Warner, Wraxling (1799)
John Prowse, who had now taken me under his protection, was a good specimen of the North Devon peasant; lively and intelligent, stout and muscular, nearly six feet high, and with shoulders that would not have disgraced Hercules. Besides this, he was upright as a dart, a grace he had acquired by having been some time in Colonel Orchard’s volunteer fencibles. As men are usually most attached to that art, pursuit, or employment in which they most excel, so John’s ruling passion pointed towards wrestling, or as he called it, in the dialect of the country, wraxling; which he confessed to me he loved better than victuals or drink. Living near the confines of Cornwall, he burned with all the emulation of a borderer, and observed triumphantly, that the Devonians were at last confessed to be better men than their neighbours; for in a great wrestling-match, held at a Cornish town in the vicinity, a short time since, every Devonshire lad had thrown his Cornish antagonist, without receiving a single fall himself. He asserted it was the prettiest play he had ever seen; and on my asking him whether any accidents had occurred in the course of these amusements, he answered, nothing to speak of, only three ribs broken, and a shoulder dislocated! He would fain have tried a fall with me, whose skill, as an east-country-man, he wished much to experience; and I could perceive he did not hear me declare myself totally ignorant of the wrestling art, without some emotion of contempt.