An interesting illustration by Hogarth of English stick-Fighters during election time in the 1700's.... Louie
Nice one. That reminds me, what sort of sticks did the old press gangs use to "persuade" drunken sailors to get onto their boats? They must have been pretty handy with them to get a hardened sailor to come along against his will.
Guards! Hi Cudgel.... The one-legged fighter in the foreground is holding his weapon with one hand while the guy in the white shirt weilds his with two... This next picture shows one traditional stance of 18thC stickfighting competitions with the left hand tied down by a scarf around the thighl!!! This prevented the use of the left hand for defence, particularily attempts to protect the head which would be considered unmanly! Louie
I was thinking exactly the same thing. The image also appears to show sticks that are knobbed at the striking end. Possibly "Shillelagh" type walking sticks; saplings cut from the ground with the root-ball shaped to a **** for the handle, alternately branches cut just above the joint and shaped to a ****. Peace favor your sword, Kirk
One legged? It appears to me (disclaimer about image quality and reading spectacles, etc.) that the fighter does have a right leg but it's turned so you see it at the ankle on, the foot hidden. From the position of his left sholder in relation to his right his left hand either must be grasping the stick below his right fist or the arm must be laid along his chest near the right shoulder (or perhaps pushing out in a "Kung Fu"-esque guard). Since the stances and stick positions of the two are otherwise similar it seems reasonable to me that the hand, if not actually currently on the stick, is intended to go there very quickly. Makes sense though if you consider the Singlestick to be a trainer for [insert your favorite basket-hilted blade]. It's downright goofy to try to block a cut with your arm when your using live blades so you defintely wouldn't want to train the habbit in when using ash trainers, right? Kinda like the purpose behind Right-of-Way, right? Peace favor your sword, Kirk
Stick-man & stick-leg! Hi Kirk.... Checked it out on photo enlargement....Yep, he's peg-legged or has a stick for a foot probably why he isn't swinging with both hands on the stick as he'd loose his balance His arm is across his abdomen as his hand just appears above his hip! I have tried to enlarge the relevant section..... Louie
Still pretty hard to tell. Might be a pegleg. I don't think it's wise for me to guess any further about that. Are you sure that's not his opponent's foot? It's right where one would expect to see his opponents foot. Might be his hand though. That'd be a logical (and physically possible) place for it to go. Peace favor your sword, Kirk
Highland Stick-fighting The Scottish form of Stick-fighting was based on the cuts and guards of the Broadsword..... This illustration shows two guards from a 1790 manual which highlighted the concept that you could use the same techniques with the cane, singlestick or broadsword! Louie
Irish Stick-fighting A style of stick-fighting that would have been familiar in the bigger cities of Britain was the Irish method. The stick was held nearer the centre which suited the traditional club-like blackthorn sticks - hitting with the club, the top half of the shaft, the bottom half and the butt. Another feature of this weapon is that the thorn lumps were left on the stick to rip the flesh of the opponent. Unlike the British sword based stick arts, I tend to think that this method was based on long-handled axe fighting which was a favourite weapon of the Irish. Louie
stick fighitng based off of axe play.......interesting. if that is the case then it could be possible to reverse engineer irish axe play off irish stick fighting.
Stick to Axe Hi Cudgel.... I believe Ken Pfrenger and his Bata colleagues in the US are doing just that....!!!! Louie
Highland stick-fighter This Scottish/Highland Mercenary 1631, (often described as Irish) fighting for the King of Sweden in the 30 Years War, can be seen carrying a cudgel. Taught to use the stick from an early age, Highlanders are known to have been involved in battles armed with little more than a stick and dirk dagger, no doubt intending to retrieve more substantial weapons as the fight progressed. Louie.
A unit of them were slaughtered in a Norwegian valley after surrendering to a peassant army. I don't know what the peassants did to achieve total victory, but I guess it was a rare combo of peassants beeing enraged by looting merceraries, combined with the fact that the local authorities ordered them to take to arms vs. the mercs fighting for the swedish king and that the scots underestimated the peassants. (Norway have allways had a conscription-army, theese scots would have met peassants armed with 2h.axes, spears and bows) The result was that they surrendered. The peassants, not really knowing what to do next, locked them up in a barn and had a very spirited celebration. Some time during that party, they decided that it would have been fun to kill somebody foregin for a change (see other post about norwegian knife and belt-duels) -and they portioned out fitting number of scots, drove them off some hunded meters and killed them. When they got fed up, they burned down the barn, killing some 400 scots :cry:
I rember Ken do some reconstrcution of axe play but I wasnt aware it was derived from irish stick wighting. Oh and I jsut love the Norwegians....remind me if I ever go back in time to say im a Dane and NOT a scot :love:
A great deal of what Ken (and the rest of us under him) does is reconstruction based on existing text and artistic sources heavily seasoned with practical testing and "word of mouth" from old timers. I'm not sure how much resemblance this bears to ax play though I susupect it could be significant. Ken's been pretty busy lately trying to move into his new home and settle in but I can direct him to this thread for a better explanation if you wish. Peace favor your sword, Kirk
Irish Cudgeller This 1581 Irish warrior carries an interesting Cudgel.... It's probably Blackthorn with the thorns left in, and has a blade attatched to the lower half!!! What looked like a cord loop on the end actually has barbs on it so it must have been used like a whip(?) Any suggestions? Louie
It depends on when in time you travel back! If you go to Norway anno 900 - 1100, you could be in loads of troubble if you boasted about beeing danish About the tartan in the national costume ("bunad"): Norwegian nationalromanticism among the citicens of Oslo in the early 19th century gave birth to what today is regarded as norwegian national costumes. Lot of it is taken directly from old norwegian costume-traditions, but most of it is citicens' flirting with theemes from both Norway as well as from abroad (some inspirations is traced to China and the use of silk!) Anyway, they look pretty nice, differ greatly from area to area (every district have it's own "bunad", and the authencity of them as evidence of peassant-traditions from the renissanse and medieval era is somewhat dubious (Allthough some of the techniques have been found as far back as the migration era (400ad). One fun aspect of the "bunad", is that the male "bunads" are equipped with knives, and they're perfectly legal to carry, so on our national-day (17/5), the streets are crowded with men carrying knives Some pics of "bunader": http://www.alperosen.no/bunader.htm
