Bataireacht: The Art of Irish Stick-Fighting
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Dating its origins exactly, of course, is speculation,
but what is certain is that the use of the stick as a
weapon seems to have been considered -- by the Irish
themselves -- a quintessentially Irish characteristic.
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By John W. Hurley
Special to The Wild Geese Today
PART 2: THE ORIGINS OF FACTION FIGHTING
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| To buy John Hurley's book, click on the cover image |
Faction Fighting's origins, like those of most martial
arts, are obscured by myth. One theory has it that
shillelagh fighting originated as a means of training
for European-style swordplay.
Under the early Penal Laws, Roman Catholics were
prohibited from owning swords and other weapons; as a
result Irishmen could only train for sword fighting
with sticks. And they would need this training, as
thousands of them prepared for service abroad,
especially in the Irish Brigade, a semi-autonomous
unit of the French army, originally under the
authority of the Jacobite King James II. Trained by
their recruiters, these Irish soldiers (the famous
"Wild Geese") would at least have some martial
arts training before their entry into the Continent's
armies.
While certain styles of Irish stick-fighting are
indeed meant as training for swordplay (the Bata
Pionsa style, for example), there are problems with
this theory. For example, Ireland has one of the
oldest unbroken warrior traditions in Western Europe,
and it thus seems unlikely that the Irish would have
imported foreign fencing styles in the 17th century.
Yet this theory seems to suggest that. This seems
unlikely given both the ancient history of
stick-fighting in Ireland and the traditions of
aboriginal Irish orders of knighthood, such as the
Knights of The Red Branch of Ulster. These orders
predate the Norman orders of chivalry by over 1,000
years, perhaps more, and many of the men fighting in
the Irish Brigade were, in fact, hereditary Irish
warriors descendant from this Gaelic warrior
tradition.
It seems unlikely, therefore, that such an ancient and
conservative society, once dominated by a warrior
aristocracy, would import and practice Continental
fencing styles in exclusion to all pre-existing,
native Irish traditions. And certainly, if thousands
of Irish soldiers a year could be smuggled in and out
of Ireland, then obtaining illegal weaponry such as
swords would have presented even fewer difficulties.
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The Irish god Dagda had a magical wooden "shillelagh"
whose strike could either kill or restore to life,
depending on the end of the stick used.
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Some contemporary writers attributed the origins of
Faction Fighting to disputes over "Mayballs." These
were hurling balls (or "sliotars") awarded to village
youth groups by a village "Queen of The May" during
Irish May Day (Beltaine) ceremonies. In some cases,
competing youth groups may have fought for the
prestige or honor of being awarded the Mayballs as
recognition of their control or domination of a
region.
The combined practices of fighting at times of
specific seasonal change (like May 1st), with wooden
sticks, over symbols of fertility and fecundity
(Mayballs), are all aspects of a once coherent,
archaic Irish, cultural folk system. And it was from
within this complex native Irish cultural matrix -
part pagan folk belief, part sport, part politics and
part paramilitarism -- that I feel the Irish art of
stick-fighting was originally born.
For generations, Irishmen have been raised on stories
of warriors using sticks, swords, axes, and spears as
their primary weapons, and there are numerous examples
in Irish mythology and history, of the use of the
stick as a weapon, which reflect the ancient origins
of Irish stick-fighting.
Faction Fighting was an ancient Irish tradition of the
old Gaelic Tuaths, which survived into the modern age.
It was a system of group dueling used to settle
disputes over territory, family, economic, political
and or religious rights.
In Irish mythology, hurling as stick fighting is used
as sword training for young warriors, such as in the
tale of the Boyhood Deeds of CuChullian. The day
before The First Battle of Moytura, the Fir Bolg "Rua
The Bloody" and his allies "the Twenty One Sons of
Mil", challenge the youth of the Tuatha De
Dannan to a fatal hurling match on the field of Magh
Nia -- in a way not unlike that of a 19th century
Irish Faction Fight.
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| Irish faction fighters use their "shillelaghs" on each other in an illustration from Carleton's book. |
The Irish god Dagda had a magical wooden "shillelagh"
whose strike could either kill or restore to life,
depending on the end of the stick used. The
qualifications of a would-be warrior of the F'anna,
included a test where the warrior stood in a pit and
had to fend off cast spears using a shield and a
stick. It is hard to imagine that stories such as
these -- which were the ancient Irish equivalent of
film and television today -- had no effect on the
traditions and mindset of Irish warriors.
An example of this impact can be found in the novel
"West In Donegal" (written by Seamus MacGrianna), the
character Tarlach Og O'Donnell imagines a faction
fight he is witnessing as a kind of heroic
re-enactment of the battle of Corr Sleive, which was
fought between the O'Donnell clan and the English. And
there is some evidence which suggest that the Fenians
took their name from a nationalist faction called the
Fianna.
There are a number of aspects of Ireland's rich
cultural heritage that have unfortunately been
forgotten or ignored, left on the periphery of Irish
popular culture. Centuries of deliberate and
repressive warfare, famine, and forced migration have
left many Irish people, even in Ireland, alienated
from some of their own most fascinating and empowering
cultural traditions. One of these seemingly forgotten
traditions is the Irish art of Bataireacht or
Stick-Fighting.
Read Part 1: The "Faction Fighting" Irish
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