Seanbhata

The Irish blackthorn stick or shillelagh has a larger entry than the other items because it occupies a special place in Gaelic martial arts.

Not only was it the last unique weapon used by the Irish after they were forbidden to own swords by occupation forces—which means it probably inherited many of the skills associated with Irish swordsmanship—but an enormous amount of research and practical experimentation has gone into restoring these skills in recent years.

This makes blackthorn stick fighting, seanbhata (the old stick), one of the most exciting new areas of Irish cultural redevelopment today!

The Guardian of Sacred Places

The sinister crone of the woods, the wishing thorn, there are as many tales told of the blackthorn trees of Ireland as there are spiky thorns on its branches. The old people planted them around their tombs and sacred places and the legends say to beware should you push too far into the twisting hollows of the blackthorn thicket, for you might not emerge in the same place, or even the same world, as you left behind!

Seanchaí say that the branches of the blackthorn should never be cut except on the old May Day and the old November day, that is the 11th of each month, and no person of Ireland no matter how uneducated or unlettered would take so much as a thorn from their branches besides those days.

The men of the Fianna bore hardened blackthorn sticks bound around thrice with iron, but even they feared the wounds of the thorn, which would often bleed heavily and turn septic. This was because the tips of the thorns would break off in wounds and dig deeper, where the blackthorn's poisons would wreak havoc, getting into the blood and spreading throughout the body.

It was called Straif in the Ogham Tracts, the earliest books of Irish writing that most know of, and its name meant “the keeper and increaser of dark secrets”, one of the eight chieftain trees. In more recent Irish it is known as draighean.

The blackthorn has a special association with winter, for it was said that the Cailleach, taker of life, would sound the beginning of that dark season by drumming her blackthorn staff on the ground. A particularly cold winter might be called a blackthorn winter, and in places crowns were made of it before being burned and the ashes scattered across the fields.

Many dark deeds and stories of witchcraft and murder mention the blackthorn. It was favoured by occultists to work their craft in times gone by. Its thorns were called “the pins of slumber”, and less mysterious but equally mischievous folk would put them under the saddles of horses, so they'd work their way around and eventually cause the horse to throw its rider!

A blackthorn tree may live for a full century, and its descendants grow where the old tree falls, so the thorns protecting ancient mounds have a long lineage. And this, perhaps has kept ancient places safer than they might have been.

The History of Seanbhata

There are some records of stick fighting, also called bataireacht or boiscín, and staff fighting before the British occupying forces enacted the Penal Laws at the end of the 17th century, such as in the mythohistorical tale of Da Dearga’s Hostel:

“Thereafter Da Derga came to them, with thrice fifty warriors, each of them having a long head of hair to the hollow of his polls, and a short cloak to their buttocks. Speckled-green drawers they wore, and in their hands were thrice fifty great clubs of thorn with bands of iron.”

However it is only after the Irish were disarmed and forbidden the use of weapons that stick fighting rose to a prominent position in Irish culture. The art flourished and developed into widespread mass combats between clans, called “faction fights”.

While often of a sporting character, as time went on they became more deadly, with hundreds of people killed in some of them.

Despite the disdain in which the concept of Irish stick fighting was held by the British, they were full of praise for the skill of the fighters, with Allanson-Winn writing that “Sometimes a great deal of skill is displayed, and I often wonder whether a really expert swordsman would be much more than a match for some quick, strong, Kerry boys I could pick out.”

Even the infamous British cavalry benefitted from Irish stick fighting, since their training was reformed after several of their men were thrashed by an Irish peasant with a stick. Such stories abound.

There were many schools of Irish stick fighting, and some of the best fighters travelled from place to place, earning a name and a purse for themselves, like wandering Ronin, or masterless Samurai. They were respected and feared, even being able to back up whole crowds by the threat of their blackthorn sticks.

Irish women would rarely join faction fights directly, contenting themselves with filling blankets with stones and either throwing the stones individually or using them like a flail from the sidelines. The fighters were allowed to deflect their attacks but forbidden to hit women directly.

Traveller women were the exception, since they often took up stick fighting and became fearsome stick fighters in their own right, joining in the faction fights alongside the men.

