Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/624

518 In the kicking, usual in Devonshire play, the wrestler about to administer a kick had but one foot on the ground, and having an off-hitch was liable to be thrown by a quick player with a trip or a lock. The kick could be prevented by bending the knee so as to bring the heel up to the buttock, and projecting it, when the knee caught the administering player on the leg-bone above the knee with such force as to paralyse it for a while, and it has even been known to break it. This was entitled the stop.

Several of the Devonshire wrestlers became famous beyond the confines of the county; and matches between Devonians and Cornishmen were not uncommon; and the latter do not seem to have been at all afraid of the kick, for by closing on their antagonists for the hug, they could prevent them from kicking with toe or heel, at all events with full force.

Thorne was a man of Widdecombe-on-the-Moor, a man of splendid build and muscular development. He had made his name as a wrestler, when he was induced to join the Life Guards, and in the battle of Waterloo took part in the famous charge against the French cuirassiers; as he was cutting down his tenth victim a shot laid him low, at the age of twenty-three.

Then two young Devonian giants took the lead in the ring, Johnny Jordan and Flower, each six feet high and weighing a trifle over eighteen stone apiece. Jordan was a redoubted kicker, and the bravest wrestlers shrank from challenging him. On one occasion Flower and Jordan were opposed to one another, and after a struggle of seventeen minutes, Flower gave way.

In 1816, Flower was confronted with Polkinghorne, a St. Columb taverner, and the champion of Cornwall. The latter was too much for Flower, and he was thrown