Scottish Combat?

[Allen Johnson]

The Cateran Society- I think Chris Thompson and the guys there do a good job. I dont agree with him 100% of the time but hey, who agrees with anyone in WMA 100% of the time. I feel the core goals and ambitions of the Cateran Society are quite similar to ours here at ARMA. I own "Lannaireachd: Gaelic Swordsmanship". I do believe that Chris Thompson (and maybe in partnership with Paul Wagner??? I can't remember) is working on a new book. Lannaireachd is pretty good. I think that I had hoped for a little better production value- like photos of techniques rather than drawings. It's not bad at all, but does leave something to be desired- but you always have to start somewhere.

The Scottish two hander: G. Matthew Webb- did you mean contemporary to the time the sword was in use or contemporary to today?

[Allen Johnson]

Since the (arguably) most ubiquitous weapon of the Scottish warrior is the claymore, you might want to look into training with it. There are no known Scottish manuals on the claymore,

If you want to recreate Scottish Broadsword use, why not use one of the Scottish manuals on it? Or more than one to help create a full system?

See how confusing it is? Craig was using the word 'claymore' to describe the two handed weapon and Martin read 'claymore' and interpreted it correctly as the Broadsword But they are two different things There are manuals for the broadsword but not for the CDL (two hander)

[Martin_Wilkinson]

Having read the aforementioned article, i read Claymore and to me it is a Broadsword, not a two handed sword.

i nearly got into it with the person who introduced me to sword over this, she's very stuck in what she's been told, and won't listen to anything i say, even if i can back it up with proof.

[G.MatthewWebb]

Allen Johnson wrote:

"The Scottish two hander: G. Matthew Webb- did you mean contemporary to the time the sword was in use or contemporary to today?"

Contemporary to the time the sword was in use and not some later and perhaps mistaken use of the term.

[Allen Johnson]

Having read the aforementioned article, i read Claymore and to me it is a Broadsword, not a two handed sword.

i nearly got into it with the person who introduced me to sword over this, she's very stuck in what she's been told, and won't listen to anything i say, even if i can back it up with proof.

Yeah, theres not much you can do with people like that. Every Highland Games I go to I still hear people tell visitors that "ancient Scots" had a natural mis-trust of banks, thats why they kept their jewels on the pommel of their dirks. I just chukle and walk away.

[Allen Johnson]

Allen Johnson wrote:

"The Scottish two hander: G. Matthew Webb- did you mean contemporary to the time the sword was in use or contemporary to today?"

Contemporary to the time the sword was in use and not some later and perhaps mistaken use of the term.

I goofed up a bit on my dates. I got some help from Chris Thompson of the Cateran Society. (he wrote the article on the word Claymore in the SPADA 2 book with Paul Wagner) The other thing to keep in mind is that Gaelic has been almost exclusivley an oral language up to the 18th century or so (there obviously were literate people- as will be explained below, but they were not widespread). This is info from him, paraphrased by me: The earliest known "written" use of the CDL is in the 18th Cent. However there are older Manx dictionaries that list a "cliwe da liie" for a two-hander. (spelling may be off here) Though I am not a Manx speaker, this seems to be very similar to the Gaelic pronunciation for a CDL.

Direct quote from Chris's email to me:
"The main reason you won't find many older references to either "claidheamh
da laimh" or "claidheamh mor" is that Gaelic literature before modern times
was dominated by bardic poetry, which used a strict system of poetic meters
requiring a certain number of syllables per line, a heavy use of
alliteration, etc and this resulted in the repeated use of stock phrases
that would fit the scheme. Even the folk tales, which are in prose, tend to
use stock phrases as well, because they help with memorization in an oral
tradition. There is one story that contains the phrase "claidheamh
dligheach"- literally, "leafy sword," an apparent reference to the
leaf-bladed swords of the La Tene period- which just goes to show how old
these stories can be."

Thanks Chris for your help in fixing me!

[G.MatthewWebb]

Allen Johnson wrote:

I goofed up a bit on my dates. I got some help from Chris Thompson of the Cateran Society. (he wrote the article on the word Claymore in the SPADA 2 book with Paul Wagner) The other thing to keep in mind is that Gaelic has been almost exclusivley an oral language up to the 18th century or so (there obviously were literate people- as will be explained below, but they were not widespread). This is info from him, paraphrased by me: The earliest known "written" use of the CDL is in the 18th Cent. However there are older Manx dictionaries that list a "cliwe da liie" for a two-hander. (spelling may be off here) Though I am not a Manx speaker, this seems to be very similar to the Gaelic pronunciation for a CDL.

