[Jeffrey Hull]

I should like to mostly replicate my post as found at another forum (HEMA Alliance), where I and others critiqued JC's rather faulty and quite-literally illiterate article. Said post is relevant to the discussion here

...The whole thing of a balanced stance (Waage, wage, wag, et.al.) is the principle of the thing. A principle which again, I remind us comes from Ringen, and for that matter was likely reinforced by Reiten.

(Of course that requires a larger acknowledgement of the spectrum of Ritterlich Kunst, with a true understanding of what founded its kinetics, rather than insisting upon the centrality of somebody's fave weapon to all the martial arts. But I digress...)

Waage is about footwork which maintains your balance while you strike and intercept and bind and wind, your feet/legs acting like scales to keep you upright.

Whether the exact foot/leg-kinetics of it are linear, or like shiko-dachi, or a duckwalk (credit to C.Bradak for that one), or even at times splayed out like a ballerina - that is up to you the given fencer with consideration for what does and feels right in most fencing engagements.

It is not an absolutist thing - although certain absolutists keep saying it is, even as they constantly change their defintion of the "correct" way of doing it.

The correct way of doing it is the way that maintatins you yet best advances to strike your foe. It is that simple. Why would it not be?

[Roger Norling]

I completely agree with the above.

What originally got me thinking about the possible ambiguity of the name Waage is just that it seems to be a good position for dodging back and forth with sometimes very little or no movement of feet, opening up for nachreissen. Quite a few images of Meyer in particular appear to show something along those lines. Thus the "flow".

Another thing that just hit me is the Swedish word "vagga" which means both "cradle", "rock" and "wag" (like a duck), which is the motion I had in mind. I'm not sure what the medieval German word for it was, but in modern German it is "Wiege" which might stem from "Waage".

And here are a few examples of medieval and renaissance cradles: http://www.larsdatter.com/cradles.htm

[Greg Coffman]

[William Carew]

Hi all,

I find the possible links with the concept of waves and cradles particularly apt, since the key aspect of movement with balance and weight shifting is apparent. Certainly, in many of the German sources, waage appears in the context of balanced movement, not just static stance, and certainly not just in relation to the direction the feet are pointing. So this is great stuff. Although I had not known about the possible 'wave' and 'cradle' links before, these kinds of ideas open up all kinds of possibilities for examining and refining our biomechanics.

[Tom Leoni]

[Bill Grandy]

[Bill Grandy]

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

[Andrew Shultz]

[Jessica Finley]

Another thought on the *use* of Waage, if we ponder for a while how scales, waves, and cradles all work...

Right now I am just thinking of wrestling (as Waage is clearer to me in those terms), but if, for instance, a man were to gain a grip on me and pull me forwards, there are a few things I can choose to do. If I add an equal amount of weight rearwards, we will remain exactly where we are - balanced like a scale. If I add an equal amount rearwards and wait for him to release his pressure as he's given up on that technique (like a wave which has crested), I can then add even more weight to my side, and pull him off balance to me (like pushing a cradle, you add the push right *after* it's maximum height to add more energy to the fall).

There are, if you're willing to geek out and think in these ways, tiny little hints about how to move a person from these ideas. Of course, these are all things we *know* intuitively. We all know from years of swinging on swings, and pushing people on swings, that *when* you add energy to the pendulum changes if it ends up a bigger arc, smaller arc, or if you stop it entirely.

These are the kinds of things that run through my mind ...

Jess

[Greg Coffman]

[Bill Grandy]

[Greg Coffman]

[Bill Grandy]

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

[Craig Johnson]

Thought the following might help make a few points clear for any brave souls still following this thread that may not be up on the style of weight measuring used in period. I assembled the below in a side discussion with someone who was trying to understand some of the aspects we where discussing and they had a vision of a seesaw in their mind as far as a scale was concerned.

Just to be clear the scale we have been referring to can also be called a balance as a noun.

Here is a portion of the discussion with images to help.

Best
Craig

*************************

Ahh, ok I see why my earlier comments did not make sense.

Lets start with the actual devise one would be referencing in discussions of this in period. It would most probably not be a fulcrum scale i.e. seesaw like devise but a hanging balance (scale is what we call it today). Exactly the devise we reference as the “scales of justice” today.

These where very ancient tools. Arguably one of the oldest. It will almost certainly be easiest to send you some links to illustrate and I will add a comment or two to add if need be.

