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Johannes Liechtenauer/Michael Chidester D2 2025
Download this translation as a PDF here.
Eight years ago (in 2017), Harry R. posted something remarkable: a free, complete translation of Hans Liechtenauer’s famous poem called the Zettel (or “Record”)—but one which rhymed like the original.
When a 15th century reader looked at a gloss of the Zettel, what they saw was a poem (crude in some places, elegant in others) accompanied by explanations of its meaning, all written in their own language using fairly simple, straightforward words and grammar.
Sadly, this is a reading experience that we often fail to capture in our English translations for a number of reasons (attachments to certain German words is one of them, but a reluctance to try to write poetry is definitely another). Indeed, I’ve heard more than one student of Kunst des Fechtens express surprise upon learning that the Zettel rhymed in German and was a real poem, not just some funny little sentence fragments.
Harry’s translation was groundbreaking to me, and I’ve used versions of it (with permission) in most of my Liechtenauer-centric projects since then, including my Medieval Gloss and a book I published with Dierk Hagedorn titled The Long Sword Gloss of GMN Manuscript 3227a. Harry likewise published it in 2019 in a book called Peter von Danzig.
However, as I’ve done more Liechtenauer translations of my own, my ideas of what the Zettel is and what it means have diverged more and more from Harry’s and his poem was less and less a good fit for my work (even with all the changes in wording I’d made to it by that point). When Dierk’s and my newest book, Pieces of Ringeck, was coming together in 2024, I initially approached Harry about using his work again, but in the end I used a non-rhyming translation that lined up with the rest of the text.
A month ago, I decided it was time to try to create my own rhyming translation from scratch, to better reflect my ideas of what it means and also play with the text in ways that aren’t really available when striving for a ‘literal’ translation (ignoring for a moment the fact that no translation can ever be truly literal in the way many readers imagine). This document is the result.
Liechtenauer’s poem is written in free Knittelvers, a poetic form popular in the German Middle Ages. Rather than try to replicate that, I chose a loose iambic tetrameter (a common English form) for my version. This means four vocal stresses per line with one unstressed syllable in between—i.e., da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM, where the first da can be left out and/or a final da added if need be. Among other things, this gave me extra space to unpack ideas that are a single word in German but not English.
Within this structure, I tried to stick close to the German text, preserving as much of the explicit meaning as possible while also exploring the subtext and underlying themes in ways that a literal translation doesn’t always allow. I also tried to make sure that when multiple verses were phrased similarly in the German, they were likewise phrased similarly in English so that the parallels remained obvious.
During this project, I looked at every English translation I could find which had no obvious dependence on others, mostly looking for unusual readings that could make the poem better—I’m thus deeply indebted both to Dierk for all the transcription and translation work he has done over the years and to Stephen P. Cheney, Falko Fritz, Rebecca L. R. Garber, Per Magnus Haaland, Jeffrey Hull, Jens-Peter Kleinau, David Lindholm, Thomas Stoeppler, Christian Henry Tobler, Christian Trosclair, Cory Winslow, and Grzegorz Żabiński for their translation efforts.
My initial pass was focused on the versions of the Zettel included in nine Ainring manuscripts that were the topic of Pieces of Ringeck, though I consulted other versions to look for interesting variations. After I finished with Ainring, I then attacked the variations and “extra” verses in ms. 3227a. The nature of the translation meant that minor differences in wording rarely had an impact, but all significant differences in meaning resulted in changes to the translation. In the document linked above, you’ll find both translations side-by-side for easier comparison. The couplets of the Zettel are numbered in the usual way, with 3227a’s unique verses having Roman numerals; other non-Zettel poems are lettered A–F to distinguish them. No German text is offered because the Ainring text is a combination of several. These translations will eventually make their way into my books as new editions are released, but since it was a free translation that got me started on this path, it seems fitting that I give back and put this out into the wild to hopefully start others on new paths as well.
For the Wiktenauer version, I tweaked the translation further to align with the Rome Version so there would be a single German transcription to compare it to (as well as Tobler’s great non-rhyming translation). I’ve also annotated this version with a number of footnotes containing my thoughts on the language, the structure, and the meaning.
These poems are all licensed for free use under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 License. Feel free to use them, quote them, post them, and share them around, but don’t try to make money off them without permission or fail to credit me as the author. (Limited quotations in commercial products are, of course, often protected by Fair Use.)
If you have suggestions for how these poems could be better, please let me know! And if you’d like to support me in working on projects like this, please consider supporting my patreon.
