Quintain (jousting)

The quintain (from Latin "fifth"), also known as pavo (Latin "peacock"), may have included a number of lance games, often used as training for jousting, where the competitor would attempt to strike an object with his lance, sword or other weapon. The common object was a shield or board on a pole (usually referred to, confusingly, as 'the quintain'), although a mannequin was sometimes used. It was not unknown for a seated armoured knight to act as the target.

This game was open to all, popular with young men of all classes. While the use of horses aided in training for the joust, the game could be played on foot, using a wooden horse or on boats (popular in 12th-century London).

As late as the 18th century running at the quintain survived in English rural districts. In one variation of the pastime the quintain was a filled with water, which, if the blow was a poor one, was emptied over the striker. A later form was a post with a cross-piece, from which was suspended a ring, which the horseman endeavoured to pierce with his lance while at full speed. This sport, called "tilting at the ring", was very popular in England and on the continent of Europe in the 17th century and is still practised as a feature of military and equestrian sport.

A form of quintain known as štehvanje is practiced by Slovenes in the Gail Valley (German: Gailtal) in Austrian Carinthia, and it was also introduced to villages in the Sava Valley north of Ljubljana in the 1930s.

The word quintain derives from Middle English quintaine, taken from Old French, derived from Latin quīntāna, "fifth", in reference to the fifth street of a Roman camp, where warlike exercises took place.

The best known historic feature of the village of Offham in Kent is the Quintain, situated on the Green, a supposedly Roman invention which was popular in Elizabethan times as a means of testing the agility of horsemen.

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