Traditional Irish stick fighting class taking place in Leitrim town
Speaking to the Leitrim Observer, Mr Leddy explained: “The idea of the group is to train women in the system but also to equip them with the skills necessary to protect themselves and their families, using the the traditional Irish martial art of bataireacht.”
Leitrim man Bernard Leddy is running a group specifically designed to empower women through the traditional martial art of bataireacht in Manorhamilton.
Speaking to the Leitrim Observer, Mr Leddy explained: “The idea of the group is to train women in the system but also to equip them with the skills necessary to protect themselves and their families, using the the traditional Irish martial art of bataireacht.”
He explained that bataireacht is traditional Irish stick fighting “so I’m doing a group specifically for women to teach them about it - it’s Ireland’s only remaining martial art and it will take place on Friday nights in Manorhamilton in Sexton House at 7pm. It’s all about empowering women.”
Mr Leddy has a long history in martial arts himself and has studied many different practices. “I did martial arts all my life. I was doing Japanese, Chinese, Philipino martial arts and started learning about Irish martial arts. I looked online and found a man called Glen Doyle who is the last hereditory stick fighter in the world and I went over to Canada and trained with him. He has now retired and handed the system over to me so I go all over the world teaching people traditionally Irish stick fighting.”
Bernard lives outside Manorhamilton near to Glenfarne. “bataireacht has a long history in Ireland and it’s only around the famine that it started to die out. It’s all linked to the faction fighting that used to go on. If you look on Dúchas.ie, it was a big thing in Ireland for many years. The Irish didn’t have access to the law so if someone did you wrong, you couldn’t go to the English courts because they didn’t care so you took matters into your own hands.”
He continued: “It would be at fairs, marts and church services (the church hated it). It’s linked back to Celts and is really, really old . The earlierst records we could find on it were a tribe called Harii who were based Germany and were part of the Teutoburg Forest that took out the Roman legions.”
He said that the Irish took the practice very seriously and would train daily . “When you look at old English reports from the time they talk about how martial the Irish were in their training because they would do the day’s work and then practice. It was also taught through hedge schools because its about self-defense as well. There was a big fight in Manorhamilton that I was reading about the other day during which a person was killed; it has a fantastic history and goes right back in Irish history. “
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He continued that after the famine, the art died out because “if you can’t eat, you can’t fight and people were starving and emigrating. Then you had the Gangs of New York; the famous book and film. What happened was the Irish went over there and ganged together. They were met with hostility by certain members of the community when they arrived and so the Irish banded together and stick fighting was one of the ways they did it. So people who were killing each other in Ireland were now defending each other in New York.”
He said that those who take part gain confidence in their abilities to defend themselves. “A lot of women in Ireland are told that women shouldn’t do this but when they come and train with us, they get a sense of empowerment. They might come in quiet and shy but when they start swinging a stick, they get a little more confident and then after a while, that confidence really comes through and you see them shine. I teach a male group on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then Friday night is just for women. The women come in and feel they can relax and everyone is the same boat and bonding together by trying to hit each other with sticks!”
He concluded: “It’s in the DNA and since I have been teaching in Ireland, people and people will just get something straight away that would take me ages to teach someone else so I think there is something linked to that. I want women to be able to defend themselves against potential abuse. It’s not just learning to use the stick; you are taught punch, kick and use the weapon and hands. There is a whole martial system there.”