After An Gorta Mór the faction fights and associated skills diminished. Stick fights were also seen as being divisive by Irish nationalist leaders and were called barbaric by the British, so when the GAA was formed, stick fighting was largely abandoned.

This was (almost) a terrible loss to the nation, representing as it did the disappearance of a true Irish martial art and most likely the last vestiges of our unique style of Irish swordsmanship.

The Making of Blackthorn Sticks

There are many blackthorn suppliers today, each with their own “recipe” for their sticks. The process usually involves storing the stick somewhere warm for a few years to dry it and season it properly.

In olden times stickmakers might put the stick into a niche up the chimney, or bury it in a compost heap, slathered with butter, to season it.

One of the most elaborate and probably effective descriptions of stick preparation comes from the 19th century, where we read of a stick being dug up and stripped of thorns, then having its butt or lower end placed in warm ashes for many nights to drive out the moisture.

When the sap was gone and the stick had hardened, it was cut to its final shape and steeped in brine, then taken out and rubbed with oil for hours, using a soft cloth.

Lastly, the stickmaker went out and killed a magpie [possibly meaning a hooded crow, associated with the war-witch, the Morrigan], drained it of its blood, and used this liquid to polish the blackthorn until its surface was a glossy black colour. After being tipped with an iron ferrule, the beloved weapon was ready for adventure! Such high quality sticks were cherished almost as family members and heirlooms.

Fighting sticks always have the thorns stripped away and are usually unvarnished, taking only a coat of lard or oil for protection. Please avoid imitation sticks in tourist shops, these are made of indeterminate wood and are unsafe to even use as walking sticks.

The Anatomy of a Bata

There are several features which characterise a good fighting stick. As mentioned earlier, it should be oiled or larded rather than varnished, since varnish will tend to crack and wear away in spots.

The shaft of the stick should be slender yet still thick enough to be able to withstand strikes as well as deal them out. It should have a little flexibility also.

All thorns should be removed, although the rounded bumps left behind are helpful in terms of maintaining a grip and deflecting incoming blows sliding up the shaft.

The murlán or knob at the top should be as rounded and symmetrical as possible, so that strikes may be made however the stick is held.

The sáil, point, or ferrule on the bottom can be of any metal. If the stick is intended for sparring purposes, a rubber ferrule would be a better idea.

The length of the stick depends on the user—a taller person may prefer a longer stick. However the basic guideline is it should be a little longer than thrice the length from the elbow to the wrist. People are encouraged to experiment with different lengths to find one they are most comfortable with.

The kinds of “shillelaghs” usually found in tourist shops bear no relationship to real blackthorn walking sticks, so looking for a stick from a reputable dealer online might be the best idea.

The most important feature of your stick should be that it is light and moves quickly—Irish stick fighting is based on speed and accuracy more than raw power or weight. A heavy or unwieldy stick will hamper your efforts to move around and will reduce your ability to strike anything at all.

Even reach, the length of the stick, is subordinate to its speed. There are many stories of smaller men with accordingly smaller sticks defeating much larger men. The speed compensates for lower mass in terms of striking power, since all of the weight and leverage of the stick is concentrated to a small point on the rounded murlán.

The State of the Art

Seanbhata has been the subject of a great deal of research over the past decade and more, with much of the best work by Maxime Chouinard in Canada. Another researcher, John Hurley, has developed an extensive categorisation of the various types and sticks that may have been used from the early 17th century, and perhaps even earlier, through to the end of the 19th century.

There are several contemporary groups involved in this activity.

Among them are what has become known as Doyle style Irish stick fighting. We have not seen any evidence that this style existed before the 1990s.

The stick fighting promoted by this group has raised questions, involving things like standing on one leg to block leg strikes, adopting a boxing stance while holding a stick—displayed on their logo (when it is pointed out how that exposes the hands to injury from an opposing stick, the usual response is that you’re unlikely to face someone who is also holding a stick), pointlessly crossed legs while striking, and so on.

Other groups make no particular claims to historicity but have chosen to explore the form factor of the blackthorn stick by applying sound martial principles to its use. In this category we would place the Combat Shillelagh project by Brent Earlwine. It can be found here and has valuable lessons to teach:

https://www.combatshillelagh.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@combatshillelagh

Their work emphasises that the restoration of seanbhata is a living work in progress and that there is no one true way—even when it was widespread across Ireland there were many variations, many different masters and styles, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.

