The sort of weapon available to peasants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoeNwEjpTE4
I think this is a novelty style for the better off and actual peasants would have preferred fighting with long knives, hammers, or clubs and sharoenedsticks.
Quote from: Graham on December 05, 2018, 06:52:29 AM
I think this is a novelty style for the better off and actual peasants would have preferred fighting with ... clubs.
http://victorianfencingsociety.blogspot.com/2014/06/victorian-singlesticks-singlesticka.html
(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-uuTh1INfOuw%2FU4tYyIPdqGI%2FAAAAAAAAAFc%2Fzb6FUUx2yoU%2Fs1600%2FSomersetshire%2BGamesters%2B1809.jpg&hash=e68a8d6367fd02961b4574258050b0a30e709016)
And in Tom Brown's School Days, Thomas Hughes gives a more appreciative description of the action. "The players are called "old gamsters," – why, I can't tell you, - and their object is to break one another's heads. If good men are playing, the quickness of the return is marvellous; you hear the rattle like that a boy makes drawing his stick along pailings, only heavier, and the closeness of the men in action to one another gives it a strange interest, and makes a spell at backswording a very noble sight."
Sporting Magazine published an account of a Singlestick match at Trowbridge in1809, with an engraving of two "gamesters". It says of backsword or singlestick that it "is a game of high antiquity, and the most warlike extant. When the fate of nations was principally decided in battle by the sword, it was the policy of our ancestors to render its use familiar to the bulk of the population, hence arose the courtly tournament, and the plebeian exhibitions at wakes and festivals of courage and skill, in sword and dagger, sword and potlid, cudgels, backsword, &c. &c. the prizes for which still remain annually given in many parts." Potlid seems to refer to the guard or "pot" of a singlestick.
English National Pride
In 1886 Walter Pollock published an article on the Backsword and Cudgel in the April issue of the Saturday Review. He says that, though waning now, the prowess of Englishmen with the backsword had long been an object of national pride. Broadsword and singlestick were more congenial to the English spirit because of "the qualities it requires of its devotees, strength of hand, hardihood and determination." This is in contrast to "the nimbleness, elegance, and highly-cultivated cunning of the foreign play."
https://youtu.be/gcHogzUn_OU