9. Conclusion and Contemporary Implications
“I’ve been saying in class in the last year, something that the Blackthorn told me, which is whenever you see a stick fighting art anywhere around the world, follow the stick and if you follow the stick, you find a tree and if you find a tree you find a place and if you find that place, you find a people and as soon as you find those people, you will learn what their relationship is with that tree and that stick and the art and you will either find the story of a people defending that tree as their kin because that tree is their kin or you’re going to find a story of those people defending that tree as their property because they either stole this art and/or the land and you will very likely find a whole fucking mess that makes that nice simple thing I told you way more convoluted” – Cuán McCann 2025
Story As Medicine
Through embodied performance and intergenerational knowledge transmission, stories impart innumerable functions in connection with place. Story-bearers and communities carry this medicine in pursuit of meaning-making, which is translated into protective and offensive therapies. These co-created narratives shape socially sanctioned realities with enough nuance to support divergent storylines of agency and resistance for those individuals and groups that boldly declare their right to exist in opposition to imposed norms and enough flexibility to nourish changing attitudes and dynamic culture over time. It is on the threshold of these negotiations that opportunities for healing and transformation come about.
Cautionary tales promote social cohesion and discourage aberrant behaviours, as defined by community in response to threats and challenges, yet they provide sites of adjudication for shifting these norms. The collective container, which shelters narrative medicine allows contradictory beliefs and complex identities to exist simultaneously and infuse with one another to reveal new paths. Satire, as a therapeutic form of public shaming, can be an oral check for overreaches of authority and inspiration for alternatives to carceral punishment with an emphasis on restorative and community justice, while embodied narrative practices in connection with the land offer novel stories of healing with guidance from ancestors and Otherworldly voices.
The protective properties of Blackthorn story medicine are reflected in the oral transmission of ancestral knowledge of the plant and their associations with the Otherworld. Legends and lore preserved in the landscape, through visible elements or memories of it inform current behaviours by holding crystallised memories and marking areas of danger. Geasa[1] around the plant discourage interaction, adding significance to voluntary collaborations. This reciprocal relationship between people and land through story can be as distilled as an innate avoidance of the thorny weed or as expansive as reenacting modes of resistance performed by oppressed ancestors, who engaged in cultural ecology by taking up weapons from the walls of their oppression. The medicinal lessons of Blackthorn are volunteered and expressed as forms of entertainment, education, cultural transmission and social cohesion, which is mirrored by the folklore of any place and/or ancestor.[2]
Irish Folk Medical Tradition
Folk medicine and other vernacular relationships with Blackthorn demonstrate the plant’s dichotomous nature of protective and dangerous through phytochemistry and ritual or practical action. A multi-layered analysis of these stories and connections within the context of their performance has provided a wattled framework for the ability of story medicine to afford a sense of control in the face of uncertainty and a societal resolution to individual and community dis-ease in solidarity with the land.
In my conversation with Cú McCann, he recognised parallels between the clearing properties of Blackthorn – purgative, laxative, blood cleansing, antimicrobial – and their “expression as a martial art…of combat…of conflict…moving sites of stagnation” or expelling a landlord like “dislodg[ing] a thorn.”[3] On a structural level, stagnation is created by oppressive forces and othering of diverse groups to avoid accountability. Blackthorn teaches us to shift these exploitive narratives through collective action. The dualistic temperament of this barbed ally aids in resistance through a combination of protective banishment and dangerous contagion, while providing a balm for any self-harm inflicted by its intimacy. Mythic and Otherworldly ancestors are brought into both battle and sick room, while ritual representations of sacrifice evict dis-ease to the periphery of communal spaces. Contemporary relationships with Blackthorn and other tradition-bearers provide a template for culturally competent accessibility to medicine either alone or in combination with allopathic medicine. Societal and institutional recognition of non-pathological approaches to healing deliver additional holistic and embodied tools. These practices are well-placed to address conditions, which resist diagnostic labels and dis-eases resulting from systemic oppression. The concepts can be applied globally and in cases of emigration or complex/unknown identities through respectful relationship with adoptive land and story.
