Thee a Waster!
By J. Clements
“…take a good
waster in thy hand”
- Anonymous, Mery Talys, 1526
One of the most common historical training tools for the
practice of swordsmanship throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance was a wooden sword or
waster. These were not light round
sticks but heavy sword shaped training weapons. Wooden training swords are of course used
in many martial arts around the world, most notably in Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and
Indian styles. Yet, less widely known is that
in Europe wooden practice weapons were also employed.
They were used not just as substitutes for wide Medieval cutting blades but
also for slender tapering Renaissance swords and even rapiers.
From at least the tenth century in many Italian communities rival
bands of youth battled in open fields with wooden swords and shields. (Davis. p. 14). In Medieval Pisa, there were also so-called giucco del mazzeascudo, or fighting “with
wooden weapons sometimes altogether, sometimes two at a time; [with] a wooden helmet on
the head and a padded breastplate of iron.” (R.
Davis, p. 175, note 8). Pretend wars between fighters wielding sticks and protected by
shields, helmets, and body armour were a regular occurrence in Italian cities during the
era. (R. Davis, p. 49).
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.” (Stow, p. 36).
Starting in the late 12th century
in Bergamo, Italy, an infantry training exercise using wooden
weapons was called “battle with small shields”. In these pugne
or “fights” all classes took part in the activity
and Judges imposed heavy fines on anyone caught using iron
the 14th century it became a form of public entertainment
often degenerating into brawls among the youth. (Nicolle,
Italian Miltiaman, p. 31).
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
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.” 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.” (chapter
II, p. 144) So, here we have an apparent description of eight wooden short
swords and a wooden longsword being used for fighting instruction
by the young king himself.
One modern source stated that these “wafters” (wasters)
were actually swords “with the blade set at right angles to the grip,
so that a blow would be struck with the flat rather than with the
edge”, but it gave no source for this claim. (Dufty, p. 9). No
historical evidence for training weapons with blades set like this has
come to light and such items would be especially awkward to
handle. Even if only the last quarter of the blade were somehow
forged so that just it was turned “sideways” for safer striking, it
would be quite and impractical for executing most fighting techniques.
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. In his 1841, 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.” Shakespeare even included a judicial combat fought
with sticks between a common armorer and his apprentice in his, Henry the VI, Part 2.
At right here, is a possible depiction of wasters held by two retainers
from a Milanese chivalric manuscript from circa 1370-1380.
The term waster in
English may derive from the quality of the tool being expendable or something that can be
discarded or also a person who wasted, spoiled, or destroyed things. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the word
“waster” (wayster, wafter, wasiler) as: “A
wooden sword or a foil used in sword-exercise and fencing” or “A cudgel, staff,
club.” It also provides several examples
where they are mentioned and refers to “Fencing with a ‘waster’;
single-stick, cudgel-play…especially to play at wasters.” Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary from
1913 similarly defined waster as “A kind of cudgel; also, a blunt-edged sword used as
Writing on old swordplay in the late 19th
century, researcher-practitioner Captain Alfred Hutton listed
it as “wafter”, not uncommon as “s”
was typically written as an “f” in earlier forms
of English literature.
Hutton concluded that in Medieval fencing those with
little or no armor cultivated their skill through sword
and buckler play by using a waster or cudgel as a substitute
for steel (Hutton, The Sword and the Centuries, p.
2.). His fellow fencing historian Egerton
Castle described the English waster as a “dummy sword
either with a rounded blade or one transversely set, so
that only the flat could be used”. (Castle, Schools
and Masters of Fence, p. 247).
He supplied no source however for why he thought
they were round. Castle
called the waster “the ‘foil’ of the backsword
during the sixteenth century.” He further related that
“practice with cutlass, Düsack, or falchion was carried
on with curved wooden lathes” and pointed out that
at the time the French still used a Dusack-like wooden sword
for sabre practice similar to the British single-stick or cudgel. Castle noted, “We find many allusions in Elizabethan
literature to ‘wasters’, used with or without
the buckler, as a substitute for the sword, and among apprentices
and such people in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
‘wasters’ seem to have been as popular a sport
as ‘single-stick’ in later days.” (Castle,
There is considerable evidence to persuade
us that for many centuries wooden swords and other wooden
practice weapons remained common training tools. From the anonymous 1536 play,
The King and Queenes Entertainment at Richmond, we even
find the lines "play at wasters with me" when
a character requests to practice fence. In Rabelais’s
early 16th century fantasy, The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, we read how Gargantua “had
a fair sword made of wood, and the dagger of boiled leather.” (Chapter 1.VIII). English
literature, especially of the 16th and 17th
centuries, is rich with references and analogies to the
use of wasters for teaching of fencing and mock-combat play.
