the North as a jocteleg.
Hence Burns, describing the famous article treasured by Captain Grose
the antiquarian, says that--

"It was a faulding jocteleq,
Or lang-kail gully;"

the word being merely a corruption of Jacques de Liege, a famous
foreign cutler, whose knives were as well known throughout Europe as
those of Rogers or Mappin are now. Scythes and sickles formed other
branches of manufacture introduced by the Flemish artisans, the makers
of the former principally living in the parish of Norton, those of the
latter in Eckington.

Many improvements were introduced from time to time in the material of
which these articles were made. Instead of importing the German steel,
as it was called, the Sheffield manufacturers began to make it
themselves, principally from Dannemora iron imported from Sweden. The
first English manufacturer of the article was one Crowley, a Newcastle
man; and the Sheffield makers shortly followed his example. We may
here briefly state that the ordinary method of preparing this valuable
material of manufactures is by exposing iron bars, placed in contact
with roughly-granulated charcoal, to an intense heat,--the process
lasting for about a week, more or less, according to the degree of
carbonization required. By this means, what is called BLISTERED STEEL
is produced, and it furnishes the material out of which razors, files,
knives, swords, and various articles of hardware are manufactured. A
further process is the manufacture of the metal thus treated into SHEAR
STEEL, by exposing a fasciculus of the blistered steel rods, with sand
scattered over them for the purposes of a flux, to the heat of a
wind-furnace until the whole mass becomes of a welding heat, when it is
taken from the fire and drawn out under a forge-hammer,--the process of
welding being repeated, after which the steel is reduced to the
required sizes. The article called FAGGOT steel is made after a
somewhat similar process.

But the most valuable form in which steel is now used in the
manufactures of Sheffield is that of cast-steel, in which iron is
presented in perhaps its very highest state of perfection. Cast-steel
consists of iron united to carbon in an elastic state together with a
small portion of oxygen; whereas crude or pig iron consists of iron
combined with carbon in a material state.[3] Chief merits of
cast-steel consist in its possessing great cohesion and closeness of
grain, with an astonishing degre