Das Schnitt from Lindholm's Ringeck interpretation

[Jamie Fellrath]

Hi all,

We were trying out the section on Das Schnitt in Lindholm's Ringeck translation/interpretation last night and I had questions for those of you who have more thoroughly explored this technique.

Ringeck states (from page 152): "If someone rushes at you with arms up and tries to push through forcefully at your upper left, wind your sword and fall on his arm below the crossguard with your own arms crossed and using the long edge, and push him upward. If he leaps at you on your right side, strike with the short edge on his arm and push him up as before."

This movement seemed very awkward to me. Based on the picture and Ringeck's text, it seems as though you push up against the opponent's wrists, with the crossguard between the wrists, then then slide past them with a pass to the right, slicing along the arms as you go. My issue with this is that with the crossguard between the wrists and the long edge against the wrists/arms, it's not a very smooth movement to make that pass... the crossguard gets stuck there. But if you push up with the flat of the blade initially, and don't position the crossguard between the wrists, then you're not "using the long edge."

Am I interpreting this correctly?

Thanks,
Jamie

[Randall Pleasant]

Jamie

You catch the adversary's arms with the strong of your blade. Your crossguard should <u>not</u> be between the adversarys arms, rather his arms are "below the crossguard". It is similar to a Hanging parry except instead of his blade slide down the flat of your blade, his lower arms are sliced by your edge.

[Jamie Fellrath]

Thanks Ran... I took "Below the crossguard" to mean "on the hilt." That certainly makes a hell of a lot of more sense and was much more what I was thinking. The picture in the Lindholm book is a bit misleading, unfortunately.