Squire Keaton wrote:
Yes, the translations are very tedious to read. I looked at that translation that one of you guys are working on on SDA's website about the krumphau and I almost laughed at the crazy way the author spoke/wrote. I have no disrespect for the old sword masters or their methods, I just wish they could say "step to the right with your lead foot while bringing the blade down at an angle" rather than "He who krumps, krumps with skill. This I will laud". (Okay I misquoted the guy completely)
Yes, many of the manuals seem to be very cryptic or even arbitrary or deliberately vague. The first is true, they can be literally cryptic and you have to kind of have the key to the "cypher" to make them out, fortunately that is pretty easy now days compared to a few years ago - but the latter is not, nothing in those books is by accident and the words of these Masters are carefully chosen.
For example, an early translation of a Lichtenauer verse done around 2000 or 2001 may have given us this cryptic sentence
"When he over hews from the roof wrathfully step sideway hew and take forward" which made absolutely no sense. But when we understand the way the words are used throughout the document we begin to see the meaning... or many of us together frankly pieced it together over a period of years, and now the same sentence might be translated as:
"
When he cuts at you from Vom Tag [guard]
cut with a zwerchau [Mastercut]
and make a passing step, you will seize the Vor [initiative]"
Which makes a lot more sense to me, at least at the level of understanding I am currently at. In fact the better I understand the system the more the original German makes sense to me and the more useless the early interpretations and translations seem to be (since the actual German words we use and understand now are in the original manauls - Vom tag, Zwerchau etc.). I figured a lot of this out with help from other people online like I'm giving you guys, but if you did meticulously read the thing from beginning to end you will already know he is speaking of one of the guards (Vom Tag) and one of the Mastercuts (zwerchau) and the idea of timing (Vor).
When I'm in doubt about something basic I always consult the Wiki, it's acutally a useful overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_of_fencingNow some Masters are much more cryptic than others of course. Ringeck is fairly straitforward Lichtenauer, though terse and in verse (sorry) form and he has no pictures. Lichtenauers "Versa" is written to rhyme for very good reasons I won't go into now though.
Talhoffer on the other hand has wonderful pictures but unless you already know the system is extremely cryptic, made even more so by the fact that the most popular (and cheap) reprinting of one of his several books has 15 or 20 pages out of order.
Joachim Meyer is available in a high quality translation, has very clear explanations and excellent illustrations, but he is a much later Master describing a more complex system.
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I don't have any disrespect for the way they talk either. I'm just sayin that its hard for my weak mind to comprehend
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Yours and mine both brother
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By the way, is this a good reference for learning the master cuts?
http://www.thearma.org/essays/mastercuts.htmlI've been trying to learn them off that site and by looking at a few videos on youtube of people attempting them. I say attempting b/c idk if half the guys on youtube are actually doing them properly or not.
yes that is a very good article, albeit a bit dated now in certain aspects, but it will give you a good basic overview of what the Mastercuts are and aren't.
It's written by Jake Norwood incidentally who is the guy forming one of the new national HEMA federations, the one they are discussing on the Pendant RMA forum. He was here visiting a couple of years ago and will probably be coming to visit again soon.
As for youtube videos, it's a good idea to collect the best ones somewhere on your site, maybe in the private area so nobody knows you are using their stuff, and organize them by topic etc. But there are many good ones out there, as well as a few pretty crappy ones. Most people are more careful than they used to be about posting half-assed stuff though, especially intepretations.
Here are a few Youtube users who usually post good HEMA videos showing specific techniques accurately:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealGladiatoreshttp://www.youtube.com/user/MEMAGhttp://www.youtube.com/user/DarkFuryhttp://www.youtube.com/user/vaingloriaHope that helps.
DB