Direct quote from Chris's email to me:
"The main reason you won't find many older references to either "claidheamh
da laimh" or "claidheamh mor" is that Gaelic literature before modern times
was dominated by bardic poetry, which used a strict system of poetic meters
requiring a certain number of syllables per line, a heavy use of
alliteration, etc and this resulted in the repeated use of stock phrases
that would fit the scheme. Even the folk tales, which are in prose, tend to
use stock phrases as well, because they help with memorization in an oral
tradition. There is one story that contains the phrase "claidheamh
dligheach"- literally, "leafy sword," an apparent reference to the
leaf-bladed swords of the La Tene period- which just goes to show how old
these stories can be."

Thanks Chris for your help in fixing me! [/quote]

Allen,

Thanks for posting the explanation from Chris Thompson (which I also read on Cateran list ). I think Chris got banned from the older incarnation of this forum in a "edge on edge" debate, he being an exponent of edge on edge and so may not be able to post here (or want to). The post is further evidence that there is no contemporary evidence for the term "claidheamh da laimh" in the corpus of Scottish Gaelic which we have to examine. If people want to use this late term, that is OK with me, BUT they need to state frequently that there is no contemporary evidence for the term. I'm afraid that people often fail to do this and so mislead. As to older Manx dictionaries, I'm not sure what he means because the evidence for Manx is rather late. The earliest lexicon is probably from a Welshman of the 17th century, whose name I can not remember right now. Oh yeah, Edward Lhuyd (or Lloyd). Still, Manx is close to Scottish Gaelic and, if an early, that is period reference, could be found then that would be a bit more convincing; but more convincing still would be showing a period reference in Irish Gaelic, out of which both Scottish and Manx Gaelic diverged. Irish has an extensive poetic and prose literature predating the literatures of Scottish and Manx Gaelic. Someone should ask an Irish Gaelic scholar if that has not already been done!

Matthew

[Allen Johnson]

That would be an interesting avenue to pursue.

I think we can easily agree that...
the term "claidheamh-mor" was used to describe the basket hilt broadsword and NOT a two handed sword.

There was a distinction between single hand swords and two handed swords reguardless of the language.

In the late 18th century there are people of non Highland origins using the word "claymore" to describe both weapons.

Through the 18th century and beyond native Highlanders refered to their own basket hilt broadswords as "claymores".

The word "claymore" is an obvious interpretation of "claidheamh-mor"

[G.MatthewWebb]

That would be an interesting avenue to pursue.

I think we can easily agree that...
the term "claidheamh-mor" was used to describe the basket hilt broadsword and NOT a two handed sword.

Matthew Webb replies:

No. We only have textual evidence for the use of "claidheamh-mor" for the use of the basket hilted sword from a date when the "two-handed" or "hand-and-a-half sword" was not longer used and thus not described.

Allen wrote:

"There was a distinction between single hand swords and two handed swords reguardless of the language."

Matthew Webb replies:

"No. We do not apparently have textual evidence for what the Scottish Gaels called the "two-hander" or "hand-and-a-half."


Allen wrote:

"In the late 18th century there are people of non Highland origins using the word "claymore" to describe both weapons."

Matthew:

Agreed.

Allen wrote;

"Through the 18th century and beyond native Highlanders refered to their own basket hilt broadswords as "claymores".

Matthew:

Yes, but the larger sword had fallen from use by then.

Allen:

"The word "claymore" is an obvious interpretation of "claidheamh-mor"

"

Matthew:

Etymologically correct, but a good question to ponder is why use the word "large sword" at all. Large compared to what? Some have suggested it was a way of distinguishing the basket hilted sword from the smallsword, but was the smallsword extensively used by Scottish highland warriors? Would they have felt the need to make that distinction to the smallsword, a rather late sword form? What do you or anyone else think.

I say once again, a much more profitable endeavor would be to scour the Irish Gaelic literature.

Regards,

Matthew

[Allen Johnson]

I dont think the distinction would be between broadsword and smallsword. As the broadsword predates the smallsword. However, it might be compared to a rapier, mortuary hilt and other 'smaller' swords in use around the island.

It's arguable that the last major battle that saw the use of the highland two hander is the Battle of KIllencrankie in 1689. We see textual evidence of differing names for two handers in the early to mid 1700's. Though the two hander was "out of use" by then, I still dont think that just 30-50 years would be enough for people to not need a distinction. It would still be in memory and since the Gaelic culture is such an oral one it would certainly be recounted in tales and legends of a martial nature. In telling kids of Great-Grandpa Nopants MacGee there would certainly be talking of fighting. Tales of his large sword (in comparison to the smaller basket hilts they were now using) a differing word would probably been used to describe it.

I have some difficulty in believing that guys in the mid to late 1700's were calling their baskethilts 'claymores' and no one mentioned, "hey, didnt we call another sword this name about 50 years ago? Does anyone remember that?" I suppose anything is possible though. Ah, the frustration of researching an oral society!

I just realized that we really have wandered off the topic of Scottish COMBAT. Oops.
To the original poster, did we help with your question?