In the summer of 1867, two ships were scheduled to set sail from Ireland: one for Boston, and the other for St. John's, Newfoundland. Edward Doyle, a scrapper from Galway, didn't care which one he stole aboard, as long as it took him far from home (and trouble). Fate complied, sort of: he wound up in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, a location that, despite its distance from the Emerald Isle, resembled it in almost every conceivable way. Within a year, Doyle would plant his roots in close to 80 unmanageable acres of Crown soil; on landing, though, he had nothing but a handful of possessions and one rather unusual legacy.
That legacy was the little-known art of Irish stick-fighting. Today, it is carried on by Edward Doyle's great-grandson, 38-year old Glen Doyle. A lifelong martial artist, Doyle is a former kung fu champion best known for teaching that art to Olympic skater Elvis Stojko. He is also the only Canadian to formally teach Irish stick-fighting as part of an unbroken lineage.
Lengths of white ash, blackthorn and oak, better known as shillelaghs, were used to lethal effect by the Irish for more than two millennia before being relegated to the status of mere tourist curios. Glen Doyle began his own stick training at the ripe old age of seven, when, after already undergoing three years of boxing instruction with his father, Gregory, he was finally introduced to the side of a blackthorn. It was all about tradition.
The Doyle clan had already practised its own brand of stick-fighting in Ireland. Although the men historically had made a living as hired muscle, their reputation for artful violence did not become cemented until the advent of uisce beatha bata rince in the mid-19th century. Pronounced ISH-key BA-ha BA-tha RINK-eh, the Gaelic name translates as "whisky stick dancing." Whisky refers to the distilleries that the founder of the system was paid to guard, while dancing was a euphemism that gave participants the freedom to speak openly about stick-fighting without attracting undue attention. Uisce was devised by Edward Doyle's uncle, a pugilist who drew upon his own expertise to create an innovative approach to the ancient art. According to John Hurley, who wrote Irish Gangs and Stick-Fighting, uisce is "a very effective, very creative style -- especially good at 'close-in' fighting. It's a great evolution and synthesis of traditional Irish stick-fighting and boxing." Although uisce was an unorthodox departure from more traditional styles, its track record soon made it highly sought after by other guards, mercenaries and fighters. Nevertheless, it was never taught outside of the clan. To illustrate this point, Glen Doyle cites the tale of a young man who went so far as to marry into the family just to learn the system. "He turned out to be a really good husband and father. They never did teach him the uisce, though."
By the time Glen's father, Gregory, was born the Doyle Clan's stick-fighting lineage had already narrowed considerably. Few family members back home studied it, and of his 15 siblings, Gregory was the only one to take it up. But he did so with abandon, becoming a fierce traditionalist. He eventually credited uisce with saving his life on the front lines of the Korean War, where he spent his 17th and 18th birthdays. Standing only 5-2 with a body that his son describes as "shaped like a hockey puck," the veteran displayed a brutal honesty and unnatural strength, both hallmarks of a congenital inability to back down from a fight. Even into his 50s, he was happy to brawl, once taking on a group of seven or eight men with a broken pool cue in place of his stick. He died of cancer in 1998, at the age of 64.
Today, Glen Doyle wields his father's heavily notched blackthorn during the classes he holds just outside Toronto. Breaking with tradition, he has become the first to teach uisce to non-Doyles, non-Irish, indeed, anyone who's seriously interested. This decision stems from his experiences studying kung fu. His teacher was Sifu Lore King Hong, a renowned fighter in his own right, and one of the first people in Canada to teach the art to non-Chinese. After close to 15 years of intensive kung fu training, Doyle could only wonder where his life would have been had Lore not taught outside of his own cultural parameter. "When I approched my dad about it," Doyle says, tensing his features, "he had three or four seconds of, 'No. Absolutely not.' And then he said 'All right.' That was it."
Due to Glen Doyle's efforts, the number of uisce practitioners is growing for the first time in more than a hundred years. The system is evolving, too. Drawing on his kung fu background, Doyle has fortified uisce by adding a new level of detail to the footwork. While this innovation has raised the ire of armchair stick-fighters and historians, he dismisses their concerns by citing the approval of his father as validation enough: "I've had arguments over the Internet," says Doyle. "I tell them to come prove me wrong. So far, no one has."
