Medieval Swordsmanship Presentation Holy Rosary School, Gr.4 May 16, 2002

After my scholler test I was invited to give a presentation at Holy Rosary Catholic School on Tweedsmuir near St. Clair in Toronto on Thursday, May 16, 2002. The demonstration was scheduled to coincide with the student's study of medieval history. When I say I was invited, I do not do justice to the word. After my scholler test, a representative of the grade 4 class who had come to watch came up to me and formally and politely handed me a package on behalf of his grade. The package contained literally dozens of hand-written and decorated letters asking if I would come and give a presentation to their class. I had no possible way to refuse.

I suspect that one of their teachers was behind this invitation.

I asked another AEMMA student if he would be willing to help with the demonstration, and Darren Smith agreed. After duly requesting and receiving permission from the principal instructors of AEMMA, I scheduled a brief one hour demonstration with Holy Rosary.

Darren and myself arrived in the morning, carrying standard light protection and training weapons--gambeson, padded knee and elbows, hickory longsword wasters, rondel wasters.

The demonstration took place in the school gymnasium. We put on our padding during the morning announcements. Then several classes of students came in. Each student wore a costume for the event. Darren and I were surrounded by a crowd of various princesses, knights, peasants and priests. Some had very detailed costumes--with cardboard visors that raised and lowered on cardboard helms. I was impressed.

All the students were extremely polite and quietly sat in a large circle around the outside of the room. Children are an excellent audience.

I began with a short description of the Academy and its aims. After pointing out that anyone could ask a question at any time, I outlined the schedule of the morning's events:

• History of longsword combat, focusing on Liberi's system. I passed around my Heimrick rondel dagger, to much excitement.
• Sword nomenclature and properties
• Grappling fundamentals (4 posta)
• Basic grappling moves and counters with takedowns
• Dagger attacks and redirects
• Dagger disarms
• Longsword postae
• Longsword strikes
• Phase I longsword
• Phase II longsword
• Phase III longsword
• Limited free fencing
• Question and Answer

All went very well. The students were surprised at how fast the weapons could move, and laughed when Darren took me to the ground in the grappling manoeuvers.

At the end of the free fencing, one of Darren's strikes broke the guard completely off of my waster. This signalled the end of the demonstration for the morning.

We fielded many questions of the usual sort: "How do you go to the bathroom in armor?" "Could a knight get back up if he fell down?" "Did you live in medieval times?" (I loved that one--I said I was born in 1968, which may seem like medieval times to them, but most assuredly was not.)

Afterwards, the students all went back to the library, and two students remained to lead us back when we had packed up. I was escorted by a beautiful young lady back to the library where a feast awaited Darren and I.

I hope that we provided some historically accurate items to their curriculum, and I would enjoy going back to do it again another time. Click on the thumbnail image below to view a larger copy of the image.

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Scholler, Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts