Billhooks

The deceptive calm that followed was too good to be true, but the men of the borders, accustomed to insecurity as the commonplace of life, stolidly picked up the pieces and kept their billhooks and pitchforks ready to hand. ❋ Unknown (2010)

I had broken the ash handle of one of my billhooks during the day through some mild abuse: using its flat side to beat in some of the hazel stakes. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

So I hooked up the old elm-boarded trailer to the tractor and loaded up with chainsaw, fuel cans, triangular bow saw, two billhooks, trimming hook, sharpening stone, a pair of sturdy leather gloves, leather kneepads, protective glasses and a wooden beetle for driving in stakes. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

In those days, the merest suggestion that a nationalized army was under consideration by some illegitimate, foreign-born blackamoor prince or other was enough to send our gallant, free-enterprising forebears scuttling back to their moat-girded castles for the billhooks, maces, broadswords, and war hammers guaranteed them under the Second Amendment to Erik Bloodaxe's Rules of Civilized Mayhem. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The church bells peeled, and people armed with billhooks and bowsaws began to appear under the bunting in West Street, heading for the woods. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

The billhooks we are using would have looked much the same two hundred years ago, although they varied in design, as they still do, in each part of the country. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

Lastly, for the purpose of carrying the nets and hayes, for either sort63 there must be a bag of calf-skin; and billhooks to cut down branches and stop gaps in the woods when necessary. 64 44 ❋ Unknown (2007)

Persian marines included men in turbans and linen breastplates, soldiers equipped with billhooks and daggers or with spears, battle-axes, and long knives. ❋ Barry Strauss (2004)

Lately, a couple of groups showed up with local lances - long poles with billhooks on 'em. ❋ Modesitt, L. E. (2000)

Fatigue parties took axes and billhooks back to the forest to cut firewood. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (1990)

There were camp kettles to find, billhooks to issue, mules to steal from the militia stable, and all had to be done in a hurry because Sharpe knew he must be away from this place before any orders arrived from London. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard (1986)

We were all well armed with fusil and sword, and in that we had some advantage of the caterans bearing down on us; for they had, for the main part, but rusty matchlocks, pikes, billhooks -- even bows and arrows, antique enough contrivance for a time of civilised war! ❋ Neil Munro (N/A)

The cart-irons, ploughshares, chains, axes, billhooks, scythes, and other cutting instruments, were hammered out on the anvil of the village blacksmith; and the work turned out by them is unequalled by any of the craft to-day. ❋ Various (N/A)

Baragwaneth bent slowly down, holding the Neck towards the ground, and all the labourers bowed low over their billhooks. ❋ F. Tennyson Jesse (N/A)

The billhooks, which a moment before had lain like shining crescents on the grass, went flashing up into blackness against the glow of the sky, and from each man came a great shout: ❋ F. Tennyson Jesse (N/A)