CHAPTER VI.
THE CUDGEL.
One remembers reading somewhere, I think in Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” of a certain “grievous crab-tree cudgel,” and the impression left by this description is that the weapon, gnarled and knotty, was capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Any thick stick under two feet long, such as a watchman’s staff or a policeman’s truncheon, may be fairly called a cudgel, and it is not so long ago that cudgel-play formed one of the chief attractions at country fairs in many parts of England.
A stage was erected, and the young fellows of the neighbourhood were wont to try conclusions with their friends or those celebrities from more distant parts of the country who were anxious to lower their colours.
The game was at times pretty rough, and the object of each combatant was to break the skin on the scalp or forehead of his antagonist, so as to cause blood to flow. As soon as the little red stream was seen to trickle down the face of one or other the battle was at an end, and the man who was successful in drawing first blood was declared the victor. Similarly, German students, squabbling over love affairs or other trivial matters, fight with a long sort of foil, which has a very short lancet blade at the extreme point. Their object, like our old cudgel-players, is to draw first blood, only our Teutonic cousins, in drawing the blood, often lop off their friends’ noses or slit open their cheeks from ear to mouth.
There is a great similarity in these two games, because in each the head, and the head alone, is the object aimed at. In the one case the defeated party went away with a pretty severe bump on his head, and in the other he hies him to a surgeon to have his nose fixed on, or his cheek stitched up with silver wire.
I have never been fortunate enough to witness a bout with the cudgels, but those who have been more lucky say that the combatants stood very close to each other, making all the hits nearly straight on to the top of their adversaries’ heads, and guarding the returns and attacks with their cudgels and with their left arms.
Considering the cudgel as a modern weapon, I am inclined to advocate its use for prodding an enemy in the pit of the stomach, for, with the extra eighteen inches or so of reach which your cudgel gives you, it is likely that you may get your thrust well home, at any rate before the opponent can hit you with his fist. Many of us know what a blow on the “mark” with the naked fist will do. Well, the area of the knuckles is very much greater than the area of the end of even a very stout stick, so that, if you can put anything like the same force into the thrust that you can into the blow, you will bring a smaller area to bear on a vital point, and consequently work on that point with greater effect.