The fighting with spear and sword in armor on horseback begins now<[1]
| 1 | Direct your lance with honor plain; Against you all will ride in vain.[2] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Strike here and there as you close in;[4] Draw not your blade from scabbard then, |
| 4 | And pull them left and seize them right—[7] You need not fence to win the fight. |
| 5 |
| 6 | If sudden shift the fight then shows And swords begin to trade their blows, |
| 7 | With yours in right hand strongly held, Cut toward the pouch behind their belt.[11][12] |
| 8 | Now learn to cover, strength displayed, And then whenever blade meets blade,[13] |
| 9 | Care not, but set upon your foe: Angle in from head to toe.[14] |
| 10 | Or if you'd harry and distress, Then hunt them long and grant no rest. |
| 11 | Whoever to defense will rise, Your wind will hurt their selfsame eyes. |
| 12 | If they will yet defend at bay, Catch well the reins and don't delay. |
| 13 | Consider where they are exposed; Your knife, not pommel, finds them most.[15] |
| 14 | Two sweeps now learn so you may stand Against all arms with empty hands. |
| 15 | And when to wrestling they would hasten, Learn to hold them like a basin.[17] |
| 16 | When underneath their very nose,[18] Correctly grab as you fly close. |
| 17 | Whoever falls on you with might When riding ’gainst you: hold them tight, |
| 18 | And let yourself hang toward the earth While gripping over—show your worth. |
| 19 | On either side, both left and right, Against them learn to ride and fight. |
| 20 | If you should choose to charge and ride Your horse onto the other side, |
| 21 | First cover strongly and suppress, Then set upon and cause distress. |
| 22 | When you defend, their sword catch wide And carry near, their handle tied. |
| 23 | Or wheel about to hunt again,[19] Prepared to harry and restrain; |
| 24 | With every skill that hunters learn, Seek your advantage as you turn. |
| 25 | Should you ride forth without relent But end up left without intent, |
| 26 | Then worry not, but their sword find, And wrestle well: push hard and bind. |
| 27 | If someone hunts you on the right, Turn halfway ’round, prepare to fight. |
| 28 | With arms to catch and drive away, No harm can reach you in the fray. |
| 29 | Take sword away like it’s a knife[20] And learn the holds that cause them strife:[21] |
| 30 | Apply the hold that has no name[22] To turn the strong and bring them shame. |
| 31 | Spoil strikes and thrusts with this defense; Have your revenge—no need to fence.[23] |
| 32 | If you would grab them as they ride, Don’t fail to ride up alongside. |
| 33 | To show the sun and make them bow:[24] Take first their left sleeve firmly now, |
| 34 | Then grab their head in front with skill, And press it upward hard until |
| 35 | They sink down low and show respect (And then might never stand erect). |
| 36 | If taking you down low’s their aim, Then grab them high and bring them shame;[25] |
| 37 | Press arm to head, their grip defeat— This often robs them of their seat. |
| 38 | But should you seek a measured course[26] To catch and hold them on their horse, |
| 39 | Then with this wrestling they’ll be found,[27] And without rope they will be bound. |
| 40 | Remember well the grab that leads,[28] To break through strength and work great deeds.[29] |
Fighting in armor on foot[30]
| 41 | When you dismount or are unhorsed, The fight on foot must take its course. |
| 42 | Take up your spear in steady hands And face your foe in proper stance;[31] |
| 43 | Its sharpened point will serve your needs, So boldly throw the thrust that leads, |
| 44 | Then leap and turn and set upon— If they defend, pull and you’ve won.[32] |
| 45 | If you would make the leading thrust,[33] Then pull and break through guards you must. |
| 46 | Now if your foe fears injury And backs away and wants to flee, |
| 47 | Then close with them and seek your chance To catch and hold as you advance. |
Wrestling in the duel[34]
| 48 | And should you wrestle, learn to leap: Your foot behind their front leg sweep, |
| 49 | Or deftly lock the leg you catch Just like the closing of a latch. |
| 50 | From either hand, both left and right, Perform your art and end the fight. |
| 51 | Should it come to pass that here The sword is drawn against the spear, |
| 52 | Observe the way they thrust, then leap And catch and wrestle as you sweep. |
| 53 | What they extend, your left hand beats; Leap surely in, catch what you meet. |
| 54 | Should they again fear harm and pull[35] Back from your catch and your control, |
| 55 | Then you will find them all exposed, Your point harassing unopposed. |
| 56 | And leather, gauntlets, and the eyes:[36] Toward these exposures you should rise. |
| 57 | Forbidden arts of wrestling learn[37] And bring them forth in battle’s churn; |
| 58 | Find ways to lock and take control, Surmount the strong to reach your goal. |
