European Martial Arts

Class times are Sundays at 5PM.....adults only...

Origin - Ireland

Collar-and-elbow wrestling

is a style of folk wrestling native to Ireland that can be traced back to the 17th century but it has ties to the Games of Tailtinn between 632 BC and 1169 AD.Though originating in Ireland, the style flourished in America. The style is often compared to Catch wrestling, Gouren and Judo. Collar-and-elbow features and array of trips, mares/throws, hip-locking, Shin kicking, pinning combinations, and submissions.

Catch Wrestling

is a style of folk wrestling that was developed and popularised in the late 19th century by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents. Catch wrestling derives from a number of different styles, the English style of Lancashire wrestling,^[1] Irish collar-and-elbow, Greco Roman wrestling, styles of the Indian subcontinent such as Pehlwani and Iranian styles such as Varzesh-e Pahlavani.^[2] The training of some modern submission wrestlers, professional wrestlers and mixed martial arts fighters is founded in Catch Wrestling.

Irish Stick Fighting - The shillelagh

Bataireacht ([ˈbˠat̪ˠəˌɾʲaxt̪ˠ], meaning stick fighting) is the term used in Irish martial arts traditionally applied to various forms of stick fighting. Today the word bataireacht is used amongst Irish and English language speakers to distinguish between traditional and non-traditional stick-fighting styles.

Origin Scotland

Basket-Hilted Sword

The basket-hilted sword is the name of a group of early modern sword types characterized by a basket-shaped guard that protects the hand. The basket hilt is a development of the quillons added to swords' crossguards since the Late Middle Ages. Also known as the broadsword, the basket-hilted sword was a military sword, termed "broad" in contrast with the rapier, the slim dueling sword worn with civilian dress during the same period.

Claymore

The term claymore /ˈkleɪmɔər; from Scottish Gaelic claidheamh mòr, "great sword")refers to the Scottish variant of the late medieval two-handed longsword. It is characterized as having a cross hilt of forward-sloping quillons with quatrefoil terminations. It was in use from the 15th to 17th centuries.

Targe

Targe (from Old Franconian *targa "shield", Proto-Germanic *targo "border") was a general word for shield in late Old English. Its diminutive, target, came to mean an object to be aimed at in the 18th century.

The term refers to various types of shields used by infantry troops from the 13th to 16th centuries. More specifically, a targe was a concave shield fitted with enarmes on the inside, one adjustable by a buckle, to be attached to the forearm, and the other fixed as a grip for the left hand. These shields were mostly made of iron or iron-plated wood. From the 15th century, the term could also refer to special shields used for jousting.

From the early 17th century, until the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the Scottish Highlander's main means of defence in battle was his targe.[1][2] After the disastrous defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, the carrying of the targe would have been banned, and many would have been destroyed, or put to other uses. Those that remain have intricate patterns, and are well decorated, indicating that they would have originally belonged to important people.

Dirk

The Scottish dirk (also "Highland dirk", Scottish Gaelic: Biodag) is the traditional and ceremonial sidearm of the officers of Scottish Highland regiments.The development of the Scottish dirk as a weapon is unrelated to that of the naval dirk; it is a modern continuation of the 16th-century ballock or rondel dagger.

The traditional Scottish dirk is a development of the second half of the 17th century, when it became a popular item of military equipment in the Jacobite Risings.^[^{citation needed}^] The 78th Fraser Highlanders, raised in 1757, wore full highland dress uniform;their equipment was described by Major-General James Stewart in 1780 as including a "musket and broadsword, to which many soldiers added the dirk at their own expense."

English Longbow

The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, is a powerful type of medieval longbow (a tall bow for archery) about 6 ft (1.83 m) long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in medieval warfare.

Messer

Messer (German for "knife", also großes Messer "great knife", Hiebmesser "cutting knife", Kriegsmesser "war knife", etc.) during the German Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (14th to 16th centuries) was a term for the class of single-edged bladed weapons, deriving from the medieval falchion and preceding the modern sabre

Sword and Buckler

A buckler (French bouclier 'shield', from Old French bocle, boucle 'boss') is a small shield, up to 45 cm (up to 18 in) in diameter, gripped in the fist with a central handle behind the boss.^[1] While being used in Europe since antiquity,^[2] it became more common as a companion weapon in hand-to-hand combat during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Its size made it poor protection against missile weapons (e.g., arrows) but useful in deflecting the blow of an opponent's weapons, binding his arms or hindering his movements.

MS I.33, considered the earliest extant armed-combat manual, (around 1300) contains an early description of a system of combat with buckler and sword.

Source: Wikipedia