However all of the real seanbhata styles, themselves probably closely related to ancient Irish swordfighting techniques, should of course rest upon a solid historical foundation, something which has only been focused on to any extent by researcher Maxime Chouinard.

Antrim Bata is the resulting form of seanbhata, named for the county in which it was discovered, taught by an individual believed to be one of the last if not the last heir to a living Irish stickfighting tradition. This gentleman passed on as much as he knew on the subject, which has since been built into something approaching a comprehensive martial art.

As always such claims of family traditions should be verified as far as possible, which is rarely very far, but there can be no question about the depth of properly referenced research that has gone into Antrim bata. The main essay describing this research process can be found here:

https://hemamisfits.com/2015/02/03/what-is-irish-stick-fighting/

Even if we discount claims of living lineages as unreliable, the emergent style of Irish stickfighting looks like what is depicted in early records of Irish stickfighting, it behaves as described in the histories, and most importantly it is a very effective martial art in practical use.

With that said, while the core material in Antrim bata is solidly grounded in historical examples, several of the elaborations, training techniques and some of the conclusions appear to be modern and novel additions with little connection to either historical or contemporary martial arts, although seanbhata does draw on the Antrim style.

In the following sections we will cover the fundamentals of seanbhata before moving into some elaborations and technique concepts.

These are not presented as the final form or a finished martial art; rather these instructions should be viewed as a starting point upon which further techniques can be built, just as Irish stick fighters did in times past.

The Irish name for a stick fighter is bataire, plural batairí.

“The skill our cavalry obtained in the last European war was from the practice of the “Loose stick play” ; The necessity of which was taught them by the fact that the best sword drills of a cavalry regiment were completely worsted by some Irish peasants with the stick.”
Capt. William McLeod Moore · 1852

Seanbhata—Theory and Strategies

There are six reaches or ranges in Seanbhata and in most martial arts. These are listed below in order from the farthest reach to the nearest.

• The Sixth Reach: Learn about your opponent from afar. Watch their attacks and defences, come to understand how they think and their preferred strategies. Learn as much from what they do not show as what they do show.
• The Fifth Reach: Provocation and intimidation, whether from skilful displays of stick mastery, insults, or other psychological manoeuvres intended to destabilise and unbalance an opponent. The Haka war dance is a good example of this strategy in action. Separate your enemy's skill from their will.
• The Fourth Reach: Long range combat, using the lunge and the lasc or lash.
• The Third Reach: Mid range combat, where Seanbhata is most effective.
• The Second Reach: Close range combat, using strikes from an Cosanta Dúnta, jabs and snaps.
• The First Reach: Grappling and wrestling, fistfighting, locks and leg sweeps.

General tips and advice:

• The best time to attack is immediately after your opponent attacks.
• Know the distance between you and your opponent, control it with footwork.
• Practise precision strikes, choose your target before striking.
• If your opponent holds their stick too far forward, take it away from them.
• Always return to a guard and avoid close fights unless against an opponent with a longer weapon.
• Putting your offhand behind a blow, open handed, can add power to a strike.
• Coconut shells on sticks make good if short-lived practise targets.

“But MacEgan was now hard pressed inside the banqueting hall. The Murphys and their friends and faction soon recovered from their surprise, and though none dare approach MacEgan within the stroke of his shillelagh, yet they seized knives and forks, and hurled them, with bottles and tumblers, at his head.

MacEgan received many severe cuts and blows, but he still kept his enemies at bay, so that none dare lay a hand on him, and wheeling, with the dexterity of a hawk upon the wind, and striking down now one and now another of his opponents, as they came within reach of his formidable weapon, he kept retreating all the time towards the door.”

Chapter List (click to read):

1. Foreword
2 The Irish Language
3. Reading
4. Making and Shaping
5. The Physical Gael
6. The Warrior Gael
- The Crios Belt
- Open Hand Traditions
- Collar and Elbow Wrestling
- Gaelic Weapons
- Seanbhata
- Seanbhata Basics
- Seanbhata Guards
- Seanbhata Strikes and Blocks
- Seanbhata Close Fighting
- The Heroic Feats
7. Tradition and Culture
8. Organisation