Celtic martial arts?

So I was doing some digging around through my family tree and discovered that I have a Celtic heritage (and it turns out I'm as much Scottish as I am Maori - a measly quater) with my clan being clan Douglas. I was wanting to know if there were any books or info about how the Celts lived, their way of doing things, customs and their philosophies when it came to warfare, and also of course about any martial arts the Celts did.

 

http://dirkdance.tripod.com/

Don't know how factual it is, but it was the first thing that came up on google, granted, you want Celtic cultural martial arts, you'd probably do better to look at the Irish.

 

That's quite a mix! wow!

 

When you say Celtish MA, are you referring to the pre roman and anglo saxon invasions or anything scottish? I don't know of any ancient books on their martial arts but for later stuff you can look at Donald McBane and William Hope amongst others.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Backhold

 

Yep
The other half of me is Danish and English.

 

Being from the ulster area (which is quite a mix if irish and scottish culture) I'd say scottish back hold us a good shout. You still see it all the time at Highland games events.

 

There's a few forms of Irish stickfighting around. I think some in Canada, heard about one maybe in Antrim, N.I.
Ill look.

 

I briefly looked into the Irish stick fighting thing, and it looks like someone trying to make money off their pretend heretige.

None in Ireland, loads in America and Canada.

 

Fusen is right. There was a de facto ban on Shillelagh fighting in Ireland in the 18th century as it was irish counties fighting against each other. With the Gaelic revival and the establishment of a modern irish identity (as a means of political autonomy from Britain), stick fighting was frowned upon as being anti irish. Irish people fighting Irish people didn't work with the propaganda of the time, so a Irish stick fighting died out. Ironically, a tradition of a Ireland was eradicated by the very group claiming they were acting in Ireland's best interests.

 

That's a shame that no one teaches it in Ireland. The same almost happened to Mau Rakau here in New Zealand. Out of curiosity, how much of Ireland's and Scotland's traditonal martial art heritage is still intact? Anyone know?

 

No one teaches it in Ireland because it's not real. The only legit stick fighting from Ireland still extant, is hurling .

 

Found this website here. It has some intresting articles. Not sure whether its legit in its info though. The author seems to think highly of the Doyle family which appears to be the one of the only Irish stick fighting styles around, except in Ireland, which is strange. I found this video of Glen Doyle showing his stuff, any thoughts? Apparently he also has a background in Jun Fan Gung Fu and teaches that as well.

http://www.isfworldwide.org/

[ame="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fcH0ww_Jbfg"]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fcH0ww_Jbfg[/ame]

 

are you taking about scottish indigenous martial arts?

Scottish backhold is very popular and has seen a resurgence (theres a number of schools that have opened). I'll film some at the high land games im going to watch next month.

you can also learn scottish broadsword at very few schools but traditionally clans had their own styles.

as for the danish stuff - scotland was settled by a number of groups of Scandinavian origins at different times so you're more Scandinavian than you think!

 

And there is this group here

http://www.irishstick.com/index.html

 

Yep, that's what I'm asking about. The indigenous stuff.

 

Yea that was the guy. Only read about him somewhere in passing.

 

Re irish stickfighting, It's highly highly likely he's made it up himself.

 

It's hard finding Irish Stick. I've trained a bit here in Canada with the Shiners and throw down with them every year at their tournament.

There's of course Celtic Wrestling, which Backhold is a part of. Here's the federation:

http://celtic-wrestling.tripod.com/id17.html

And as mentioned, some HEMA groups do Scottish Backsword.

 

What's the deal with MR in NZ?