So It's "By my Halidom, I'll Cleave Thee"
So It's "By my Halidom, I'll Cleave Thee" is an article published in The Daily Mirror on 6 march 1948.
Article
With cries like, "I will spill thy evil blood," modern knights in armour, Adrian Conan Doyle and Captain Douglas Ash, battle with mighty swords — to revive of the days of chivalry.
"Daily Mirror" Reporter, Minstead (Hampshire), Friday.
Two men in armour brandishing heavy swords, pranced over the greensward near this village today, shouting through their visors: "Sire, I would fain slit thy weasand," and, "I will cleave thee to the chine."
The clang of 500-year-old steel against steel was heard for miles around. It was almost serious.
The armoured figures were Adrian Conan Doyle, 37, and Captain Douglas Ash, an artist, who for some time now have been realistically reliving in deed, dress and thought the days of the knights of Crecy and Agincourt — all for a purpose.
'Sire, This Is No Merry Joke'
For Adrian, six-foot son of the author of "The White Company" and creator of knight-heroes like Sir Nigel Loring is trying to start a "back to medievalism" movement.
He told me all about it today as he returned from his morning assault-at-arms with Captain Ash.
"Sire, this is no merry joke," he boomed, slipping off his visored helmet.
"Come quaff a stoup of ale and tarry awhile, for I am battle-weary."
Then, pointing to the perspiring Captain Ash, he said:
"This oaf, sire," has cut me all over today."
Mr. Adrian bowed me with a sweep of his steel-clad arm into his Elizabethan home full of medieval knights' armour.
"The trouble with people today," he boomed, "is that they are losing all their individualism and chivalry. I want to change that.
"Instead of sportsmen we have become a nation of sports watchers."
'I'll Spill Thy Evil Blood'
Captain Ash interjected: "He's dead right, old boy. There's no sport in kicking a leather pudding around a field. This is the only true sport." He grabbed for a ten-foot long sword.
Refixing his visor Mr. Adrian went clanging over the lawn after him, shouting: "By my two-handed sword I will spill thy evil blood."
Mr. Adrian sleeps in a 400-year-old four-poster. He keeps a "pillow-sword" by his bedside for night prowlers.
