The Sword of Mercy

Tam ponders why some people name (and decorate) their guns.  Brigid writes an outstanding piece filled with history and psychology, about the power of names.  All I can add is that this idea of naming deadly weapons is very, very old.

The picture shows three of the five swords used during the coronation of British Monarchs.  The one in the middle is The Sword of Mercy, symbolizing the necessity for a sovereign to possess the quality of mercy.

The sword is very, very old.  It was Edward The Confessor's sword; he was the last of the House of Wessex, the son of Ethelred the Unready, and the penultimate Anglo-Saxon monarch.

He named the sword, and called it Curtana, which hearkens back to an even older sword, possessed by one of Charlemagne's companions, Ogier the Dane.  It is said that Ogier - maddened with grief and rage when his son was killed - sought out Charlemagne's son to kill him in revenge.  When Ogier swung his sword at the youth, the sword was broken at Heaven's command.  Show mercy.

Ogier had decorated the sword, engraving it with the words My name is Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal.  Joyeuse was Charlemagne's sword, and Durendal was Roland's, of Le Chanson de Roland fame.  Dark Ages marketing, if you want to think about it that way.

The naming of swords is much older than this, of course, and seems to have occurred in many cultures: the Prophet Mohamed named his sword Zulfiquar, the ancient Japanese Emperess Jingu possessed the Seven Branched Sword, Julius Caesar had his sword Crocea Mors.

Names contain power, both a prayer for the future and remembrance of the past.  Brigid writes:

Just north of my home is a small, very old, graveyard. As I've passed by on foot, I've observed people there, kneeling by a stone, tracing the carved name of their loved one with their fingers, lost in their grief, yet comforted in the remembrance. The feel of the words, the soft utterance of the name, bringing back so much of what was lost.

That remembrance to me perfectly captures the sense of the name applied to the Sword of Mercy.  It's a meditation.  Other, more warlike names are also meditations.  Joyeuse.  Think on that, and what that meant to Charlemagne.  It speaks volumes in a single word, about the man and his day.  Was the name a prayer or a remembrance?

Some people - like Tam - don't need to name their weapon, which is fine.  Some people like the idea of naming and decorating, but don't ponder the mystery of the meditation.  They're psychologically "bubba-ing" their weapon.  If you have a worthy weapon, give it a worthy name, or none at all.