On Friday, I'd gone over to see the stage combat review that the Professor had put together with his high school kids. They did a great job, though I think they were more than a little nervous. I was trying really hard not to be envious- I think they're doing much better than I am. But then I remembered they've had three times the practices and don't actually get to hit people, and I feel a little better.
After the play, we talked a bit about the performance, and somehow got on to vocabulary for the different plays. As we were talking, it came out that though we study Lichtenauer, the Professor's been teaching us the terms he thinks we'll remember best for each maneuver. Some of them are strictly the German translations like I used to make up my stories. Sometimes though, he tells us the German word, but adds on the Italian translations- like for "nebenhut," for example. In German, it's the 'near guard,' which makes sense, but isn't terribly descriptive. So he tells us it's also tail, if you go by the Italian term posta di coda, which is the same move, just a few countries north. So we all learned 'tail,' and that's what we call the position where you've got your sword trailing behind, looking for all the world like a tail. Well, like a tail that could whip around and slice off the protruding bits of someone's anatomy, but still.
From there, we move on to other Italian translations of the proper German positions. (totally teasing, by the way- that's just for the "dirty Fiorists," as the Professor calls them ;-) ). The German ox position, ochs, can be transposed with the Italian posta di finerstra, which translates to the window guard. I should've been able to guess that one, because my favorite word, which I teach all my kids at school, is defenestrate- to throw someone out a window. Fenestre-window... I should've made the leap. Anyway, that's one where I think the ochs makes more sense- ox horns I can see in a position where you hold the sword up by your ear. I'm not quite sure why I'd be guarding windows. Or is it the position you'd have to hold your sword in to stab it out some tiny castle window in order to actually hit someone? No idea. Then we went on to how the German alber, fool, is the same as the Italian dente al cinghiara, or boar's tooth. Fool was always a bit confusing to me, but that boar's tooth thing makes sense- boars have tusks facing out and their heads are down, and when they attack, they pretty much just thrust their faces forward and up to do their slicing and dicing- makes perfect sense then for a position in which your sword tip is aimed at the ground.
As we're talking, and practicing the positions without any swords or yardsticks or anything, the Professor reminded me that those guards aren't supposed to be static positions anyway, that every one is the starting point for an attack, or the ending point for one. You may start in vom tag, but a zorn later you should end in some kind of pflug. Start off in alber, unterhau, and maybe end in ochs. And then my internal translator kicks in and starts interpreting the plays... so now all I can think of is this: if the Italian version of alber is a pig's tooth, and the Italian ochs is a window, then really, all you're doing is tossing a pig out the window. So now it finally sinks in- each strike should end in a guard. And all I had to do to remember it was to wait... until pigs fly.
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