I inherited this shillelagh from my Grandpa Taylor. The word is pronounced she-LAY-lee, which is, according to Wikipedia, an anglicized form of the Irish term sail eille. I read somewhere that it means "a stick to hit with."
The shillelagh has become a symbol of Irishness. (Purists would argue that mine is a touristy imitation.) Real shillelaghs, according to one website I saw, were walking sticks with a handy knob at one end for whacking people of the opposite faction.
Opposing factions have also become a symbol of Irishness.
In fact, not too long after Grandpa's family left Belfast when he was nine, Northern Ireland's opposing factions boiled into a toxic stew. Belfast became a clot of checkpoints and bomb-sniffers, tangled in razor wire. Knowing Grandpa's strong tendency to stand his ground, he might not have survived to adulthood in that town.
Of course, the shillelagh reminds me of Grandpa's way. Tough, funny, knotty and blunt. He could be more blunt than most people, but he rarely used his own words.
He quoted Longfellow and Robert Burns, but mostly the Bible. The Little Flock Hymnbook got lots of play, too.
Once, when I repeated some gossip in front of him, he said, Whatsoever things are of good report...think on these things. (That's from Philippians 4.) Fortunately I was mature enough to thank him. As a younger person I would've just gone silent, mad.
Over a decade ago, when we got the call that my Grandpa Lamb died and my sister was crying in the driveway, Grandpa T hugged her and said:
Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep
From which none ever wakes to weep;
A calm and undisturbed repose,
Where pow'rless is the last of foes.
(McKay)
He quoted this one often...it's the last line of "To a Louse," by Robert Burns (1786):
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
I have the shillelagh in my bedside drawer. I have the blundering, foolish notion that if someone intrudes some night, I'll whack them with it.
