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While appealing, I await further evidence of this usage before giving it precedence over other etymologies. He speculates that the English word shillelagh may actually come from a shortening of the Irish for ‘thong walking stick’. Irish martial arts researcher John Hurley proposes a third interpretation in his book Shillelagh: The Irish Fighting Stick. They don’t give provenance for the former, but at least maide is a more common word for stick (along with bata). Or perhaps the etymology is reversed and sail éille is actually an Irish appropriation of the English s hillelagh, which was itself an anglicization of the Irish place name? I note that Foras na Gaeilge’s New English-Irish Dictionary lists both sail éille and maide draighin as translations of shillelagh. The English word for an Irish cudgel may also be a corruption of the Gaelic for ‘beam/log/willow with a thong’, which refers to a stout stick equipped with a leather strap that could be secured around the user’s wrist. By 1773, Oxford shows that shillelagh was used to refer to a wooden cudgel, seemingly in reference to the famous oaks of the village/barony of Shillelagh. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the place name comes from the Irish for ‘descendants of Elach’, referring to the sept of an 8 th century Irish king in the Province of Leinster. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first use of shillelagh (spelled Shelela) in 1677 as the name of a village and barony in County Wicklow, Ireland, which was known for its oak forests. And just to be thorough, alternate spellings of shillelagh in English include: shelaly, shillaley, shillely, shillaly, shilley, shillela, shilala, shillala, shillalah, shilela, shilelah, shilelagh, shillealah, and shilelagh. The origin or etymology of the English word shillelagh is a bit convoluted. Finally, I offer some brief preliminary thoughts on the cultural importance of the shillelagh as a symbol, which I listen for through music.
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Then, I discuss the ways it is currently used in reference to the practice of Irish stick-fighting as shillelagh martial arts. First, I consider how the noun may have come into English. In this introductory blog post, I define the word shillelagh is three ways. An Overview of Irish Stick-fighting and Its Musical Legacy.Ī shillelagh is a wooden cudgel, and the word is pronounced “shuh-lay-lee.” More specifically, a shillelagh is an Irish style of stout, knobbed stick that can function as a weapon.