Getty 44v
The Long Tail's last two plays — the sword-taking and the throw — each with its counter, closing on [Mounted 22], the pommel strike that counters the whole guard and everything built on it. This is also the section's worst-tangled folio for numbering: the two prose copies swap the fifth and sixth ordinals and the Getty misnames a counter.
This is the sixth [play], which means to take the companion's sword: with the handle (mantenir) of his own sword he will lift the other handle upward — from his hand his sword will certainly fall.
- This is the how that [Mounted 18] withheld: the mounted taking of the sword.
- Bring the handle of your own sword (mantenir) against his handle.
- Lift his handle upward. That is the entire mechanic — a lever applied to the grip, not to the blade.
- His sword falls from his hand, "certainly".
The mounted disarm is the longsword's taking-family reduced to one action (Technical grouping §4). Note what it does not require: no lock, no second grip, no dismount — one hilt against another, at speed.
The Pisani Dossi's couplet here does not speak for this disarmer at all, but for the man countering him — see the comparison.
the Getty calls this play the sixth and [20] the fifth, and its folios run in the same inverted order (44v-b before 44v-a); the Morgan numbers them fifth and sixth. The Pisani Dossi couplet here speaks not for the disarmer but for his counter — the man who turns his sword so that it cannot be taken.
This is the fifth play, which makes the cover with the beat of the sword: I throw my arm about his neck in the turning, at once; with his sword and all I will throw him to the ground, without a doubt. And my counter, behind, is the second play [see Note] — though [the man] being armored, there is no place for doing it.
- Make the cover with the beat of the sword — the same beat as all of 44r.
- In the turning — as the horses pass and he is carried past you — throw your arm about his neck, at once. The tempo is the passage itself; there is no second chance at it.
- Throw him to the ground, sword and all (cum tutta la spada): you do not disarm him first, you take man and weapon together.
- The counter is named: the play behind — the strike to the leg at [Mounted 21]. (The Getty calls it "the second play"; this is a slip — see the comparison.)
- The disqualification: "though [the man] being armored, there is no place for doing it." Against a man in harness the counter does not apply — the leg-strike it depends on will not bite.
This is the fourth of the four plays promised at [Mounted 12] — "throw [you] from horseback" — and the first mounted grappling action in the section. From here the sword steadily gives way to the arms.
the Getty names this play's counter "the second play"; the Morgan reads "the seventh", which must be right — play [21] announces itself as the seventh play and the counter of the fifth. The Getty's "second" is best taken as a scribal slip. (On the fifth/sixth ordinal swap, see [19].)
This is the seventh play, which is the counter of the fifth: the strike that he makes to his leg — that is the very one. If the companion were armored, do not trust in it.
- He has his arm around your neck and is taking you off the horse ([Mounted 20]).
- Strike him in the leg. The Getty is emphatic that the picture is the instruction: "the strike that he makes to his leg — that is the very one."
- The verse admits how desperate this is: "If I must go to the ground entirely, I can make no other defense than this strike" — the counter is made by a man who is already falling.
- The proviso, stated twice on this folio: "If the companion were armored, do not trust in it." The leg is only a target while it is bare.
Both [20] and [21] carry the same armored disclaimer from opposite sides — the throw's counter fails against harness, and the throw therefore stands. The section keeps score of what armor cancels.
This is the eighth play, which is the counter of all the plays that stand before me, and most of all of the plays of the sword on horseback and of their Masters who stand in the guard of the Long Tail (coda longa). For when the Masters or scholars stand in the said guard, and I throw a thrust or another blow at them, at once they beat me aside — whether I make cut or thrust. When they beat me aside, at once I give a turn to my sword (do volta ala mia spada), and with my pommel I strike him in the face. And then I pass with my swift cover, and with a round backhand (riverso tondo) I strike him behind the head.
- Read the claim first: this play is the counter of all the plays before it, and most of all of the mounted sword plays and their Masters in the Long Tail ([Mounted 12]–[Mounted 21]). It is aimed at a guard, not at a technique.
- You are the attacker. They are standing in the Long Tail, waiting to receive.
- Throw a thrust or another blow at them — cut or thrust, it does not matter which. The attack is bait: its purpose is to draw the beat.
- They beat you aside — as the guard is built to do, and as [Mounted 12] instructed them to.
- That beat is the tempo. At once, give a turn to your sword (do volta ala mia spada) — rotate it about the hands so the pommel comes forward.
- Strike him in the face with the pommel.
- Then pass with your swift cover, and
- strike him behind the head with a round backhand (riverso tondo) — the finish, delivered to the back of a head that has just been driven away from you.
