Hi all....
I've recently written an article for the April edition of British MA mag 'Martial Arts Illustrated' which looks at the research I've been doing into finding traces of living Indigenous martial arts in the UK & Ireland. It will include some of the following 'discoveries'
Stick fighting was one of Britains most popular pastimes. Village fairs once held singlestick or cudgelling matches which employed yard-long ash wood sticks with a wicker basket guard. The bout often began with the short protective prayer, "God, spare our eyes", after which the object of the game was to break each others heads, from which we get the term first blood, "for the moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten".
It seems that a 'sporting' form of singlestick survived in Edinburgh through a series of fencing masters and I also uncovered a former Royal Navy commander who re-introduced singlestick back into the Navy in the 1980's
Another Indiginous martial tradition possibly going back to at least the 19th C is the Highland Dirk Dance which follows a pattern similar to a kata with dagger cuts & guards and kicking-sweeping leg movements which can be found in another indigenous MA, traditional wrestling. While discussing this with a Backhold wrestling coach it turns out he remembered an old form of Dirk fencing which he learned as a youngster, this too included kicks!
Shortly after I was later to meet an Irishman who shared Blackthorn cudgel techniques his father had shown him....
Hopefully the article might encourage some of our Eastern MA colleagues to look around and investigate indigenous martial traditions in their own areas of the UK.
Louie
I've recently written an article for the April edition of British MA mag 'Martial Arts Illustrated' which looks at the research I've been doing into finding traces of living Indigenous martial arts in the UK & Ireland. It will include some of the following 'discoveries'
Stick fighting was one of Britains most popular pastimes. Village fairs once held singlestick or cudgelling matches which employed yard-long ash wood sticks with a wicker basket guard. The bout often began with the short protective prayer, "God, spare our eyes", after which the object of the game was to break each others heads, from which we get the term first blood, "for the moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten".
It seems that a 'sporting' form of singlestick survived in Edinburgh through a series of fencing masters and I also uncovered a former Royal Navy commander who re-introduced singlestick back into the Navy in the 1980's
Another Indiginous martial tradition possibly going back to at least the 19th C is the Highland Dirk Dance which follows a pattern similar to a kata with dagger cuts & guards and kicking-sweeping leg movements which can be found in another indigenous MA, traditional wrestling. While discussing this with a Backhold wrestling coach it turns out he remembered an old form of Dirk fencing which he learned as a youngster, this too included kicks!
Shortly after I was later to meet an Irishman who shared Blackthorn cudgel techniques his father had shown him....
Hopefully the article might encourage some of our Eastern MA colleagues to look around and investigate indigenous martial traditions in their own areas of the UK.
Louie
