A wee bit on the historic use of wood - before, instead of, or alongside steel.... John Stow’s 1598, Survey of London, recounted the following: “Ye may have read in mine annals how that in the year 1222 the citizens kept games of defence, and wrestlings, near unto the hospital of St. Giles in the field, where they challenged and had the mastery of the men in the suburbs and other commoners…The youths of this city also have used on holy days after Evening prayer, at their masters’ doors, to exercise their wasters and bucklers.” One of the clearest examples of the use of wooden swords in Medieval fencing comes to us from the 1434 writings of the Portuguese King Dom Duarte. In his Regimento, Duarte described: “And there he had weapons made of fine iron for other men, and he had lances and axes and wooden swords, and whenever he wanted to practice he armed himself with heavier weapons...made for learning different methods of defence and offence in which others are well versed.”[1] Duarte further advised: “Have spare weapons and armor at your house for anyone who comes over. Have wooden weapons to play with. When you spar use heavier weapons. Sparring helps you to learn new techniques from suitable partners. If no one comes over, train with anyone you can.”[2] English antiquarian Samuel R. Meyrick in his 1824, Antient Armour, noted a 1455 reference from a document in the Tower of London to, “Furst viij swerds and a long blade of a swerde made in wafters [read wasters]…for to lerne the king to play in his tendre age.” Fighting with sticks or cudgels was an accepted form of combat for judicial duels in Medieval Europe. In the 15th century, Olivier de la Marche, for example, told of a judicial duel between two tailors fought with shield and cudgel. The History of Dueling, J. G. Millingen related a duel in 1455 at the French city of Valenciennes between two burghers using “knightly cudgels of equal length, and bucklers painted red”. (Millingen, Vol I, p 363). The town even furnished the combatants with instructors to teach them the use of the club and buckler. The early 19th century chronicler of duels J. P. Gilchrist related a 15th century statement that in duels among commoners, “The weapons allowed them are, batons, or staves…and a four-cornered leather target…[and] in France villeins only fought with the buckler and baton.” In the section Of the exercise and strength of the armes at the end of the 1594 English edition of Giacomo Di Grassi’s, His True Arte of Defence, we are told: “The sword as each man knowes, striketh either with the poynt or with the edge. To strike edgewise, it is required that a man accustome himselfe to strike edgewise as well right as reversed with some cudgell or other thing apt for the purpose.” This would be a clear indication that wasters were indeed blade-shaped tools and not merely round sticks It is clear these activities were typically martial exercises not mere stick-fighting sports. B. P. Hall’s 1621, Heaven upon Earth, for example, noted clearly, “Even as with woodden wasters we learne to play at the sharp.” While Sir Thomas Overbury commenting on English masters in 1616, noted that to teach fencing, all the new Master needed was three large “bavins”, or ash sticks. (Aylward, p. 25). Michel de Montaigne, in his 1575 essays wrote of seeing: “in the house…canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms…in fencing”. (Chapter VIII, Of Drunkenness). In the 1615, Charron's Wisdom, we read of how, “A weake arme wanting power and skill well to welde a waster or staffe that is somewhat too heavy for it, wearieth it selfe and fainteth.” From the 1541, Rutland Manuscripts, we find: “For Bryngyng...of hiltes for the crosse wasters for my Lorde Roose” (Hist. MSS. Comm. IV. 313, iiijd), a statement that seems to imply that metal guards were even sometimes attached to wooden blades. The English fencing master Joseph Swetnam at the end of chapter XI of his 1617 fencing text, The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence, even specifically referred to the use of wooden rapiers and for safety advised students to cover the points of their “woodden foile or staffe”. In the anonymous satirical play of 1620, Swetnam the Woman-Hater Arraign'd by Women, about the misogyny of the Master of Defence, we read how the Spanish gentleman Scanfardo refers to Swetnam as “my noble Gladiator, Doctor of Defence” to which the Swetnam character then describes himself only as “A Master, Sir, of the most magnanimous Method Cudgell-cracking” (i.e., waster practice). In England, James Miller, a noted prize-fighter and Master of Defense, published a book in 1737 with plates detailing stick-fighting weapons including the cudgel, whose original purpose he wrote was for training in the backsword. The use of wooden swords as we will see even continued into the 18th and 19th centuries as both military tool and sporting implement. http://www.thearma.org/essays/wasters.htm
