page_title: Sgian-dubh
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Sgian-dubh / Origins
context_page_description: The sgian-dubh is a small, single-edged knife worn as part of traditional Scottish Highland dress along with the kilt. Originally used for eating and preparing fruit, meat, and cutting bread and cheese, as well as serving for other more general day-to-day uses such as cutting material and protection, it is now worn as part of traditional Scottish dress tucked into the top of the kilt hose with only the upper portion of the hilt visible. The sgian-dubh is normally worn on the same side as the dominant hand.
context_section_description: The sgian-dubh may have evolved from the sgian-achlais, a dagger that could be concealed under the armpit. Used by the Scots of the 17th and  18th centuries, this knife was slightly larger than the average modern sgian-dubh and was carried in the upper sleeve or lining of the body of the jacket.
  Courtesy and etiquette would demand that when entering the home of a friend, any concealed weapons would be revealed. It follows that the sgian-achlais would be removed from its hiding place and displayed in the stocking top held securely by the garters.
  The sgian-dubh also resembles the small skinning knife that is part of the typical set of hunting knives. These sets contain a butchering knife with a 9-to-10-inch (23 to 25 cm) blade, and a skinner with a blade of about 4 inches (10 cm). These knives usually had antler handles, as do many early sgian-dubhs. The larger knife is likely the ancestor of the modern dirk.
  The bog oak, jet black in appearance, was a very hard wood suitable for the purpose. The handles on the stag knives simulate horn which was also traditionally used. Any ornamentation is merely a reflection of the Highlander's lack of confidence in paper money which resulted in him embellishing much of his personal wearing apparel with silver and cairngorm stones which are of value.  Thus he carried on his person most of his worldly wealth.  The black dagger (sgian-dubh) was usually carried in a place of concealment very often under his armpit (or oxter). This gives support to the view that 'black' does not refer only to the colour of the handle but implies 'covert' – as in (as stated previously) blackmail or black market.  When the Highlander visited a house on his travels having deposited all his other weapons at the front door he did not divest himself of his concealed dagger, since in these far off days it was unsafe to be ever totally unarmed, not because he feared his host but rather because he feared intrusions from outside.  Accordingly, although retaining the dagger; out of courtesy to his host he removed it from its place of concealment and put it somewhere where his host could see it, invariably in his stocking on the side of his hand (right- or left-handed).
  The sgian-dubh can be seen in portraits of kilted men of the mid-19th century. A portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn of Colonel Alasdair Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland; it shows hanging from his belt on his right hand side a Highland Scottish dirk, and visible at the top of his right stocking what appears to be a nested set of two sgian-dubhs. A similar sgian-dubh is in the collection of The National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.
caption: Portrait by Henry Raeburn of Alasdair Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry in 1812
exif: {}