Nicol, failing a couple of broadswords or four dirks, had got two pieces of rusty old iron and placed them cross-wise on the extemporised floor.
"The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols"
William Black
His head was thrown upward, and he kept striking himself on the right side, just over the place where his ancestors had worn their dirks or broadswords.
"An Orkney Maid"
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
So the Touaricks are reckoned very devils at night, and usually attack their enemy at this time, and hack him to pieces with their broadswords.
"Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846"
James Richardson