Show off your Sgian Dubh

Rose and Thistle Custom

Rose and Thistle Custom

Josh Mead
Joined
May 9, 2018
Messages
2,301
I'm looking for some inspiration on these little guys, found some pictures in old threads but not much recent. Also what features do you all think are most desirable in a sgian dubh for EDC?
 
Here is (hopefully) a link to one that belongs to my wife made by Brian Lyttle (D)

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For an EDC, the first requirement likely would be -- a Scot!
 
Well, my sister is getting enrolled in Clan MacLaren so I guess I can qualify for the Scott requirement :)
My wife really likes that knife, thanks for putting up the pic, clean and classy.
 
I've been told that the Sgian Dubh is a Scottish knife. Per Cold Steel marketing material and the Oracle at Wiki it's a Scottish knife. However, I saw a knife that looks like a Sgian Dubh being sold as a traditional Irish knife by an Irish maker. That was news to me, but I didn't argue. Anyone know of an Irish connection for this style of knife?
 
Well I just remembered my Irish family's oral history. My Irish grandpa would say the Scotch-Irish are not real Irish since they were brought over from Scotland by the English to subjugate the native Irish. Maybe the Irish-made knife that looks like a sgian dubh was made by an Irishman that hails from the Scotch-Irish tradition.
 
According to a sgian dubh site I found "The Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada included parts of western Scotland and Northern Ireland. The inhabitants of Dalriada were often referred to as Scots (Scoti in Latin), a name originally used by Roman and Greek writers for the Irish who raided Roman Britain, and as a result Dalriada has come to be known as the first kingdom of the Scots. The kingdom's independence ended in the Viking Age, as it merged with the lands of the Picts to form the Kingdom of Alba and the beginnings of modern day Scotland."

That predates the sgian dubh as a specific knife but shows that similar ideas would have been shared. From what I can tell it is uniquely Scottish but I'm sure people with similar needs made similar knives all over the world. Look at the kwaiken, just a Japanese sgian dubh.
 
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