Bataireacht - History

History

The Irish have used various sticks and cudgels as weapons of self-defense for centuries. Since ancient times, the arts of stick fighting had been handed down from fathers to sons or learned in traditional military fencing schools. The shillelagh is still identified with Irish popular culture to this day, although the arts of bataireacht are much less so. The sticks used for bataireacht are not of a standardised size, as there are various styles of bataireacht, using various kinds of sticks.

By the 18th century bataireacht became increasingly associated with Irish gangs called "factions". Irish faction fights involved large groups of men (and sometimes women) who engaged in melees at county fairs, weddings, funerals, or any other convenient gathering. One social historian, Conley, believed that this reflected a culture of recreational violence. Most historians however agree that faction fighting had class and political overtones, as depicted for example in the works of William Carleton and James S. Donnelly's "Irish Peasants: Violence & Political Unrest, 1780".

By the early 19th century, these gangs had organized into larger regional federations, which coalesced from the old Whiteboys, into the Caravat and Shanavest factions. Beginning in Munster the Caravat and Shanavest "war" erupted sporadically throughout the 19th century and caused some serious disturbances.