A question on Silver

[Guest]

Greetings to all ARMA members, I am knew to this forum and am looking for a scholarly answer to a answer to or analysis of a question

George Silver Ch.8 (25): The like may you do if he strike at your other side (left side), if you ward his blow with the edge of your sword your hand and knuckles as aforesaid (bearing you knuckles downward & your nails upward), casting out his sword blade towards your left side, this may be used at short or long sword fight.

The parts in brackets are taken from the previous part (24) and seemed to me to fit the intent best.

Somebody cuts mandritta at my legs. I parry point down with my hand in quarta (palm up, edge out to the left) the blades meet edge on edge

In the interest of scholarly discussion could someone give me an interpretation that doesn’t involve edge on edge? I cannot currently imagine one.

I look forward to your response
Charles Gallagher
Stoccata

[Tony_Indurante]

Welcome Charles,

"Somebody cuts mandritta at my legs. I parry point down with my hand in quarta (palm up, edge out to the left) the blades meet edge on edge"

I grabbed my wasters and tried this in practice. A downwards diagonal cut to my left side (legs specifically) with me parrying quarta, I couldn't get edge to edge contact at more than the most oblique angle, and the more I turned my knuckles upwards (palm up) the more the flat of my blade came into contact with the other sword. I'll take some digital pictures in the morning showing what I mean and try to post them up here.

[Tony_Indurante]

I tried posting the pictures but couldn't seem to get it to work. I'll try again later or you can drop me an email and I'll send them to you.

Tony

[Randall Pleasant]

Tony

I think the pictures need to be where they can be seen on the Internet, basically within the "/images" directory of a web site. This way you can provide a URL to the pictures. Send the pictures to me and I will place them from the ARMA DFW web site. The ARMA web master might also be able to do this for you.

[Tony_Indurante]

Thanks to Ran for hosting my pictures.

Ok, lets try this again.

The first set of pictures shows quarta with the hand at three different angles





the next three images show the same angles in action





With the attacking blade coming in at a 45 degree angle I couldn't get more than minor edge contact with most of the parrying being either done on my flat or the attacking swords flat.

Tony

[John_Clements]

This is no different really than just cutting downward to a low right stance, when you do your blade ends in a position where any cut to the leg will hit your flat.

JC

[Guest]

I can see exactly what you mean, but I am not sure how valid it is to say that it can be done with the flat of your blade. After all Silver does specifically state that it is performed with the edge of your blade. The angle of the incoming blow may well mean that your edge contacts with the semi-flat of your opponents sword but in my experience this in not common. I think it should be borne in mind that this is described primarily as a sword and dagger/buckler technique and that suppinating the hand to the degree where the flat of your blade contacts with the incoming blow effectively removes the dagger/buckler from the equation whilst also weakening the defence. This is why (in my humble opinion) Silver specifically tells us to use the edge for this parry.

Take Care

Oz

[Tony_Indurante]

Actually, I did use the edge of my blade, I just never encountered my opponent's edge. The blades always seem to meet on the flat of one sword or the other. I tried supinating my hand from little to extreme to see if there would be a differance, but I didn't see one (other than the extreme supination was uncomfortable and felt weak).

Tony

[Guest]

Right, so it seems we are actually talking semantics, I would call that an edge on edge block, although not as direct because the attacker is at the 45 degree angle you say.

I`m glad to say that we have the same interpretation of Silvers words, (I hadn't figured how there could be another myself which was why I went looking) we just voice it in different ways.

On a side note, I find that when doing this at speed: take the first image with the ruler and flatten the hand, that's the way I do that technique because I find that unless I am thrusting into an opponent as I ward the blow, having the point directed to my right at all allows my guard to be blown through, if the opponent has made there distance properly you are in danger being hit with a considerable blow. This way there is more strength in the wrist and arm, even though your sword does get pushed in in a little bit and this position allows for the greatest range of counters. Do others find that?

John, could you clarify how you are doing that? I don't quite follow what you are saying? (maybe semantics again)

I look foreword to more discussion on this forum, thank you all.

Charles

[Guest]

While we are at it I`ll go into counters so you can get a better idea of where I see my sword must be and you can do the same to ensure we are talking about he same thing.

