Oops, I forgot my rapier...

[Stacy Clifford]

While looking through Swetnam this evening I found this fascinating piece of advice:

Now if thou have a quarrell and willing to answer, and not being furnished with a Rapier, then take a cudgell of what length thou wilt thy selfe, and make a shoulder within a handfull of the ende of it by cutting him halfe way through, and there binde the haft of thy knife, and so the shoulder will keepe him from slipping backe, and this is as sure and as fearefull, and as good as a Rapier to encounter against a Rapier and Dagger, or a Sword and Dagger, so that you have close hilted Dagger: likewise you may tie a point at the But-end of the Cudgell, to put in thy finger that thy Cudgell slippe not out of thy hand: this weapon I have made good proofe of, but it was in another Country, where I could get no other weapon to my minde.

I guess anybody can beat a rapier with another rapier, but it takes a real master to beat one with a knife on a stick!

[KatherineJohnson]

I love little tidbits like this. Our ancestors were so much more clever then they get credit for.

[JeffGentry]

Hye Stacy

I guess anybody can beat a rapier with another rapier, but it takes a real master to beat one with a knife on a stick!

It takes a real master to beat a rapier with a hotdog on a stick.

LOL

Jeff

[Matthew_Anderson]

"Knife on a stick" Kind of makes sense if you think about it. I mean really, the point of a rapier is the deadly part. Tying a long stick to a sharp dagger allows you to thrust from range much as you would with a rapier.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Cool. Basically a short-pike.

[Stacy Clifford]

True, but I doubt that a jerry-rigged knife on a stick is going to come out with the same balanced agility of a well-made rapier, so I think you would need to be able to compensate with greater skill. It really is more like a short one-handed spear, although the quillons on the dagger could create some interesting binding situations. What impresses me is that Swetnam says he actually did this once, obviously successfully.