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October 3, 2009 - (Soundbite of music)
JACKI LYDEN, host:
We're standing where the flags are flying, the bugles are bugling, the drums are tapping, and the people are (unintelligible) to watch the American jouster take up lads with swords and prove himself on the field of battle astride his thunder of speed.
It's the Maryland Renaissance Fair and we wanted to find out what valor of sentiment that work in the hearts of the American jouster and why would anyone do this?
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. JOHN BASHIR (Jouster): I am Sir John Bashir, the Earl of Bath, and it would be my pleasure to answer any questions about the joust that you might have this day.
Unidentified Woman: Does it hurt?
Mr. BASHIR: Does it hurt? Yes.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. BASHIR: Picture this if you will: you are wearing a hundred pounds of armor. Say you weight 350 pounds at that point. You're riding a horse that weighs 1,800 to 2,200 pounds. You're riding at each other at 20 miles per hour each. You're going to hit each other with something that's about an inch and a quarter in diameter. Do the math.
Even in armor it hurts. Even through the armor it leaves bruises, but where else can you have so much fun where you can deliberately try to knock your friend off a horse?
Mr. ROY WILLIAM COX (Jouster): I'm Sir William Westmoreland, Earl of Westmoreland, and royal champion to King Henry VIII. I've broken all but seven bones in my body. Had a guy at one time say, you know, that's a load. And then he started - he was a bone doctor, an osteopath, and he started feeling my spine. He said oh my God, 'cause I broke my neck in the same place that Christopher Reeve did, almost at the same second.
I was in Texas doing a show and I got knocked off and I broke my neck and it felt weird. But it didn't separate because I had my armor on.
LYDEN: I got to say these make football injuries seem almost like nothing. It's incredible.
Mr. COX: Well, the thing is, with football injuries you're going at it and going at it and going at it. We make six passes and we're done. In a tournament we only make four passes.
(Soundbite of canon firing)
LYDEN: Okay. Before you think we've been whisked away to some distant warzone, we should add this was Pirate Weekend at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, a fact not exactly celebrated by knights.
Mr. COX: It's a group of pirates demonstrating canon fire. They didn't call fire in the hole, did they?
LYDEN: I bet some of your horses…
Mr. COX: Didn't like that one bit.
LYDEN: …didn't like that at all.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: Why do people turn up at your training camp? I mean, there's a lot of things to do in this world in 2009; why do people still want to become renaissance knights?
Mr. COX: A lot of them want to escape the everyday mundane grind. You know, sitting in a cubicle, you know, listening to the boss, wanting to take that boss out and hit him with a 10-foot pole. My guys get to do that. They get to come at me with 50,000 PSI of force and hit me. And what a great job for a boss. I mean, your employees are acting up, you get out there and you nail them. And you have a good time. When it's all done, you know, it's said and done, you know, you're friends. You can go out and have a beer with them afterwards.
(Soundbite of crowd)
LYDEN: Richard Alvarez joins us now from member station KQED. He's jousted for 11 years and is the director of "American Jouster," a documentary. Welcome to the show.
Mr. RICHARD ALVAREZ (Director, "American Jouster"): Thank you for having me on, Jacki.
LYDEN: Well, does hearing those sounds, which are so bold, bring back memories or (unintelligible) scars?
Mr. ALVAREZ: Yeah, there is an empathetic twinge when I hear the contact hits in the background. I have to admit to that, yeah.
LYDEN: So jousting isn't limited to renaissance fairs. There's tournaments too, right?
Mr. ALVAREZ: That is correct. There are independent tournaments that are held, there are renaissance festivals that are held, and then there are stunt shows. And of course there are those medieval restaurants that happen every day of the week during the year.
LYDEN: Now, you directed a documentary about this and you called it "American Jouster." I'd like to ask a little bit about the culture of living this life. Let's talk about your friend, Sir William Westmoreland. His real name is Roy William Cox. He's a former Marine. How did he and other people get into this? Are there a lot of former military people?