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 1561 English translation by Sir Thomas Hoby of
the Italian Baldassare Castiglione’s influential 1528,
The Book of the Courtier, included in its “First Booke”
the line: “houldyng in hys hand a sworde or any other
waster” (Walter Raleigh edt. David Nutt, London, 1900).
Castiglione’s work reflects the courtiers of
the duke of Urbino at the turn of the century and thus suggests
wooden weapons were not unfamiliar tools among them. Both
the Italian fencing masters Angelo Viggiani writing in the 1540s and
Camillo Palladini in the late 1500s referenced the use of
practice swords, such as the spade da marra and
spade da gioco, as opposed to sharp or edged swords
(spade da filo). Whether these were merely blunted
steel blades or wooden swords is not determinable.
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 (Although, the original Italian edition of
1570 apparently referred to this bastone not as a wooden sword or stick but
as a pell or a pole planted in the ground).
German Fechtbuch (“fight book” or “fencing
book”) from the mid-1500s illustrates in color the
use of several forms of wooden practice weapons including
spears, daggers, and halberds with round balls in place
of sharp points. Several treatises from the period, such
as Paulus Hector Mair’s compendium of c.1540 and the
work of Joachim Meyer’s in 1570, depict such round-tipped
dagger wasters. There is no other reason for employing such
tools other than to safely learn to make non-injurious contact
when training realistically with a partner.
In his Il Torneo of 1627, the Italian knight
Bonaventura Pistofilo described a poleaxe made of wood but
painted like metal, “so that it should more closely
approximate to reality”.
Presumably we can surmise these were intended for
fighting practice, otherwise if they were only for display
we might wonder why not just use actual metal ones?
In the 1616 poem, Honest Lawyer, written by one, S. S.,
we indeed tellingly read, "With wooden wasters learne
to play at sharpe."
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 his 1646, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Sir Thomas Browne referred
metaphorically to wasters as safe arms: “For being unable to wield the intellectuall
arms of reason, they are fain to betake themselves unto wasters, and the blunter weapons
of truth” (Chapter III). Samuel Butler’s
fantasy poem, Hudibras, from 1663 noted the use of thick leather coat armor as
being resistant to wooden weapons but not sharp blades: “His
doublet was of sturdy buff, And tho' not sword, yet cudgel-proof; Whereby 'twas fitter for
his use, Who fear'd no blows, but such as bruise.” (Part I, Canto I.
lines 305-308). Butler
even described an imaginary fight between wooden and steel swords:
“Then Hudibras, with furious haste, Drew out his sword;
yet not so fast, But Talgol first, with hardy thwack, Twice bruis'd his head, and twice
his back. But when his nut-brown sword was out, With stomach huge he laid about,
Imprinting many a wound upon His mortal foe, the truncheon. The trusty cudgel did oppose
Itself against dead-doing blows, To guard its leader from fell bane, And then reveng'd
itself again. And though the sword (some understood) In force had much the odds of wood,
'Twas nothing so; both sides were ballanc't So equal, none knew which was valiant'st: For
wood with Honour b'ing engag'd, Is so implacably enrag'd, Though iron hew and mangle sore,
Wood wounds and bruises Honour more” (lines 794-813).
Wasters were also frequent non-lethal substitutes in bout of combat
sport. In the 1620 play, Philaster: Or,
Love lies a Bleeding, by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, we also find the lines:
“thou wouldst be loth to play half a dozen of veneys at wasters with a good fellow
for a broken head” (Act 4, Scene 1). From
the anonymous, Pinder of Wakefield, published in 1632 we read of a grudge contest
between the common men from rural Kendall and Halifax on Midsummer day. Among the various
swords and weapons the bouting included were cudgels by which many heads were bruised and
bloodied. One amusing English tale from 1638
which provides an example of friendly mock sword combat with wooden swords reads: “A
Country fellow comming into Cheapeside, tooke up a waster and a buckeler to play with an
Apprentice, the Apprentice beating him soundly, breaking his head, etc. the fellow cast
downe his waster againe, and said that if he had not thought that the Apprentice would
still have struck on the Buckler, (as he thought) he would not have plaid.”
