"So ought each knight, that use of perill has,
In swimming be expert, through waters force to pas".
Spenser, The Faërie Queene, v.ii.16
In this April heatwave, in the absence of shoures soothe, I have been thinking of river swimming. I have never swum in a river down here, indeed have not swum in inland waters since last summer, when I enjoyed the Cam. The Ouse beckons: the Cuckmere looks less possible.
I know my father had a copy of Nicholas Orme's Early British Swimming, but I have been unable to find it; there are still copies to be had from the publishers, the University of Exeter Press.
I have ordered a copy, and while searching for it, came across a fascinating article on swimming in Spenser by Michael West.
Orme, Nicholas
Early British swimming, 55 BC-AD 1719: with the first swimming treatise in English, 1595
Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1983
West, Michael
Spenser, Everard Digby, and the Renaissance Art of Swimming
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1. (Spring, 1973), pp. 11-22.
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