This is a sport that seems unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon – hopefully. Cudgelling was a type of duel fought with wooden weapons and was also known as ‘single stick’, with its origin dating back to around Tudor times.
The aim of the competition was to break your opponent’s head with a single stick i.e. to cut the skin on the head, face or neck so that blood was drawn. When the crowd saw blood, they would shout ‘a head’. What a relaxing pastime this sounds, those Georgians sure knew how to have fun!
A Cudgelling Match between English and French Negroes in the Island of Dominica. courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art
Competitors needed to be both strong and agile and have great speed as it could take quite some time to hit your opponent hard enough to draw blood.
The newspapers carried…
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