HIGHLAND SWORDSMANSHIP
Techniques of the Scottish Sword Masters

Edited by Mark Rector
Contributions by Paul MacDonald, Milo Thurston & Paul Wagner

~208PP, Softcover
Includes more than 100 illustrative photographs
 

Available now
 
 

See plates from the book!

 "After you take up your sword you are to lodge it on your left arm, then retire to an Outside guard with a graceful air...with a quick motion, both foot and hand, with your left hand down on the knee, showing your point in a direct line to your adversary's right eye, covering well your outside."

The Scottish Highlander has been romanticized in poetry, song and legend; immortalized in the figures of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Rob Roy. His reputation as a fierce fighter and deadly swordsman was much more than a myth--a proud tradition of Scottish fencing masters taught the use of the backsword, smallsword, target and dirk from the 17^th through the 19^th centuries. These masters were as colorful and diverse as the Scottish people themselves, from the upper-class  “Anglicized,” Sir William Hope, to the bawdy, soldier- turned- fencing master Donald McBane, who ran a fencing salon out of his wife’s brothel.

In this omnibus edition, Mark Rector presents two classic manuals of Scottish swordsmanship from the days of Culloden.

"I am persuaded, [that my writings] will be much more valued when I am gone, and mouldering in the grave,
than they are now; however acceptable they may have been hitherto to the more curious"

--Sir William Hope

Sir William Hope had his fencing book published in 1692, at the age of 27 and it was singularly unimpressive or unique in its contents. Over the next several decades, Hope broke with what had gone before, and began to develop his own ideas of swordsmanship. During Hope's long career as author and fencing master his philosophy changed to focus upon the subject of using any form of single hand sword available to defend one's life from ruffians or trained swordsman. The result was his "New Method," a unique method of swordplay.

Donald MacBane, the self-described soldier, gambler and brother-owner who acquired his skills as a swordsman through the rough-and-tumble soldier's life of bloodthirsty combat, duels, drinking, whoring and outright robbery. His techniques were proven in the blood of his angry opponents. His own account of his life as a soldier in Marlborough’s army, preserved and included at the beginning of his manual, reads like an action-adventure ripped from the pages of Defoe. His story alone is worth the price of the book, as our readers have howled with laughter at his black exploits.

Sample Pages
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