I ward as shown in the first picture with the ruler (with the slightly flatter hand) and then as I am casting out his sword blade towards my left side (pushing it to the left to give me room to act) I rotate my sword hand and arm around the point of contact and cut up into his right armpit or body. This must be a very quick fluid motion with the individual parts merging together if I am to get him before he flies out.

Other options that I don't use due to personal preference are: thrust into my opponents body, cut with the false edge into his body (not to likely to do much as that sort of a blow wouldn't go through a doublet) or cut into the knee of his leading leg, not a bad option but terribly antisocial in a modern school.

Are we talking about the same motion?

Charles

[TimSheetz]

HI Charles,

I like the armpit and knee options you mentioned. A seriously good slice to the armpit and forward into the pectorals where they attach to the arm will cripple that limb... same with the knee... then you can thrust at your 'leisure'! My natutal reaction for that motion (down to the left) would not be a thrust.

Best,

Tim

[Shawn Cathcart]

John is correct as always. You might be thinking of the motion as following. The cut comes at your left leg, and you move your sword down, placing it in the line of his cut. This is not how its done, that is too static. Instead you make the motion of a downward cut towards your left leg. It's a very small margin, but this is basically deflecting with the flat of your blade on his edge. This makes more sense done with accurate replica's. The "edge" on a waster is huge and is not indicitive of a true sword. A real swords "edge" is very very thin and small. An edge on edge parry is directly edge on edge. There is no way that done properly, this technique would end up straight on, edge on edge. You blade probably has a slight diamond cross section, so its inevitable that your "edge", will make make a slight contact with his edge, even when the majority of his blow will be received on your flat. The important thing to remember is that your edge will not, and should not ever make total 90 degree head on contact with his edge. I'm sure John feels the same way, but I'm not going to go further into yet another edge on edge parrying discussion, it has been well discussed, and in most everyone's opinion, well disproven. Do this technique as a downward dynamic cut, and it will naturally not happen edge on edge. The reason you do it like a cut, and do it dynamically is so that the cutting action deflects his sword and with your continuing momentum you can very quickly strike back a counter by following through.

[Guest]

Tim: I suppose it depends on where your sword ends up, in Pallas Armata I often find that I am in a position to single time stab in to the thigh as well as ward the blow, but in silver with the passing footwork I find I don't. Thus I like to cut

Shawn: But Silver says to "ward his blow with the edge of your sword" and "casting out his sword blade towards your left side" I would take that to mean cutting far more to the left that back, the sword does a circle so at the base of that circle the sword is going cutting directly to the left. How far back is your sword going?

A problem I see is that if your sword is going diagonally back is that if the attacker slows his attack down you would no longer be taking the attack on a strong part of the sword, your sword may even be out of the line when the attack arrives if you are slightly panicked and do the parry to quickly (and the odds of that happening in a real fight are not to slim) I can attest to these "slow ball" attacks easily having enough power to destroy the knee having large bruises on lower thigh and upper calf.

Charles

[Matt Easton]

"I'm not going to go further into yet another edge on edge parrying discussion, it has been well discussed, and in most everyone's opinion, well disproven. "

That's not actually true - while I agree that most medieval and early renaissance treatises make use of advantageous body mechanics by not opposing the motion of the opponent's weapons directly, there is evidence of 'stiffling' counter-attacks, and it is very very clear that later fencing schools (18th and 19thC's) did use direct edge on edge parrying. So to say nobody parried an attck directly by presenting the edge is not true. To say it in referrence to medieval martial arts is a somewhat more complex issue that relies so heavily on semantics that it is really not worth discussing unless it is face to face with sword in one hand and a manuscript and translation in the other hand.

Matt

[Guest]

Matt, sorry to say this but can week keep this thread to the discussion of the technique? I agree all of these things are better discussed in person, but with so narrow a focus we can argue it successfully over the net we just have to be sure our points are expressed to the full and we are mature and have an open mind.

Also as I`m in Australia its kind of hard to see people in person to discus it, if you are prepared to shout me some tickets I`d be happy to head over there discuss and learn and then head to the pub before heading home... didn't think so <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Charles