Shillelaghs: Make and Market Them

Image Gallery [1] Beware of the delicate appearance of the hawthorn in its spring finery... the limbs of the shillelagh-to-be are armored with 1-5 spikes!

You don't have to be Irish to make a sturdy and marketable shillelagh (pronounced shih-LAY-lee or shih-LAY-lah). In fact, the gnarled, hardwood wallopers (which the Celts have carried—as canes or weapons—since the days of the legendary Irish giant, Finn MacCool) are really pretty easy to craft.

The traditional walking stick's name comes from an old Gaelic word meaning "oak club", andcenturies agothese weapons were made of oak . . . cut from a great forest near the village of Shillelagh in County Wicklow.

Before the eighth century, the sturdy bludgeons were used to settle old family feuds at village fairs . . . (or at least to solve the problems until the next fair was held). On such occasions the shillelagh was seldom swung with just one hand, but grasped in the middle with both fists and brought down with head-splitting force. Sometimes, however, an extremely strong man would use two shillelaghs: one to fend off attacks, and the other to bash his opponent.

When the British invaded the Emerald Isle, they not only chopped down the great oak forests (which had been considered sacred by the Druids) and shipped off the timber to England, but also imposed strict laws . . . one of which was a ban on weapons.

After that, shillelaghs—far from disappearing along with the oak—simply began to be made from the wood of the Irish blackthorn (a species of hawthorn), and the innocent-appearing "canes" became the Irish resisters' main weapon in their continuing struggle against the conquerors. In later years, as more peaceful pursuits prevailed, the traditional club was used primarily as a walking staff, or as a stick to herd cattle.

Today the shillelagh is a symbolic souvenir of the Irish spirit, and—according to New York City's largest cane shop—the Gaelic cudgel is one of the best-selling (at prices from $30.00 to $37.50 each! ) types of walking stick.

WILD RAW MATERIAL

You'll have to be mighty careful, however, when you start to gather your raw shillelagh material, because all of the 100-plus species of North American hawthorn are armed with thorns that grow anywhere from one to five inches long. You'll have no trouble recognizing members of the genus Crataegus —whether they're the knee—high or tree-high variety—because their straight (or moderately curved) single spikes are not shared by any of North America's other native shrubs or trees.

American hawthorns were originally found only as undergrowth in dense forests, but later—as homes and shopping centers whittled the woodlands away—the small trees were able to hybridize. oday they grow abundantly in thickets along woodlands, in deserted fields, in moist ground on the banks of ponds and streams . . . and even at altitudes up to 8,.500 feet!