William Horman’s 1519, Vulgaria, includes the lines, “Let us pley at
buckeler and at waster in feyre game”, and also, “This waster [rudis] is
not laufull.” From Robert Greene’s
1594 play, Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, we note the line, “I thought my
selfe as proper a fellow at wasters, as any in all our village.” In the Club Law from c. 1599 (attributed to
George Ruggle) we find a description that, “To night is holy daye, and there will be
waster play.” William Gouge’s 1631,
God's Three Arrows, also referred
to “Such kind of
recreations as…playing at wasters and foines.” (III. §11. 206). In Cotswold, England, a series of popular local
games held beginning in 1612 included cudgel playing (considered a lower class sport)
among its activities. A contemporary woodcut of the Cotswold games included a small
depiction of two adult figures playing with wooden swords and daggers.
Medieval knightly tournaments were also
well known for using safer mock weapons.
In the 1400s one form of tournament was the Kolbenturnier
or baton course whose object was to bash the crest on the
adversary’s helm. The weapon used for this was the
Kolben, an octagonal
wooden club or baton. (Clephan, p. 41). Several Medieval fighting manuals,
such as those of Hans Talhoffer in the mid-1400s, also depict
such clubs as being used by commoners in judicial combats.
The 15th century “Book of Tournaments”
by King René d’Anjou refers to using “a rebated
sword such as is used in a tourney” and stated that
both the sword and club (bâton) should not exceed the length of one arm. It further stipulated:
“It should be four fingers wide, so that it cannot
pass through the eye-slot of the helm, and the two edges
ought to be as thick as a finger’s thickness. And so
that it will not be too heavy, it should be hollowed out
in the middle and rebated in front and all in one piece
from the crosspiece to the end.” (Translation by Elizabeth
Bennett, 1997). As well, 15th century German tournament
societies specified the club of wood, like the tourneying
sword, had to have a width of no less than 3 and 1/2 fingers. The 15th century treatise cries
des joustes specified a baton two and a half feet long. Exchanges of blows in these tournaments
between armored opponents were conducted in earnest, with
each party trying their best to strike hard and accurately.
A more or less informal and friendly type of tournament
fight was the Behourd, which frequently used wooden
or rebated swords or even ones made out of whalebone (which
were sometimes given leather guards and decorated to make
them appear like steel blades). These combats were mostly fought between esquires
or knights in training.
Use of wooden training swords are actually
known to date back to ancient times. The Egyptians practiced
a form of fencing sport using thin knobbed pointed sticks
and the Romans specifically employed them for combat training.
From Philip Francis’s 1743 translation of the Roman
poet Horace we also find that, “The Gladiators, in
learning their Exercises, played with wooden Swords, called
rudes.” In B. Holyday’s 1661 translation
of the Roman poet Juvenal we read: “The fencer’s
staffe or waster…was call’d rudis (as some think)
because with such cudgels they practiz’d the rudiments
of fencing, before they came in publick to fight at sharp.”
In the ancient Roman arena preliminary events
occasionally included bloodless, sometimes farcical, duels
between paegniarii or lusorii, who fought
with wooden weapons called arma lusoria.
Among the gladiators, if a man repeatedly
survived the arena and lived long enough to retire, a symbolic
wooden sword or rudis was awarded as a token of discharge
from service (Michael Grant,
Gladiators, Barnes and Noble, 1967, p. 74 & 100).
One classical historian has concluded that Roman
gladiators trained with wooden swords at a straw man or
a two-meter high wooden post called a palus (precursor
to the Medieval pell).
The same source tells us to give the gladiators strength
training these wooden weapons were heavier than the real
ones. (L. Friedlander-Drexel. Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte
Roms, as cited in Grant, Gladiators, p. 40). The emperor
Caligula himself was known to have engaged in practice fights
against gladiators using wooden swords. (Grant, p. 97).
Describing the traditional training of
soldiers, the Roman military writer Vegetius told how young
legionnaire recruits were given a “double-weight shield
frame and foil, so that when the recruit takes up real,
lighter weapons, as if freed from the heavier weight, he
will fight in greater safety and speed.” (M. P. Milner.
of Military Science, Liverpool, 1993). The original Latin term used by Vegetius was not “foil”,
but ligneas caluas, with ligneas meaning wood or wooden and caluas
meaning cudgels, stick, or practice sword.
In his 1572 version of the 5th century
text on training of soldiers by the Roman military writer
Vegetius, John Sadler used both the terms “wooden waster”
as well as “cudgels” and referred to “great
wodden cowgels as heavy agayne as their usual…wasters”. Finally, Philemon Holland’s English
translation in 1600 of the 7th century Roman
historian Livy described, “Foule worke they made with
their wodden wasters and headlesse pikes” (XL. vi.
wooden sword from Grotsetter in the Orkney Islands, Scotland,
dated to the Late Bronze Age (now in the National Museum
in Edinburgh) has been found as well as a similar example
from Ireland, "made of yew, a rare hardwood, indicating
its practical function, just as the pommel had been broken
off apparently in antiquity." Wooden swords and weapons
are mentioned in the Irish myth, the Táin, where
an insult is made against Cuchulainn that he is only good
at graceful tricks with wooden weapons. (Kristiansen, p.
