CLIVE GAMMON
" Watch thyself," said Black Gauntlet.
Rebuked, Sir Frederick of Gaywood, champion knight of Kent, sneaked back to the Red Pavilion. He did not wish to share the fate of Sir William of Launceston, champion knight of Cornwall, who had just been dragged the length of the tilt, bundled up in a sack, at the heels of the charger of Sir John of Norwich (Champion
of England and a notable goody), Sir William's sin was kicking the legs from under Sir Leslie of Hertford during a playful interchange with mace and morningstar, which had led to an,
unknightly fracas right beneath the gaze of the Queen of Youth and Beauty seated under a canopy embroidered with purple and white lilies in the royal box. Or rather, pavilion.
The crowd loved it. "Don't take no notice! Up the reds!" yelled a youth behind me who had achieved total identification with his team. A bitter wind with rain from the west rattled the awnings. Here, on the field of Senlac where Harold died and the Saxons broke, a new battle was being fought by knights in nylon armour, who were as convincing, much of the time, as all-in wrestlers, as they clowned and punched one another, fell off their horses and drew synthetic blood with synthetic mailed fists.
But not, oddly, all the time. In the tilting, when the knights on horseback
closed at 60 mph, when the lances, albeit bamboo ones, were levelled and clashed on shields and helms, there was suddenly something very serious to be watched.
"The boys fool around, of course they do," Max Diamond said. He is the film stunt man largely responsible for the current and highly successful revival of the ancient sport of jousting which I witnessed at Battle, Sussex, on Bank Holiday weekend. "But if you gave them tilting all the time, the crowd would just get bored."
I had started with the impression of total phoniness, not difficult to avoid when one saw, previous to the tourney, in the knight's enclosure, Sir Michael of Forfar, champion of Montrose, stub out a fag, touch up his armour from a silver paint aerosol can and then go to the assistance of the Queen of Youth and Beauty, a London model, who was having some difficulty clambering aboard her white horse while clinging on to the stuffed falcon she carried. Nor did a programme which included a custard-pie contest, with pies designed by Sir Barnes Wallis, fill me with confidence. But I had changed my mind by the end of the afternoon.
The jousting teams managed by Max
Diamond are made up entirely of film stunt men. Diamond said, "It was the recession in the film industry that started us off. There weren't going to be many more epics, no more Guns of Navarone, that was clear. So a few of the boys got together and here we are." He admitted freely that much of the show was staged. But there was no way of staging the actual riding at the tilt.
"You go down the tilt for real," Diamond said, and he was on crutches to prove it, having fractured his knee four weeks since at, of all places, Belfast. This season, in addition, he has had four broken ribs, a broken nose and two lots of concussion. National Hunt racing, or playing rugby against New Zealand, are the only sports which produce a comparable scale of injury. "There's plenty of danger," he said. "Take today with the wind blowing, upsetting the horses because their caparisons flap about, and sending papers blowing across the tilt. Your horse can suddenly swerve so that your shield isn't protecting your body. Jack Cooper had a lance in his throat, it nearly killed him."
I could believe that. And also convincing was the fact that three amateurs from Nottingham had responded to the challenge to take on the pros, fox-hunting men. That they were soundly beaten is irrelevant. It showed that, in this admitted circus, there is the seed of a fascinating and a very exciting sport. Teams, moreover, are being currently formed in France, Germany and Italy. There will be an international tourney next year.
Without the custard pies, presumably.
Previous page
