Examining "Flail Two"

Making sense of what Mair is saying in his Opus can be very frustrating. Here is an example of a recent attempt at interpreting the Flail.

Flail Two
One Upper Strike Against Abnemen (Taking-Off)

Note, when you travel together then position yourself thus in this technique: Stand with your Left foot forward, and hold your Flail with your Right hand above on your Staff, your Left by your lower point, simultaneously strike him with your Flegel to his head.

Ok. That wasn't too hard. But now let's take a look at the second paragraph...

If he strikes at you thus, and you also stand (in the same position) ... then step inside with your Right leg, and take him aside with your Staff onto your Right side, in this, pass forward with your Left leg, and strike him with your Flegel to the Right side of his body.

First Challenge:

The fighter on the Right is being attacked. He stands in a Hoch with the Flail over his Right shoulder. How does he deflect the Oberhaw to his Right side? Our first idea was to wave the Staff above one's head in a motion that would intercept the Oberhaw and take it to the Right. Here's how it would look against an opponent...

It fulfills the requirements of Mair's text, but it sure doesn't feel very safe. The Flegel can hit your own head as it swings over, and the motion leaves a large opportunity for your opponent to strike since you must pass his weapon on the Left before deflecting it to the Right.

Second Idea... As the fighter on the Left strikes an Oberhaw, the fighter on the
Right slides his Left hand away from the Back Point, up the Staff, and parries the attack to the Right with the 'Hinder Ort'. Here's how it would look against an opponent...

This actually works pretty well. But there are some problems. Nothing in Mair's eight pages of Flail combat mentions holding the weapon with both hands in the middle of the Staff. Although 'Flail One' includes directions to strike an opponent with the Back Point, none of the material mentions deflecting a strike with the Back Point. Also, the current stance of the fighter on the Right makes it hard to perform the next move in Mair's set of directions. More on that later... Although there were a few reasons for rejecting this exchange, it should be noted that the Right fighter ends in a stance very similar to Mair's confusing 'Double Mittelhaw'. But since Mair never mentions anything about the Double - Mittelhaw in his directions, we can be sure that this is not the correct interpretation.

Third Idea...

After some thinking and research we realized that changing into a
'Hanging Guard' with the Flail staff might be the best way to deflect an attacker's Oberhaw to the Right side.

Pictured, is a Hanging Guard in Mair's fourth plate on the common 'Bauren Stangen' or Peasant's Staff. The text says to "... take his strike aside with your Staff onto your Right side..." which sounds very similar to the Flail directions. So we decided to give it a try. But the Flails kept getting wrapped together. With just a little more tweaking we found that it was easier to move into a more forward, overhead guard (like Ochs) before dumping the opponent's Flail to the Right side and changing back over to strike.

Success! Let's try that a few more times for good measure.

Review in Slow-Motion...

Left Fighter strikes an Oberhaw. Right Fighter intercepts with an Ochs / Hanging guard, dumps the attack to the Right, swings around and strikes the opponent's Right side.

Third Paragraph

If he strikes at you thus, then step with your Left leg to the back, and take him aside with your Flail-Head onto your Right side, simultaneously step quickly in a triangle, and strike him with your Flail-Head to his Right side, step from him to withdraw.

Not too bad for a first try at understanding Mair's directions. But there is one challenge with the Third Paragraph that we could not find a solution to.

The text says:

"...take him aside with your
Flail-Head onto your Right
side..."

In other words; instead of using the Staff to deflect the attack like usual, Mair says to use the hinged Flail-Head instead. Deflecting a committed attack with just the Flail-Head seems like an unreliable tactic at best. Despite its weight and mass, it is doubtful that a rotating Flail-Head could successfully displace an opponent's entire weapon consistently. Without a real Threshing Flail available, nor any idea how to successfully deflect an attack with the Flegel; we decided to ignore Mair's directions and use the Staff instead.

It was only later, after practice, that we realized Mair may have possibly meant for the fighter to steady the Flail-Head with his hand, like in this illustration. This new idea will be examined as soon as the weather permits. While certainly an incomplete interpretation of 'Flail Two', we are happy with the progress so far. Stay tuned for more...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Medieval
• Flail
• Weapon
• Paulus
• Hector
• Mair
• Peasant
• Longsword
• Pollaxe
• Staff
• Threshing
• Western
• Martial
• Arts

[bp968]

Very interesting video. Its too bad there is so little original information on the use of the weapon.

[Djemps]

@bp968 Yes. I wish there was more information on the Flail as well. I'm happy to hear to watched the whole video. I think I made it too long. :-)

[hitokijb]

Hi... im fan of blunt/hammer weapon type...

seems that you have study the flail fr a while, could you give me some answers?

is the 2-handed staff flail the only available material to study?

the weapons show a 2 ring most betwen head and staff, but in some museum pictures, there are chains with maybe 10cm, this changes the swinging way and attacking positions? And a longer chain is not better to use in swinged attacks?

how much can be the weight of the flail head?

[Djemps]

The style of two handed Flails with very long chains were meant for warfare. I don't know of any information on HOW these were used on the battlefield other than the fact they were very effective. Just read about the Hussite wars.

[Djemps]

Thanks! I'm happy to know you watched the whole video.  Thanks for the explanation about the similarities between Ablauffen and Abnemen. I will keep this in mind as I go back to the texts.

[CollegiumInArmis]

Meant to add, executing the abnahmen as ablauffen is essentially what you did in the end to solve challenge one, and it seemed to work great!

[CollegiumInArmis]

Good work and nice demo of the interpretive process. Actually, I believe the earlier abnahmen in Doby, Ringeck, PvD etc is analagous to Meyer's ablauffen: try inserting ablauffen (i.e. meet the attack in a bind with soft resistance, raise the hilt up and allow the force of his attack to run off toward the ground, then strike around) whenever you see abnahmen. Works a treat.

[Djemps]

My opinion is that there were three basic styles of the Flail. The original Grain Flail was two pieces of wood, connected by a leather strap. Only Talhoffer's book shows this style and he is the oldest source. All of the rest of the sources show a Flail with a very large, almost bulbous head, with a short band of leather or chain. Suttor shows a city watchman using this type of Flail. I think this style was meant for self defense and personal combat and this is why it is included in manuals.

[Djemps]

Hi! Lots of great questions. I will try to answer them quickly. Paulus Hector Mair's work that you see in my videos is the largest source on the Flail that I know about: 8 pages of techniques. A little known book by Jacob Sutor shows the Flail twice. Joachim Meyer has a picture of two 'little people' fighting with the Flail but no text about it. I just learned that one of Talhoffer's manuals has two pages depicting the Flail. All of these sources show the two hand Flail with a short band.

[Galaktia]

Very nice.

Might I suggest looking round your local for someone who is experienced at using a Bo or a Jo , or perhaps one of the other long staffs from martial arts. As alot of your problems with hand positions, stances and the methods of movement are familiar.

Alot of new students with the Jo in my karate classes get the same tangle of how do we move it from this side to that side without hitting ourselves.

While a flail is more complex, the knowledge seems applicable.