Jacob Collstrup wrote:On a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland I acquired a Scottish Claymore. A large 2 handed sword. The salesman told me quite a few things about it. And I sorta want to know more about it. What he told me was that it was used to cut down cavalry. So a sword designed to specifically for combat against riders on horses. Under what circumstances? I figure nothing beats a good barricade of spears against charging cavalry.
Unfortunately, he's probably just making things up. Swords meant for cutting up horses doesn't seem to have featured at all in medieval and Renaissance European history; the closest we can get to that is the mention of "horse-cutting swords" in some texts from the Sung Dynasty period in China, and even then there are doubts about whether these swordsmen ever really worked as the texts said they did
The two-handed "claymore" was likely just a Scottish/Irish variant of the two-handed swords used elsewhere in contemporary Europe, and so their usage would have been pretty similar. The
Wikipedia page on the two-handed sword has a surprisingly good (for Wikipedia standards) summary of the controversy regarding the subject.
Secondly the Claymores he had seemed VERY heavy compaired to what I expected a continental European 2 hand sword to weigh. This was apparently because the sword needed to be heavy in order to cut down cavalry. Does make some sort of sense.
Unfortunately again, this is probably because the sword you got isn't true to its historical models. The two-handed "claymore" had similar dimensions and construction to its continental European counterparts so it ought to weigh just like the other swords. In fact, many (or most?) blades for Scottish two-handed swords were imported from Germany and I strongly doubt that these blades would have had different characteristics from the blades the German smiths would have otherwise made for continental two-handed swords.
Thirdly I was told that the sword was usually a bit taller when standing next to the wielder. And that I (Height 175cm app.) would wield a sword roughly 185cm. Any truth to that?
It's true that two-handed swords
could be a bit longer than the wielder was tall. But I don't think this was ever a hard-and-fast rule.
By the way. Sometimes when searching for 'claymore' I also get 'baskethilt claymore' and what I'd call regular broad swords. How do you tell the difference? I thought that 'Claymore' referred ONLY to the big 2 handed swords, since its gaelic for 'great sword'.
Yes, the word has been used--correctly or incorrectly--to refer to both kinds of swords. Confusing isn't it?
SFI's article on the Highland Scots has some explanation about the matter. Personally I think both usages are correct and it's the writer who has the responsibility to clarify which kind of sword he/she is talking about when there's any significant possibility of confusion.
