Monthly Archives: March 2020

New Bards announcement

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The Bardic Assmbley recognizes bards of the Cateran Society and honors them for their contributions in lore, art, music, and/or language.

Lore means substantial research in the areas we study, such as publishing a book, writing articles, creating video lesson content or fulfilling the requirements of the Hoplology course.

Art incluedes things like a chapbook-length work of poetry, an artistic portfolio, a novel or short-story collection on Cateran-related themes.

Music means the demonstrated ability to play on a traditional Celtic instrument, sing Gaelic songs or some equivalent skill.

Language of course refers to demonstrated proficiency in Gaelic.

Scottish_Piper

The Cateran Society is happy and proud to announce the following new 1st Degree Bards:

Jay Maas (Lore) contributed and still does a lot of very helpfull video lessons available not only for Cateran members, but the whole HEMA world. He worked out a complete video lesson interpretation of Captain G. Sinclair´s “Anti-Pugilism” (1790) next to many other videos.

Cornelius Stöhr (Music) started to learn the Bagpipe the same year he picked up the Broadsword to train at the BAG. Since then he not only became a good fencer, but also the official BAG Piper, proofing his skills in public regulary.

Tom Langhorne (Lore) is a Bushcraft expert and outdoor guide from Scotland, who started to research on the historical survival skills of the Highlanders several years ago. In his youtube-channel he presents his outdoor experiments and research with historical clothes, the Highland Dirk, firemaking, traditional cooking and other topics.

Edward Lindey (Music) recently started to train at the BAG and provides the Bardic Assembly with his skills playing traditional tunes on the feadog (penny whistle).

Congratulations to all four gentlemen 🙂

 

 

 

Cateran certification

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We are happy and proud to announce, that Joshua Campbell hereby earns the rank of a Cateran. Joshua fullfilled all required levels and proofed with his dedication and hard work, that he has a deep understanding of our art and is fit for the rank of a full-instructor (Cateran).

Joshua worked through Level I and II with the Highland Broadsword, but also adopted the material, especially the Old Style, onto the Scottish Halflang Sword. He used the same weapon next to the Basket-Hilted Broadsword together with the Targe and Dirk during his study of Level III (Double-weapons). In Level IV Joshua used his favourite weapon, the Highland Twohander (Claidheamh dà làimh), but also worked with the Dirk in Highland Knife Fighting.

During his time working through the program, Joshua did a lot of bouts with all the level-weapons he used. He fought with other martial artists and versus various weapon styles, like Longsword, Sidesword, Rapier, Buckler, Targa, Sabre and Schiavona. He proofed that he is able to adopt his skills and fundamentals, when facing different styles and weapons.

Joshua was also a participant in the TV show “Forged in Fire – Knife or Death”, narrated by Jeff Goldberg, where he went through several cutting tests with his scottish halflang sword. He worked through the obstacle course very good, it was an excellent cutting performance and he reached the next round called Dead Run. There his performance was very impressive, but no spoilers here 😉 You can watch Joshua´s episode here.

Congratulations, Joshua, well done and well deserved.

Mentor certification in Germany

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The Broadsword Academy Germany is happy and proud to announce, that Peter Stabel successfully earned mentorship for Level IV (MacGregor Method & Auxiliary Arts). Over the last years Peter proofed his ability to adopt his Broadsword skills on a great variety of weapons within the 4 families. He used and faced within many bouts different weapon types and styles. This inclueded Highland Dirk, Scottish Twohander, Bayonet & Musket, Quarterstaff, Cane, Cutlass, Smallsword and many more. He became especially fond of the Smallsword and uses it quite effectively within the concept of the MacGregor Method.

Peter_BAG

For a final test Peter used and faced 4 different weapons from all 4 familys in a row in his official 3 minutes certification bouts:

Peter also helped a lot to test the Lessons for the use of the medieval scottish Quillon-sword, which were finally put into the book “Scorners of Death”. He also always is very open minded to visit workshops of other HEMA-styles as well as bouting with different people at different events. Over the last years he proofed his skills in the MacGregor Method over and over again as you can see in many of our bouting videos. Here is one example using the Smallsword & Dagger:

Congratulations, Peter, well done and well deserved!