One of the guys I work with at my day job is seriously into martial arts. So, when he found out that I’ve had some fencing experience, he became very interested in my helping him out. Part of this help involves me piecing together a few mysteries of technique (and maybe theory) to be found in Henry Blackwell’s The English Fencing-Master (or, the compleat tuterour of the small sword…In a dialogue between master and scholar. Adorned with several curious postures.).
However, before I could just grab a copy from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), he brought the book in. Knowing about his interest in medieval epic poetry, I brought in one of my copies of Beowulf, and we traded texts.
Having read the first five lessons of Blackwell’s book, it’s safe to say that my rather casual fencing training wasn’t for naught. The talk of Flankanade and Segoone is unfamiliar to me (not to mention the idea of thrusting with the nails down as in a Tierce), but the rest of it adds up.
Along with having a teacher who was more interested in the athletics side of the art (he trained a member of the 2012 Canadian Olympic fencing team, after all), it seems that he was also some 50 years too early for Blackwell to be of perfect relation. Riposte and “Holy Cross” (for the squaring of your upper body) have yet to come up.
Going Box By Box 