This is why the guard's own scholars need [Mounted 23]: the Long Tail's strength — that it beats everything aside — is precisely what this play feeds on. The verse names all three things it defends at once: not to be struck, not to have the sword taken ([Mounted 19]), not to be thrown from the horse ([Mounted 20]). One action answers the whole folio.
Glossological analysis
- mantenir ([19]) — the handle/grip of the sword, the part between cross and pommel. The mounted taking is done handle-against-handle, and the counter at [Mounted 23] is made with the same part — mantenir is the operative noun of both plays.
- do volta ala mia spada ([22]) — "I give a turn to my sword": the rotation that brings the pommel to the front. Volta is Fiore's general word for a turn, of body or weapon (Glossary, "turns"); here it names the mechanic on which the section's master-counter depends. The Pisani Dossi uses the same noun at [19] for the counter-turn that saves a sword from being taken.
- pomo ([22]) — the pommel, used as a striking head. The Paris calls it capulo (hilt) — see the comparison.
- riverso tondo ([22]) — a round backhand: a horizontal-ish cut from the left, thrown around rather than down. Distinguish from a man riversa at [Mounted 13], which names a side, not a blow.
- coverta presta ([22]) — a swift cover. Presto = quick; the cover is not a pause but the connective between the pommel-strike and the finishing blow.
- non a logo ([20]) — "there is no place" for doing it, i.e. the action does not apply. Idiomatic: the counter is not merely hard against armor, it is off the table.
- non te infidar in esso ([21]) — "do not trust in it". The book's standing formula for a technique with a condition attached, as at [Grappling 15]'s gambarola.
- desso ([21]) — "that very one", pointing at the picture. The Getty here teaches by deixis: the plate is the instruction and the text only points at it.
Manuscript comparison
- The two prose copies swap the fifth and sixth plays. The Getty calls [19] (the sword-taking) "lo Sexto" and [20] (the arm about the neck) "lo quinto zogho"; the Morgan calls [19] "lo quinto" and [20] "lo sexto zogo". Same two plays, opposite ordinals, and each copy is internally consistent with itself. Our concordance numbering follows the Morgan's sequence, so in the Getty the two plates also run in the reverse order (44v-b before 44v-a). (Flagged in Mounted Fencing translation; cf. Manuscript comparison §4D.)
- A scribal slip in the Getty at [20], and the Morgan corrects it. The Getty names this play's counter "lo segondo zogho" — the second play, which is the cut to the head and no counter to anything. The Morgan reads "lo septimo zogo" — the seventh — and the seventh is exactly what [Mounted 21] announces itself to be ("the seventh play, which is the counter of the fifth"). The Morgan must be right; the Getty's "second" is a slip.
- The Morgan then quietly drops the cross-reference that its own renumbering would have broken. Getty [21]: "the seventh play, which is the counter of the fifth". Morgan [21]: "the seventh play, which is the counter: the strike he makes to the leg…" — no ordinal. Since the Morgan has renumbered [20] as the sixth, "counter of the fifth" would have been wrong in its own text, and the phrase is absent. Whether by care or by accident, the Morgan is the copy without a contradiction.
- The Pisani Dossi's couplet at [19] speaks for the wrong man — or rather, the other one. Its verse is not the disarmer's but the counter's: "So that my sword is not taken from me, I have made this turn (volta) against you… by the counter I do to you." The prose plate teaches the taking; the verse aligned to it teaches the escape from the taking. (Flagged in the translation.) The verse family repeatedly narrates these plates from the defending saddle — cf. [Mounted 10].
- The Getty's prose here is rhymed. From [20] onward the "prose" stops being prose: "Io gli butto lo brazzo al collo allo voltar subito / cum tutta la spada in terra lu buttiro senza dubito", and "si'e lo segondo zogho / … di farlo, non a logo". The Morgan carries the same rhymes (subito/dubito, zogo/logo), so they are inherited, not one scribe's flourish. This is Manuscript comparison §6's thesis visible on the page: the verse kernel showing through the prose, in the plays where the prose is longest.
- The Paris calls the pommel a hilt. At [22] the Latin has "I strike your face with the hilt (capulo)" where all three Italian witnesses say pommel (pomo). It also compresses the play to its defensive purpose and drops the entire finish — no turn of the sword, no pass, no round backhand. The play that the Getty calls the counter of everything is, in Latin, three lines about not being disarmed.
- Illustrations. [19] pairs the Pisani Dossi (32b-b) with the Getty (44v-b); [20] and [21] are the Getty's (44v-a, 44v-c); [22] pairs the Paris (04v-b) — one of only two Paris figures in the section — with the Getty (44v-d).
- Coverage. All four witnesses carry [20] and [22]; [19] and [21] are in Getty, Morgan, and Pisani Dossi, but not the Paris.