Mr. ALVAREZ: I don't know if there are a lot. I do know several of them. When I semi-retired in '97, I thought I'd never get back on a horse and I actually got called back onto a horse in 2005 because one of my friends who is in the military got called - he had done a tour in Afghanistan and he got called for a tour in Iraq. So I got back in the harness.
But there is a kind of a quasi-military camaraderie to risking your life with these guys. So I think that that aspect of camaraderie certainly appeals to the military mind.
LYDEN: Now, you demonstrated in your film: people live like this at least for an entire season if not all year round.
Mr. ALVAREZ: Right. If you're interested in doing this full time and you're working with one of the major companies - and there are probably four major companies that have a year-round circuit of festivals that they do - you can start in, say, Arizona or Florida in January and wind up jousting all around the country until - for instance, the Texas Fair outside of Houston ends this Thanksgiving. That's a pretty much year-round occupation. You might get the Christmas season off.
LYDEN: Can you support yourself doing this? Can you make any money?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ALVAREZ: You can. It's not really about the money. But yeah, if you're a young man and you don't have a lot of overhead, you know, if you're not paying a mortgage or something like that, sure, yeah, it's pretty good money. You're living life on the road, you're not paying rent, you can spend your money freely. But you are sleeping typically in a tent.
You know, so in that sense it's like the medieval lifestyle. You travel from kingdom to kingdom and you joust for the king that pays you the most money.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ALVAREZ: So in that sense it really is just like it was back in the day. You know, knights would travel from tournament to tournament earning their living. That's what William Marshall, the flower of chivalry, did. He jousted well into his 70s.
And what you see at a renaissance festival is essentially the same thing. I mean, they're putting on exactly the same armor, they're getting on real live horses, and try as you might, there's no way to fake gravity. When you fall you hit the ground. And it is a dangerous game.
The actual last person killed in a tournament in modern times died in October of 2007 in England, and he died from exactly the same injury that took the life of Henry II of France, and that was a lance splinter through the eye slot and into the brain. So it's still a very dangerous game. So, yeah.
LYDEN: How do you decide when a squire is ready to be a knight. How were you knighted, Sir Richard?
Mr. ALVAREZ: Oh gosh. I started jousting in the early '80s, and I was invited to join a company. And I came onboard as a knight in training. And I had to learn basically to ride. I learned to ride a horse by learning to joust. And you learn by practicing the skills. You learn by lancing rings.
If you can control a lance and hit a ring at a cantor, then your skill with a lance is good enough that I'm going to allow you to hit my shield. Because essentially my head is only a few inches from my shield. So I want to make sure that you hit the shield and not my head.
LYDEN: Are there any dame jousters?
Mr. ALVAREZ: Yes, of course. In fact, Roy's wife Kate is an accomplished, probably the best skilled female jouster, if not in the world then certainly in America. But she is very skilled. And she is in my documentary. You actually get to see her trade hits.
LYDEN: You know, as a matter of fact, Richard, we spoke to Kate's niece. Here's Nicole Zentgraf.
Ms. NICOLE ZENTGRAF: I am nine-and-a-half years old and I am a squire for today.
LYDEN: And tell me your duties as a squire. You were out on the field.
Ms. ZENTGRAF: I am supposed to catch lance tips, head(ph) horses, and in the backstage before the show I put armor on the horses and put armor (unintelligible).
LYDEN: You ride already?
Ms. ZENTGRAF: Yes.
LYDEN: Yeah. Of course riding with those big lances and those big draft horses…
Ms. ZENTGRAF: No, not yet. I wish I could though, but not yet.
LYDEN: And what do you think it gives a girl to be a jouster?
Ms. ZENTGRAF: Well, it's actually, there aren't many dame jousters, as they call them. It would be just a fun experience to be a dame when I get older.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: Well, Sir Richard Alvarez, retired jouster and director of the documentary "American Jouster," thank you for mounting up and being so gracious to us.
Mr. ALVAREZ: Thank you for having me on, Jacki.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: And you can find an audio slideshow of the knights in action and a link to Richard Alvarez's documentary on our Web site, NPR.org.
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