Folio 6 / 8
Morgan 11r (no Getty text)
Where the Getty falls silent: the edge under the hand
The Getty has no text from [21] to [25]; the base for these five plates is the Morgan. This one answers the very play the Getty's scholars have spent two folios making — the point to the face — and answers it at the hand.
[21] Edge under the hand; pommel to the face
Paris · 16v-b
Illustration: Paris 16v-b · Text: Morgan 11r-d · Pisani Dossi 26a-d · Paris 16v-b
Morgan · translation
My Master has shown me that when I am armored, and someone tries in such a way to put the point in my face, I must set the edge of my sword under his left hand, and must pass with my right foot behind his left; and in this way I will be able to strike him with the pommel, or with the crossguard, in the face — as this scholar behind me can do. If I make the pass, such a play cannot fail me.
Flow of actions
- You are armored, and someone is trying to put his point in your face — [SwordArmor 9] and [SwordArmor 20], done to you.
- Set the edge of your sword under his left hand. (Which hand of yours, and what his left hand is doing there, the Morgan does not say.)
- Pass with your right foot behind his left.
- From there strike him in the face with the pommel or with the crossguard — as the scholar standing behind can do ([SwordArmor 22]–[SwordArmor 23]).
- The guarantee is attached to the footwork, not to the hand: "if I make the pass, such a play cannot fail me."
- The scholar cites his authority rather than assuming it: "My Master has shown me…"
Glossological analysis
- taio / taglio ([21]) — the edge; used here not to cut but as a bar set under a hand. The armored section repeatedly employs the sword's parts as levers rather than as blades.
- guastar (PD, [21]) — ruined: "I have ruined your hand". The verse family's key verb through this run ([SwordArmor 22], [SwordArmor 23]) — and the same verb the Getty uses at [SwordArmor 15] for what the sword cannot do to an armored man. What cannot be ruined through the harness can be ruined at the hand.
- palmam (Paris, [21]) — the palm: the Latin is anatomically specific where both Italian witnesses say only "the hand".
- capulo (Paris, [21]) — the hilt: the Latin collapses the Morgan's pommel-or-crossguard choice into a single word.
- pomo / elzo ([21]) — pommel / crossguard, offered as alternatives, exactly as the Getty offers them at [SwordArmor 16].
- passar dredo ([21]) — passing behind his foot: the structural move of the whole close run ([SwordArmor 14], [SwordArmor 15], [SwordArmor 18], [SwordArmor 26]).
Manuscript comparison
- The Getty stops; the Morgan carries on. From [21] through [25] the Getty has no text at all, and the base here is the Morgan (11r-d). This is the exact mirror of 33v, where the Getty stood alone: the two prose copies each hold material the other lacks, and this section is where that is most visible.
- Prose gives the lever, verse gives the injury. The Morgan explains the play as a structure: edge under the hand, pass behind the foot, then pommel or crossguard, the whole thing conditional on the pass. The Pisani Dossi and the Paris report only what happened to the hand — "I have ruined your hand", "with how great a wound I have crushed your palm" — and leave the pommel strike as a possibility not yet taken ("I could strike you"). The verse family reads the plate as an injury; the prose family reads it as a mechanism.
- The Latin is at once the most and the least precise. The Paris names the palm where the Italian says only "the hand", then flattens the Morgan's pommel-or-crossguard alternative into one capulo. It gains anatomy and loses the technical choice — the trade the Latin makes throughout.
- Illustration. The figure shown is the Paris's (16v-b) — one of only two Paris illustrations in this section (the other is at [SwordArmor 6]). Neither prose copy's figure is used: the reader sees the Latin verse witness's rendering of a play whose text is the Morgan's.