Fiddlestick

In the Great German epic called The Nibelungen-Lied, this word is used six or eight times for a broadsword.

“His fiddlestick he grasped, ‘twas massy, broad, and long,

As sharp as any razor.”

Stanza 1,841.

“My fiddlestick’s no feather; on whom I let it fall,

If he has friends that love him, ‘twill set them weeping all.”

Stanza 1,880.

“His fiddlestick, sharp-cutting, can hardest steel divide,

And at a stroke can shiver the morion’s beamy pride.”

Stanza, 2,078.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.