CHAPTER II
THE SHILLELAGH
As the Yorkshireman is said to sport on his escutcheon a flea, a fly, and a flitch of bacon, so in the popular imagination an Irishman of the real old sort is usually conceived in association with a pig, a pipe, and a shillelagh. Rightly considered, one supposes that the shillelagh is a survival of the pre-historic club. In any case, it is a weapon of some character, chiefly notable for its handiness in the matter of skull cracking, and believed to be the pride and joy of every Paddy worth his salt. The shillelagh has undoubtedly earned for the Irish a reputation for roguish and heroic delight in battle. “Tread on the tail of my coat, now,” is supposed to be forever on Irish lips, with immediate results in the article of broken heads. And when we English wish the use of a metaphor for rows and scuffles, free fights and so forth, we have a habit of remarking that the affair amounted to “a regular Donnybrook”—Donnybrook, of course, being a sort of feast of shillelaghs to which all Ireland was wont annually to repair. Of the number of shillelaghs in Ireland at the present moment the blue books give no account. It seems to me doubtful whether there are a thousand in the whole country. One may travel through Ireland for weeks on end, and come across nothing of the sort. The only shillelagh I had the pleasure of seeing in the course of a recent, lengthy Irish journey was in the hands of a very ill-clad youth who looked more like a Lancashire cotton operative out of work than a broth of a boy. And the shillelagh in question was of polished black wood without knots, and the top of it had a nickel silver knob, like a beau’s cane. The weapon, indeed, reminded one of nothing so much as a Salmon & Gluckstein, silver-headed, ebony walking-stick, cut short. The owner proudly assured me that it was his bit of a blackthorn, and the finest for miles around. It seems more than probable that the shillelagh-notion of an Irishman had at one time something in it. While Donnybrook Fair has been suppressed, there can be no getting away from the fact that there once was a Donnybrook, and a pretty warm one to boot. Says the poet:
“Who has e’er had the luck to see Donnybrook Fair?
An Irishman, all in his glory, is there,
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green!
His clothes spic and span new, without e’er a speck,
A neat Barcelona tied round his neat neck;
He goes to a tent, and he spends half a crown,
He meets with a friend, and for love knocks him down