Text 1: Taking hold, by Beth Atkinson

An original contemporary magazine article.

At most agricultural shows, the main attractions are the prize bulls and the tea tent. At this one, high in the fells, the biggest crowd of the afternoon gathers around a roped-off square of grass to watch people try to throw each other over.

The style of wrestling here has been practised in these valleys for centuries, and the rules are beautifully simple. The two wrestlers stand chest to chest, chins on each other’s right shoulders, arms locked round each other’s backs. Once they have ‘taken hold’, the first to touch the ground with anything other than their feet, or to let go, loses. A bout can be over in three seconds. It can also last three minutes, the two of them swaying and straining like trees in a gale.

Many of the wrestlers wear the traditional costume: white vest, long white johns and velvet trunks embroidered with flowers. Fourteen-year-old Marnie Rigg made her own trunks this year, with purple thistles. She has been wrestling since she was six, coached by her grandfather, who won here in 1978 and stands at the ropes muttering advice nobody else can hear.

Marnie wins her first two bouts quickly, twisting her opponents off balance with a hip throw so fast I miss it both times. Her third is against a taller girl from the next valley, and it goes on and on. They lean, they shuffle, they grunt. The crowd falls silent. Then, suddenly, Marnie is on her back in the grass, laughing, and the two girls are helping each other up.

‘She’s better than me,’ Marnie says afterwards, shrugging. ‘I’ll get her next year.’ Her grandfather pats her on the shoulder. There is no sulking here, no arguing with the referee, no prize money worth mentioning. The wrestlers shake hands, brush the grass off their white johns, and go and queue for ice cream together.

Text 2: The Brackenmere sports, by A Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this newspaper report, published in 1858, a correspondent describes the wrestling at an annual sports meeting in the north of England.

The annual sports at Brackenmere were held on Tuesday upon the usual ground at the head of the lake, and, the weather being fine, drew together a larger assemblage than has been known for many years. Shepherds and quarrymen had walked twenty miles over the fells to be present, and the slope above the ring was crowded from end to end with spectators, many of whom had laid wagers upon the result.

The wrestling, which is here regarded as the chief business of the day, commenced at noon. Upwards of sixty men entered the open contest, and the play was throughout of a very high order. By five o’clock the contest had narrowed to two men, as unlike one another as could well be imagined: John Tyson, a shepherd of enormous size and strength, who has been the champion of the district these three years, and a young quarryman named Wilson, not above eleven stone, whom few had ever heard of.

The betting was all upon Tyson, and when the men took hold, the giant’s arms seemed fairly to swallow his opponent. For some minutes neither could gain an advantage. Tyson strove to lift the lighter man bodily from the ground; Wilson, keeping low, resisted every effort. Then, at a moment when the champion leaned too far, the quarryman twisted sharply beneath him, and the great man went down upon the turf with a shock that seemed to shake the hillside.

The roar that followed was tremendous, and hats were flung into the air. It is pleasing to record that Tyson was the first to rise and shake his conqueror by the hand, and the two walked from the ring together amid general applause. Wilson received the champion’s belt, together with a purse of five pounds. We have seldom witnessed a finer example of skill triumphing over mere weight, or of good feeling between rivals.

Both of these texts are about traditional wrestling at country sports meetings.

Compare:

• what the writers say about the wrestlers and their contests
• how the writers present the wrestling to readers

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