Irish Martial Arts

[Nathan Calvert]

I need help trying to find information on Traditional Irish Martial Arts. All i have found so far is asian based martial arts from Ireland.

[Stewart Sackett]

All I know/have heard on the subject is that Ireland has it's own folk wrestling traditions & a strong tradition of stick fighting. Boxing has also been popular in Ireland for a long time.

Googling the phrase "Irish martial arts" brought up this:

http://johnwhurley.com/ima.htm

I can't think of anything going back to the medieval period that mentions specifically Irish fighting methods/styles. Sorry. Best of luck.

[Nathan Calvert]

All I know/have heard on the subject is that Ireland has it's own folk wrestling traditions & a strong tradition of stick fighting. Boxing has also been popular in Ireland for a long time.

Googling the phrase "Irish martial arts" brought up this:

http://johnwhurley.com/ima.htm

I can't think of anything going back to the medieval period that mentions specifically Irish fighting methods/styles. Sorry. Best of luck.

Thank you this is very helpful.

[Axel Pettersson]

here are two other links you might want to check out:

http://www.geocities.com/glendoyle/bata/

http://dirkdance.tripod.com/ (this last one is Scottish though)

[louie Pastore]

I need help trying to find information on Traditional Irish Martial Arts. All i have found so far is asian based martial arts from Ireland.

Hi Nathan...

I trained with Irishman John Ramsay who taught me a form of Irish stick which he had learned from his father, You can see him on my "dirkdance" website previously listed. He was based in County Antrim at the time and has since taught Maxime Chouinard who is teaching in Quebec city and Silat Guru William Sanders who is in the US.

I understand that he intends to go 'public' with his style very soon.

Louie

[Nathan Calvert]

I need help trying to find information on Traditional Irish Martial Arts. All i have found so far is asian based martial arts from Ireland.

Hi Nathan...

I trained with Irishman John Ramsay who taught me a form of Irish stick which he had learned from his father, You can see him on my "dirkdance" website previously listed. He was based in County Antrim at the time and has since taught Maxime Chouinard who is teaching in Quebec city and Silat Guru William Sanders who is in the US.

I understand that he intends to go 'public' with his style very soon.

Louie

Thanks for the help. sorry it took me so long to reply

[Maxime Chouinard]

Here's the article I wrote about the Ramsey family style of Irish stick, hope it helps : http://quebec.shinkendo.ca/textes/stick_edited.pdf

[Nathan Calvert]

Here's the article I wrote about the Ramsey family style of Irish stick, hope it helps : http://quebec.shinkendo.ca/textes/stick_edited.pdf

Thank you this has been very helpful

[CalebChow]

I also stumbled across this on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p4Jp1he1uM

[Nathan Calvert]

I also stumbled across this on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p4Jp1he1uM

Thank you

[Benjamin Smith]

That is fascinating. I hope one of the remaining heirs of this tradition writes a book on it someday. Thanks for the essay Nathan. I find it odd that the style you got to document didn't employ sparring. There is pretty solid evidence for it in other arts and places in Europe. There are lots of reasons why it might have, or might not now, but it all comes down to pure speculation these days.

[Nathan Calvert]

That is fascinating. I hope one of the remaining heirs of this tradition writes a book on it someday. Thanks for the essay Nathan. I find it odd that the style you got to document didn't employ sparring. There is pretty solid evidence for it in other arts and places in Europe. There are lots of reasons why it might have, or might not now, but it all comes down to pure speculation these days.

Thank you I am glad to finally find a group that shares my interest. it is sort of a hobby of mine to document the martial arts of different countrys. I look forward to using the ARMA forum to aid in my future studys

[Maxime Chouinard]

That is fascinating. I hope one of the remaining heirs of this tradition writes a book on it someday. Thanks for the essay Nathan. I find it odd that the style you got to document didn't employ sparring. There is pretty solid evidence for it in other arts and places in Europe. There are lots of reasons why it might have, or might not now, but it all comes down to pure speculation these days.

Well I don't know if you are talking about the article on the Ramsey tradition, but I'm the one who wrote it . As for sparring, I'm aware there are some evidence for it elsewhere but Europe is a pretty big place with lot of different cultures. We must not extrapolate that everything worked the same. If you take Japan for example, you have traditions that spar, others don't. If you consider stick fighting, I know of no european stick art that practised sparring before their modern sportification. Jogo do Pau didn't, nor did french bâton, bastone siciliano. We have two styles of Irish stick that survive today (that we know of), and none did free spar. Now they all do some kind of sparring, but it's not what I would call free sparring, as it is much more controlled.

[RayMcCullough]

There is an article on the website here about the Venitains stick fighting. What they did could be considered sparring, you think , maybe.

[Maxime Chouinard]

Yes, you'll see it's in my bibliography.

It is sparring as much as faction fighting was in Ireland. But now it depends on your definition of free sparring. These things were not really done in a training mindset as much as for sport/recreation or even plain fighting and killing. And the amount of danger involved is in no way comparable to most of today sparring sessions, which is one of the main points why sparring isn't practiced in this style.

If I go out in a bar and start a brawl, I wouldn't consider it sparring (although that might depend on who you ask), and if you do then we can consider that sparring was and is still involed in Irish stick.... (I'm not authorized to give details, but Mr. Ramsey grown up during the height of violence in Northern Ireland, and had some stories to go along).

Keep in mind I am not denigrating sparring as a training tool, I did some and I think it has some benefits in many cases. I'm only giving out facts about bataireacht, one of which being that free sparring is not part of the training system.