The left arm, supplying the place of the targe, alluded to in Scott’s lines, is doubtless an advantage; but, in the case of the two combatants whose merits we are considering, the ordinary swordsman possesses superior reach, can lunge out further, and knows full well the value of the point.
A melée at an Irish fair is worth seeing, but it is better not to join in it, if possible.
A number of the “boys,” from Cork or an adjacent county, were once had up before Judge Keogh for beating a certain man within an inch of his life. A witness under examination—after graphically describing how one of the prisoners had beaten the poor man “wid a stone, and he lying senseless in the road;” how another had hit the “crater wid a thick wattle;” and how a third had kicked him in the back—was asked what one Michael O’Flannagan, another of the prisoners, had done. “Begorra, your honour,” said the witness, “devil a hap’orth was Micky doing at all, at all; he was just walking round searching for a vacancy.”
A similar story is told of about a dozen tinkers who had set upon one man and were unmercifully beating him. Presently there was a lull in the proceedings, and a little deformed man, brandishing a very big stick, elbowed his way through the crowd, shouting, “Och, now, boys, for the love of mercy let a poor little cripple have just one stroke at him.”
The fun of the fair—“Whirroo.”
The Walking-stick.
The choice of this useful adjunct is by no means as easy as many people suppose, for it involves not only a knowledge of the prerequisities—in the matter of various kinds of woods, etc.—but also an acquaintance with the situations a man may find himself in, and the uses to which he may have to put his walking-stick.
First, then, as to the matter of the best wood. There are, roughly speaking, two headings under which we may class our types of raw material—strong and stiff wood, such as the oak and the hazel; and strong and pliable, such as the ash-plant and various kinds of canes. What one really wants to secure is a sufficient amount of stiffness and strength to enable one to make an effective hit or longe, without any chance of snapping, and a degree of pliability and spring combined with that lightness which makes a stick handy and lively in actual encounter.