the edge of the shield. A similar one was found in a Merovingian cemetery near Troyes. In a Frankish grave at Londinières was discovered a variety of this type, in which the strips proceeding from the handle were _three_ on each side, radiating towards the rim. This very curious example is engraved in the _Normandie Souterraine_, Plate VIII. Others were found in the recent excavations in the Isle of Wight.