Death under Shield.

Death in battle.

“Her imagination had been familiarised with wild and bloody events … . and had been trained up to consider an honourable ‘death under shieldʹ (as that in a field of battle was termed) a desirable termination to the life of a warrior.”—Sir W. Scott: The Betrothed, chap. 6.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.