Stork's Beak: School of Historical Swordplay

The Sunday session tomorrow will be at St Catherine's on the Grange, from 2:30-4:00 pm, this is a one off as we have had an unexpected venue chnage.

Pumpkin cutting

This Thursday, we will be doing our annual pumpkin cutting a week earlier than usual, normally, we murder a few pumpkins with sharps to celebrate Halloween. We will have a few pumpkins, but it would be very helpful if people could bring one or two pumpkins themselves.

Aside from that we will be looking at more Vadi, cutting mechanics, and we will do a friendly king of the hill style tournament.

A really nice session on Meyer's play from the posture of Nebenhut

Tonight we are going to be beginning the Introductory/Refresher Meyer course. This will run until the end of September. The course will mainly cover Longsword; however, we will also cover Rappier and Dussack. This is the perfect time to start, so bring your friends and if you have been away for a bit, a good time to restart fencing. For those with experience, this course will include a wealth of new material. We will also be fencing outside to escape the heat :)

Tomorrow we will be fencing in the park at St Peter’s from 3-5pm, we’ll focus on Longsword in the taught section tomorrow. I will bring some other weapons for freeplay, and we will do a fair bit of sparring in the second half of the session.

Fencing with Exclusion: How Medievalists Are Defending Trans Inclusion in Sword Sports - Medievalists.net After a fencing controversy sparked an American debate over transgender participation, medievalist communities like HEMA and the SCA are standing firm in support of inclusion and trans rights in sword sports.

Several really good points are made in this video on the topic of control and competition in HEMA.

How hard is too hard? Solution to injuries in HEMA a debate worth having. As it says. I’m sure you are all aware of Stabgate. Here I want to offer potential solutions as well as ramble incoherently for a while. I hope you will enga...

Tonight we will be looking at on-set plays with the longsword in the first session, and we will do some introductory duelling sabre in the second session.

I want a 'My lord emperor coquier frog sword' :)

The swordcane was a variant of the smallsword, possibly the only one lasting into the present day. As a covert blade its social status varies; it could be the mark of a military man retired into civilian life (as done by some French Grognards) and thus a fitting companion or a discreet item of defence while working for the state (as carried by Rabbie Burns during Excise duties) but most commonly seen as the mark of a bully, ruffian or assassin. Advice for their use is in some treatises for defence with and against for these reasons. Our favourite treatise advice is that if both draw a sword from their cane, they should exchange cartels and arrange a proper duel in cold blood rather than a hot blooded rencontre as is proper for gentlefolk.

Following on from the success of our last introductory smallsword course, we are going to be running a new course from this Sunday, 3-4pm, at the Southside Centre on Nicholson Street.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smallsword-introductory-course-tickets-1392703917909?aff=oddtdtcreator