| 59 | In every lesson that you learn, Your point toward the exposure turn. |
| 60 | When each from scabbard draws their sword And both face off with one accord, |
| 61 | Then you should strengthen in the fight And bear in mind to cover right. |
| 62 | Before and after: these two things[38] Learn well to gauge with backward spring. |
| 63 | Pursue whenever steel meets steel, And you’ll confound the strong with zeal.[39] |
| 64 | If they defend, pull back and thrust; If they defend, rush in you must. |
| 65 | If they should fight you long and wide, Then artfully their fate decide.[40] |
| 66 | If they attack you fierce and strong, Defeat them when you shoot in long. |
| 67 | The other point can guard and smite, So meet their sword and don’t take fright. |
| 68 | With either hand, both left and right, Turn then your point to piece their sight.[41] |
| 69 | With strikes, your forward foot defend, That you may fight on to the end.[42] |
- ↑ Unlike the fencing verses, the dueling teaching has little overt structure. There are no section titles assigned apart from one (of the two) segments of wrestling in the dismounted dueling, and it certainly doesn’t follow any Classical rhetorical structures. Apart from a couple shared lines (see the footnotes), this section has so little in common with the fencing verses that it’s hard to believe they had the same author (the writing style is also different in ways that are hard to describe). This could be further evidence of Liechtenauer’s role as a compiler and editor rather than an author in the modern sense.
- ↑ I went a little bit metaphoric at the beginning here because the glosses don't really have much relevance to the text of the Record anyway.
- ↑ Couplets 2a–2e are very similar to the mounted verses included in Martin Huntsfeld's treatise (lines 3–4 and 11–18).
- ↑ This line uses similar wording to couplet 6 in the foreword, so I translated it accordingly.
- ↑ Couplets 3a–3c are very similar to the mounted verses included in Martin Huntsfeld's treatise (lines 19–20 and 35–38).
- ↑ Couplet 3d is similar to Liechtenauer's 4th figure.
- ↑ ‘But pull them left’ carries over from couplet 3; these two are always presented as a quatrain in the glosses so this spillover seems fine, but annoyingly, the author of ms. 3227a inserts several extra couplets in between them in his unglossed presentation of the Record, which divorces this clause from its context a bit.
- ↑ Couplet 4a is similar to Liechtenauer's 2nd figure.
- ↑ Couplet 4b is very similar to the mounted verses included in Martin Huntsfeld's treatise (lines 39–40).
- ↑ This line is the same as the first line of fencing couplet 31, in the section on the wrath cut.
- ↑ A Taschen is a belt pouch or purse worn on the side toward the back; I was sadly unable to work Jessica Finley's imagery of a cutpurse (i.e. pickpocket) into this translation. I'm not sad to not be using Stephen Cheney's imagery of a ‘fanny pack’ (also called a ‘belt bag’, I assume by people who weren't there in the 1980s and ’90s).
- ↑ Here we see a major difference between the fencing and dueling verses: where the fencing verses offer descriptions which the glosses then turn into formal names (reifying them in ways that may or may not have been Liechtenauer's intent), the dueling verses are prone to directly assign formal names to things. So here, the Record literally says something like “Seek and remember the Belt-pouch Cut”. In this translation, I have un-reified this terminology for aesthetic and mnemonic reasons, but be aware that this is going to be happening in the German through the rest of the text.
- ↑ ‘Ohne Fahr=without danger’ (rendered here as “care not” to match earlier uses) appears in both this line and the next one, so I omitted it here to avoid the redundancy. A final instruction to cause distress seems to have been added purely to complete Liechtenauer’s rhyme scheme and syllable count, but is omitted due to hitting my syllable cap.
- ↑ Literally “from stirrup to hair”; Grimm indicates that ‘from soles to hair’ was an expression equivalent to ‘from head to toe’, so I assume this is similar.
- ↑ This “knife” is interpreted as a dagger by the glossators.
- ↑ Couplet 13a is very close to 59, but the word ‘were=weapon or defense (with weapons)’ is unusual. All copies of verse 59 apart from the Rome version (and the Krakow version which is based on it) have ‘lere=learn’ instead.
- ↑ A Schaff is a large bucket, basket, or wash basin, and the name may arise from the method of carrying it by the handles (Thanks to Dierk Hagedorn for pointing this out to me.). Other translators have read it as ‘Schaf=sheep’, perhaps making a reference to holding sheep still for shearing. Paulus Hector Mayr reads it as Schopf and his Latinist renders it juba, meaning “horse mane” or “helmet crest”. This is another instance of the Record assigning something a proper name: “the bucket hold”.
