You never see the unfinished type on the right in 19th century illustrations. Same thing in Percy Longhurst’s Jiu Jitsu and Other Methods of Self DefenseĪ finished and unfinished shillelagh by Con Stanton of Killarney in the 1940s. The author of the Footpad and the cane does not really describe the size of the shillelagh, but actually shows it in photographs. Winn takes the time to say that we should be able to grab the stick with the thumb up in the same manner as shown in fig 14: 14, without the least spraining your thumb, then you may be pretty sure that you are not “over-sticked,” and that your cuts and thrusts will be smart to an extent not to be acquired if you carried a stick ever so little too heavy for you. If it comes up to guard readily and without any apparent effort or straining of your wrist, and if you find you can make all the broadsword cuts, grasping it as shown in Fig. Let the stick you habitually carry be one well within your compass. Without wishing to detract from the undoubted merits, in certain special cases, of these very big sticks, I am bound to say that, only being useful to a limited extent, they should not be encouraged. Some time ago it was rather the fashion for very young men to affect gigantic walking-sticks-possibly with the view of intimidating would-be plunderers and robbers, and investing themselves generally with a magic sort of noli me tangere air. Some blackthorns are so enormously heavy that it is next to impossible to do any quick effective work with them, and one is reminded, on seeing a man “over sticked,”-if I may be allowed such an expression-of Lord Dundreary’s riddle, “Why does a dog wag his tail? Because the dog is stronger than the tail,” or of David in Saul’s armour. The weight of the stick is an important matter to consider. Let’s check with Allanson-Winn, who wrote a little bit about bataireacht in his book Broadsword and Singlestick: (Again, what I am going to say applies only to Antrim Bata, other styles may have their own rationales)Īs I teach a traditional style, I always like to look back into history to see what people thought was a great fighting stick. So let’s talk about it then, how heavy does a shillelagh really need to be?
This is the image that has been presented of a shillelagh in popular culture, and surely that’s what a bata fundamentally is? Right? A lot of people come to us expecting that we will be using large and heavy clubs. The main reason being that I get a few people discovering bataireacht and being surprised at the weight of the shillelaghs we use. Here is a subject I have been wanting to tackle for a while.
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