33. Living Quintain—XIV. Century.
This representation is justified by the concurrent testimony of an ancient author, cited by Ducange, who introduces one knight saying to another, "I do not by any means esteem you sufficiently valiant (si bons chevalier) for me to take a lance and just with you; therefore I desire you to retire some distance from me, and then run at me with all your force, and I will be your quintain." [469] The satirist Hall, who wrote in the time of Elizabeth, evidently alludes to a custom of this kind, in a satire [470] first printed in 1599, when he was twenty-five years of age. He says:
Pawne thou no glove for challenge of the deed,
Nor make thy quintaine other's armed head.
XI.—EXERCISES PROBABLY DERIVED FROM THE QUINTAIN.
The living quintain, according to the representation just given, is seated upon a stool with three legs without any support behind; and the business, I presume, of the tilter, was to overthrow him; while, on his part, he was to turn the stroke of the pole or lance on one side with his shield, and by doing so with adroitness occasion the fall of his adversary.
Something of a similar kind of exercise, though practised in a different way, appears in the following engraving, where a man seated, holds up one of his feet, opposed to the foot of another man, who standing upon one leg endeavours to thrust him backwards.