326, citing Táin, p. 118-119).
are the advantages and disadvantages of wooden swords as
training tools? Clearly,
they are economical and save abuse of expensive steel weapons
thereby preserving them for proper use.
Wooden weapons are also inherently less intimidating
and threatening than steel and therefore are good for introducing
new students to the necessary skills.
Getting knocked in practice by a wooden blade
is less dangerous than being hit by the blunt edge of a
thin metal one. The disadvantages of wooden weapons are that they do not function
identically to quicker ones of steel.
In order to understand the important but often subtle
differences the student must acquire experience by using
practice weapons were thus not uncommon or unusual in European
fencing history. Recently, a pair
of antique 19th century wooden practice foils, designed
like smallswords, were discovered in Louisiana and purchased
by a British fencing museum. Since
the mid-1990s, the
Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (www.thearma.org)
has pioneered the modern use of wooden swords for practice
and these tools make up a large portion of our training
drills and exercises (or armatura).
Wasters provide an excellent training tool for physical conditioning
as well as exercise drills. They also save wear and tear on
steel blades. High quality commercial wasters of many varieties
are available today. A good waster should be made of
solid hardwood and be capable of taking strenuous contact.
They should be as close to the size, balance, weight,
and feel of their steel counterparts. Rather than overly-light versions,
a heavy waster is best for both solo exercising and pell
work. Thus, to paraphrase
the historical view, if you intend to train seriously in
Medieval and Renaissance fencing my advice is: get thee
handbooks for military-drill of the 18th and 19th centuries devoted much attention to
fencing with wooden sticks as training for military sabre strokes. In his 1798
military sword treatise C. Roworth commented on the difference between using sticks and
steel blades, which did not encourage the use of a true edge, stating: “…if they
practice only with a stick, the weight of the
sword will render it so unwieldy when they are compelled to draw it on a real occasion, as
to frustrate almost every offensive movement against an antagonist possessed of either
science or agility.” (p.6, The Art of Defence
on Foot with the Broad Sword and Sabre, London, Printed for T. Egerton at the Military
Library near Whitehall, 1798). Yet, many
other writers contradicted this view. In
his 1805 Scotch broadsword treatise Lt. Mathewson wrote that for his lessons and guards he
“would recommend to be practised with flat wooden blades, in the form of the sword
you mean to carry”. (Thomas Mathewson, Fencing
Familiarized; or A New Treatise on the Art of the Scotch Broad Sword: Showing the
superiority of that weapon, when opposed to an enemy armed with a spear, pike, or gun and
bayonet, W. Cowdroy, 1805, p.8.)
In its section “Of the Practice
Drill with Sticks” one 1819 British military fencing treatise stated: “As no
exercise with the Sword can be brought to perfection without some species of loose or
independent practice, Sticks should be substituted for Swords in the present
instance, as in fencing, Foils are used for the acquirement of that Science.” In the broadsword fencing section of his 1840, Defensive Exercises, Donald Walker astutely noted,
“As no exercise with the Sword can be brought to perfection without some specious of
loose or independent practice, Sticks should be substituted for Swords”. But he
wisely noted nothing “should be attempted with the Stick, which could not be
performed with the sword”. (Donald
Walker, Defensive Exercises; Comprising Wrestling
as in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Cornwall, and Davonshire; Boxing, both in the usual mode
and in a simpler one; Defence against brute force, by various means; Fencing and Broad
sword, with simpler methods; the Gun, and its Exercise; the Rifle, and its Exercise,
London, Thomas Hurst, 1840, p. 115-116). British
cavalry Captain Valentine Baker wrote in 1858 how, “There should be a school of arms
in each regiment, where loose play, mounted and dismounted, could constantly be practised.”
He added “Good loose play with single sticks would be the best teaching for the
cavalry soldier…” (Baker, p.58-59).