St. Eligius

Here is one of the most recognizable images that depict a balance in the period. The small devise in his hand is what I am describing. Though as I will illustrate these would have been one of the most common tools of the merchant and craftsman and something everyone would have knowledge of. St Eligius in His Workshop, 1449,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


Ancient Balance

Egyptian balance beam, c 5000 BC. As I said, very old tool. The understanding of the feel and action of weight in motion in such a devise would in many professions been a sixth sense in period. Something we have probably lost to our disadvantage today.


Celtic Balance

8th C. Celtic bronze balance beam (i.e. Scale) and lead weight, Isle of Man.


Roman Balance

Roman Balance and weights 350 AD


Medieval Balance

Augsburg 1489
Here is the classic version depicted quite clearly from the period of the manuals. When one hangs a weight in the cups it has a very fluid motion but one that does not go one for ever. In the context of having one that you hold in your hand gives you an excellent feel of what I was trying to describe earlier via and ebb and flow action.


Da Vinci

Two balances designed by Da Vinci, 1452-1519. Here we see even at the point of the late 15th C. the best minds of the day where exploring and thinking about these details. It is important to remember how the Medieval mind viewed the world. It was not with out curiosity, which some today miss, and a very hands on and experiential understanding.


Merchant

Weighting olives Strasbourg 1497. All levels of society would have known understood and used these devises on a very intimate basis.




A Waagmeister from before 1414, Nuremberg. Hausbuch illustration from the period of the earliest manuals. Here we see an example of a larger version and one would expect the use of such an item to have practical influence on the way shifting of weight would be perceived as compared to just trying to balance on a point, i.e . seesaw style.

Thus you can see clearly that the style of balance would be informative in the discussion of how these aspects where viewed in the period and would inform any discussion of the way body movement, balance and weight shifting would be understood. These ideas would for most students of say, Martial practice, have been a visceral intuitive knowledge that could be communicated with a word in the day but if we try to encompass them in a word today it is ever so difficult due to the fact we have not used and seen balances used on a daily basis our entire lives.

********


tried to have the images show in the post but the sites must have outside link blockers and such but I think all the click ons will get you to the images and hope again that this is useful to some.

[Andrew Maxwell]

[M. Hayes]

Hello,
i looked leger up at http://www.etymonline.com, and it tells me that it is the Old English form of Modern English lair. It also tells me that it comes from the Proto-European root leg-, meaning "to lie". so perhaps leger could mean in this context "a place to lie". food for thought maybe?

An addendum in relation to the German word hut, please observe the first definition on this page-http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hood; namely its meaning as "cover' and relation to the German hut(hat) and the Old Frisian hode(guard,protection). Also, is not the word "cover" used in English sword arts and if so could one more knowledgeable than myself explain how?

[Craig Johnson]

[David E. Farrell]

Like all the articles/releases by John Clements that I have read, this one would be much better if it weren't for the elitist/omnipotent tone of the author. I'm willing to forgive some writing/editing gaffes - I'm an engineer, after all :P

I guess I just don't see the big deal (as was foretold by the initial advertisement, of course). Maybe I run in the 'wrong' circles, but I haven't seen a 90 degree foot position advocated in any of the groups or styles I have trained with, and this seems to be the main point of the article: that the 90 degree foot position is really only seen in much later works (just as I have not seen a both feet parallel direction). The rest seems to be mostly on the level of what I have seen and been taught by a number of instructors, though with some minor differences. For example, what he terms the 'open position' (front foot pointed forward, rear foot pointed ~135 deg back), my group tends to not use in our Fiore interpretation. This is mostly because the positions which illustrate it can equally be after volta stabile from the 'closed position' to what the article calls the 'reverse position', making the system much more simple and coherent (i.e. we don't end up with foot arangement that is only used a few places). But the 'open position' does show up in the rapier and sidesword material - one of the places that the article claims it is specifically not seen in modern interpretations.

That said, what I'd like to have seen is an analysis of how the representation of feet in paintings from not just before and during, but also much after the late medieval/early renaissance period to see when and how exactly one can begin to unambiguously determine foot angles. Given what is known about perspective in realist paintings and photography, I'd bet that one basically still couldn't tell unless you had numerous angles of the exact same position. And sadly, I don't think there are any sculpture versions of the fighting MSs to give a 3D view.