Longhurst, Wrestling (1938)

(p.2) From the earliest periods of history wrestling has been a popular recreation, a sport in which the English had the reputation of being particularly skilful. Whoever has read The Canterbury Tales will not forget the two references to wrestling: Gamelyn in the Cook’s Tale (a pre-Chaucerian poem often printed in Chaucer’s works), and the redoubtable Miller, who “at wrestling would bear away the ram”. To Agincourt Cornwall sent five hundred fighting men, who marched under a banner bearing the figures of two wrestlers in holds. When Henry VIlI journeyed to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, he sent to Cornwall for “six or eight tried wrestlers” to match against the best France could produce. And the Cornishmen won. We shall see why. In the early eighteenth century Sir Thomas Parkyns of Bunny, Notts, himself a mighty wrestler, wrote the first English textbook on the subject. Richard Trevithick, inventor of the high-pressure engine, was a remarkable exponent of the art. Until well into the middle of the nineteenth century wrestling maintained its popularity, especially in the western and north-western counties, each of these localities having its distinctive style.

Then came a decline; and the renson is not far to seek. For the utmost expertness in the sport early training-rightly-was considered essential. Hence the superiority of the wrestlers of Cornwall and of Cumberland and Westmorland; for in these (p.3) parts it was, until relatively recently, the common thing for schoolboys to gather on the village green, pitch in their hats (the form of challenge), throw off their jackets, and set to.

Says Carew, who wrote his Survey of Cornwall in 1602, “You shall hardly find an assembly of boys in Devon and Cornwall, where the most untowardly amonget them, will not as readily give you a muster (trial) of this exercise as you are prone to require it.” Much the same obtained in the northern counties.

The point I am anxious to drive home is that wrestling is as much a boy’s exercise as it is a man’s. It is as perfectly suitable to his physical powers as it is in fulfilment of his preference for “doing some-thing”, something more interesting than callisthenics or ” jerks “.

There are good people who (for want of knowing better) regard the sport as a dangerous one. Well, its exponents will collect a few bruises maybe, but nothing much worse. It is a developmental exercise; one that exercises every bit of the body equally, if strenuously, There can be no one-sided or unequal development with those who practise wrestling frequently, which is not to be said of all athletic games and sports. It imposes no prolonged severe strains upon either the muscles or the skeleton, the heart or the lungs. True, there are moments in a wrestling bout when every ounce of power and atom of energy may be called into action, but such moments are of brief duration.

…

originated in the English counties of Devon and Cornwall, and in England it is called by the names of those counties. As between the styles practiced in these counties, however, there are differences in detail.

The essential feature of the costume is a canvas jacket loosely laced with cords in front, or with a harness made to bring a strap across the shoulder and down to the elbow. The men take hold, each with his right hand upon the collar, at the left shoulder of his opponent, and with his left hand upon the other’s right elbow: Three points down, that is two shoulders and one hip, or two hips and one shoulder, constitute a fall.

Longhurst, Percy (1938). Wrestling. pp. 1-3.