The 1858, Athletic Sports for Boys, featured “exercises”
and “drills” for “the young swordsman” to “progress as a
broadswordsman or a single-stick player”. The short section on fencing offered “are
many exercises with the broadsword, called Practices” and stated: “These
exercises are always learned with the singlestick, or basket-hilted cudgel, in order to
avoid the dangers which would be inevitable if the sword were used.” It also
cautioned “the single-stick is only an imitation of the sword.”(Athletic
Sports for Boys: A Repository of Graceful Recreations for Youth, (Dick &
Fitzgerald, Publishers, NY, 1858, p.169). In
the introduction to his 1876, New System of Sword
Exercise, Sir Richard Burton, however observed: “I would note the mistake of
“loose practice” with the single stick instead of the sabre; it probably arose
from a mistaken economy in saving swords and paddings. Single stick is a different weapon,
a cane or light cudgel with a basket-hilt covering the back of the hand, like the
imperfect guard of the Highland Clay-more; it is straight, not curved, and as the rod has
no edges, so in practice every blow equally represents a cut.” (Burton, A New System of Sword Exercise for Infantry,
William Clowes and Sons, London, 1876).
Naval historian Gilkerson tells us:
“Perhaps in order to save wear and tear on the cutlasses – if not the sailors
– wooden practice cutlasses known as ‘single sticks’ were formally adopted
and retained in use as a sport and exercise in both the British and U.S. Navies well into
the 20th century. In White Jacket,
Herman Melville even described the single-stick practice which he witnessed aboard the
frigate United States in 1840: “Single-stick
as ever one knows, is a delightful pastime, which consists in two men standing a few feet
apart, and rapping each other over the head with long poles. There is a good deal of fun in it, so long as you
are not hit; but a hit – in the judgment of discreet persons – spoils the sport
completely. When this pastime is practiced by
connoisseurs ashore, they wear heavy, wired helmets, to break the force of the blows. But the only helmets of our tars were those with
which nature had furnished them.” (Gilkerson, p.103).
Wooden sabres were also used in the
French cavalry during the mid-1800s and to the present day the French stick-fighting art
of La canne uses hard slender reeds in a “cut
and thrust” style of fighting as do other stick-fighting arts from the Canary
Islands. The traditional Irish fighting
stick, the shilelah / shillelagh is a
knotted cudgel typically made of oak or blackthorn wood.
It was written on in the 18th & 19th centuries as a
commonplace method of self-defense. The use
of the shillelagh walking stick became common as British occupiers restricted weapons in
Ireland. As well, one form of 19th
century polish wooden training sword was known as a palcat. The 18th century English fighting sport
of Singlestick used one larger stick. Techniques for longer staves (wattles) and cudgels
were also known to exist. To prevent unfair use of the left hand in contests it was tied
behind the back or at the waist in various fashions according to local rules. Several
stick-fighting systems developed around the world and many still survive in forms of
sport, folkdance, and ritual. Some of the craft still survives. In Portugal, the art of Jogo
do Pau still exists as a cultural tradition, self-defense skill, and sport. French
stick-fighting systems use many kinds of sticks: la canne d’armes
(using a dress cane or walking stick), the sport form of canne de combat (using a
65” baton or walking staff), and the crooked cane used in lutte parisseinne. The street combat system of La canne de armes
developed during a ban under Napoleonic laws on carrying swords within the city of Paris.
The cane is handled much like a sword and many fencers took to practicing it as a legal
alternative to the sword. Italy also has a stickfighting art of suing the bastone.
A tradition of stickfighting in Russia is known as Shtyk and uses a 5-foot stick
called the polka.
James P. Gilchrist. A Brief
Display of the Origin and History of Ordeals; Trials by Battle; Courts of Chilvary or
Honour; and the Decision of Private Quarrels by Single Combat: Also, a Chronological
Register of the Principle Duels. Printed for the Author, London 1821, p. 32.
King James Bible, includes the word in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (54:16): “Behold,
I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an
instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.” Though, in this sense it seems to mean a person
who uses a weapon to cause destruction. Florio also identified Rouinatore as a
“ruiner, a spoiler, a waster, a consumer”.
the Italian master Viggiani in his 1575, Lo schermo,
disputed the use of rebated practice swords, arguing that with such weapons proper
attitude or the “psychology of combat” was learned imperfectly. Which certainly
says a great deal about the entire premise of contact in foyning swordplay and fencing
practice. (Lo schermo, Angelo Viggiani, Venice,
1575, fols 52v-53r).
L. Oxon. Gratiae Ludentes; or, Jestes from the University. Thomas Cotes,
London, 1638. Verse 116, “A Country man.”
Vegetius Renatus. The Foure Bookes of Martiall Policye,briefly contayninge a plaine
forme, and perfect knowledge of martiall policye, feates of Chivalrie, and whatsoever
persayeth to warre. Translated out of lattine, into English, by John Sadler. Thomas
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