- ↑ ‘Unter Augen=under the eyes’ is an expression suggesting it happens very close to them. I chose ‘under their nose’ as an equivalent English expression; Jessica Finley suggests ‘in their face’ as another equivalent expression, and Jack Gassmann suggests ‘when toe-to-toe’. Note that in exactly one instance further down (couplet 56), the glossators interpret it literally and tell you to attack their physical eyes.
- ↑ Jagen is literally “to hunt”, but also has a sense of “to run as if hunting or hunted” which might be intended here and all other instances of the word.
- ↑ Literally just “the knife disarm”, but the glossators interpret it as a sword disarm, suggesting the reading that you're applying a dagger technique to the sword. Lew uniquely has “the sword disarm” instead.
- ↑ Should be ‘shame’, not ‘strife’, but rhyming is hard.
- ↑ The direct translation of this line is just ‘the nameless [hold]’.
- ↑ “Have your revenge” is standing in for a phrase that would be more directly translated ‘verderben=spoil, ruin, destroy’.
- ↑ The direct translation of this line is just ‘the sun show’ (bowing is pulled from the next line). This is a piece in which you turn your opponent’s face upward to ‘show them the sun’, but it could also be understood as a reference to the gnomon or ‘pointer arm’ (Zeiger) of a sundial (Sonnenuhr).
- ↑ Couplet 36 uses similar phrasing to fencing 32, in the section on the wrath cut, and 80, in the section on overrunning.
- ↑ This time it’s ‘messen=measured’ rather than sittiglich, which is also one of the two virtues prescribed in couplet 8 of the preface.
- ↑ Literally ‘fuhren=to lead or guide’ rather than “found”, though this verb is missing from the Rome ms. (breaking the rhyme scheme).
- ↑ Vorgriffen is usually read as ‘vor=before’ + ‘griffen=grabbing’, but Jessica Finley has pointed out that, just as angriffen means both “grab” + “on” and “attack”, vorgriffen could also mean “attack before” and perhaps even be related to the ‘Vorschlag=leading strike’ that is the centerpiece of the author of 3227a’s gloss of the common lesson. For this reason, and because the term isn’t otherwise clearly defined, I’ve translated it similarly to that text. Only the Pseudo-Peter von Danzig gloss clearly associates this verse with Before and After.
- ↑ “Work great deeds” is an addition to serve the rhyme.
- ↑ This section title comes from Antonius Rast's ms., since it's less wordy than the Rome.
- ↑ Sigmund ain Ringeck groups couplet 42 together with the previous one as a quatrain, but Pseudo-Peter von Danzig glosses them separately.
- ↑ Sigmund ain Ringeck groups couplet 44 together with the previous one as a quatrain, but Pseudo-Peter von Danzig glosses them separately.
- ↑ This Vorstich also tends to be glossed in a way reminiscent of the description of the ‘Vorschlag=leading strike’ that is the centerpiece of the author of 3227a’s gloss of the common lesson, so I’ve again translated it similarly.
- ↑ I can’t for the life of me understand why this is the only ‘section title’ in the entire dueling Record apart from the introductions to mounted and dismounted. It’s not even the only wrestling segment (nor even the only dismounted wrestling segment), and most of the verses after it aren’t about wrestling. It's interesting to note, though, that couplets 41–47 are included at the beginning of one branch of Martin Huntsfeld's armored fencing treatise, and that two witnesses—Salzburg and Rostock—begin with couplet 48 and skip 41–47 entirely.
- ↑ ‘Schaden=injury, harm’ and ‘Scheiden=scabbard, sheath’ can be spelled the same, and the verb zucken can equally mean drawing a weapon or drawing yourself back (in fear), so it's not always clear which one is intended in the Record. I use the interpretations in RDL to guide my choices here.
- ↑ This is generally ‘unter Augen=under the eyes’, but a minority reading has ‘und Augen=and the eyes’, which makes more sense in a list of potential targets.
- ↑ Again, the direct translation of this line is just “The Forbidden Wrestling” (“learn” is from the next line).
- ↑ This line is the same as the first line of fencing couplet 17, in the common lesson.
- ↑ Couplet 63 is very close to fencing couplet 35, in the section on the cut of wrath, and 90, in the section on overrunning.
- ↑ This couplet is skipped in the Pseudo-Peter von Danzig gloss.
- ↑ More literally “their eyes”.
- ↑ This line is pure filler, since I used up all the text of this couplet in the first line.
