The Shillelaghs

I gave my son Sean Keegan a shillelagh for Christmas this year.

I found the shillelagh I gave him in the back of a closet in my house on Seymour Street in early 1974. There were three of them hidden away. The house had been bought by my great grandfather Tom Keegan and his wife Bridget in 1909 where they raised a family in the southwest Germantown section of Philadelphia. I had recently purchased the house from my great aunt’s estate after I got out of the Navy and moved back in the old neighborhood in late 1973. The Seymour Street house, where my grandmother and mother were raised was around the corner from the house I grew up in on Greene Street. I showed the shillelaghs I found to my grandmother and she said that they belonged to her father. She already had the other one in her home and kept it beside the door. I had seen that shillelagh many times while growing up so I knew what I was looking at when I found the other sticks in the closet. A shillelagh is an Irish walking stick that was also known for settling arguments. It was a formidable weapon made from a stout knotty blackthorn wood. According to my grandmother her father got them from his grandfather… another Tom Keegan who brought the sticks from Donegal Ireland when he came to this country in the early 1840’s. He would be my great great great grandfather. She gave me one of the shillelaghs and the others went into her closet and stayed with the house. I kept my shillelagh for over forty years in my several homes until giving it to Sean.

Now the shillelagh will be sitting on the mantel of my son’s new home, a recently renovated 1840’s farmhouse in upstate New York and will stay in the family for more generations.

My brother Tom had the other shillelaghs after my grandmother passed. My mother also lived in that house and after she passed Tom kept the house. I wonder if he knew about the shillelaghs in the closet.  The one still sat in the umbrella rack near the front door. Now my brother Dan is living in the house and has been renovated it. We've talked about the other shillelaghs and I came up with a plan for distributing them. It is a Irish male tradition so I thought we should give them out to the next generation. We don't have many boys in our family at this time. Dan's son Nick Emery would get one. Sean has one.  Another one should go to Betsy's grandson Chase. The last one would go to my grandson Henry. That should keep them in the family another hundred years.