We were asked this week by a good friend and “fellow traveller” in the martial arts about the use of paired shillelagh in stickfighting, whether shillelagh were ever used in a manner similar to paired escrima sticks. Now, “ever” is a long time and no doubt in some valley somewhere, someone’s great grandfather was known …
It’s hard to read much of the literature of Shillelaghs and Irish stickfighting without coming across the phenomenon of the “Faction Fight”, or the “Fair Fight”. “Faction Fighting” refers to large organised groups of (usually) young, (usually) men, meeting to participate in a mass stickfighting battle. Sometimes they were described in terms we’d use to …
Fair Fighting and Shillelagh “too small for a war, too mean for a sport” Read More »