Fairy Faith
Sacrificial relationships with ethereal beings are employed to enact control in the face of uncertainty. Folk narratives, beliefs and rituals related to capricious fairies, magical humans and sacred places provide comfort and rationalisation, while transferring blame from community members who violate social mores or experience trauma. Through interaction with Blackthorn in cooperation with the Otherworld, humans are provided with weapons and other implements to resist both mortal and supernatural threats. They are instilled with agency and sometimes superhuman ability as they embody ancestral stories of Otherworldly ancestors. The conflicting nature of Blackthorn is a competent narrative tool to engage with thorny and socially proscribed topics, including contemporary struggles.
In recent years, mass graves found at mother and baby homes have forced Irish society and diaspora to collectively grieve the violent loss of many children across four generations, while simultaneously struggling to assign blame for murder and neglect directly related to structural oppression by the church and the government, particularly in cases of poverty and unwed birth parents. Although changeling tales may have provided an outlet for discussing these tragic losses and the authorised abductions that led to them, communal acceptance of historic wrongs have allowed for less coded arenas of discussion. At one memorial, the mother of a victim set aside the changeling poem she intended to read and shared a frank account of her story, stating “nobody knows where the children are buried. But nobody believes, back then or now, that faeries have them” (Whiteside 2025). Her recognition of fairy scapegoats parallels the unaccountability of equally elusive kidnappers who are no longer living, are obscured by institutional facades and/or are protected by blaming society itself. Reconciliation of structural and societal blame in combination with resilience and future avoidance is made possible by sharing personal experiences and collective traumas, while co-creating healing narratives that address complex understandings of responsibility.
Fairy stories, which have allowed for encrypted discourse on the fickle nature of “the other” can provide lessons on immigration, identity and reactionary nationalism by emphasising benefits of diversity and implicit biases based on fear. As in the example above, these tales can invite more open conversation by sharing mutual conceptions and finding commonality without the intervention of Otherworld scapegoats. Regardless of fairy involvement, use of story and metaphor establishes a generative space for resolving complex issues, rooted in existential dread and institutional division.
Hedges and Liminality
The temporal and spatial boundaries created by Blackthorn in relationship with fairy faith are crystalised by Irish hedges and the complex histories woven within them. These barriers are simultaneously protective and dangerous in relation to fluid contexts and positionality. Although they are often weaponised as instruments of oppression, their fluctuating nature as clandestine spaces and transformative portals situates them as sites of becoming and resistance. Ireland’s intergenerational inheritance of colonisation and reactive self-regulation fortifies tidy hedges as barriers to inclusion and obstacles to community cooperation, but stories of mutual aid, resistance and Otherworld interaction convert them to tangled webs of liminality, which inspire resolution of seemingly conflicting thoughts to provide storied solutions to structural problems, which cause dis-ease of land and community.
Gatekeeping of “Irish” identity by people living on the island is an explicable reaction to the colonial suppression of Irish language and culture, which is complicated by Irish-American tendencies to over-perform romanticised notions of “Irishness,” but both of these behaviour patterns uphold White supremacy and obscure diasporic involvement in other colonial ventures.[4] Members of the Irish diaspora are liminal personae,[5] not one thing or the other, out of place, uprooted, disrupted, yet causing disruption in a new place. Blackthorn as a tool of resistance and community medicine, which volunteers in spaces of disruption, provides lessons on naturalisation to place through embodied right relationship with the land you are on, without erasing the stories of the land of your ancestors. In our discussion about contemporary lessons of Blackthorn, Cú discussed the systemic forces that violate people and the land and how these obstacles shaped our initial partnership with the plant. He also recognised Blackthorn’s ability to grow where forests have been uprooted as an education in resilience and our ability to thrive under any conditions.[6] These narratives also provide a bridge of solidarity and commonality with all people facing adversity and finding strength in ancestral knowledge.
The story of Blackthorn and hedges in general speak to the importance of conservation. Government sanctioned clearing of native forests has eliminated habitats for many indigenous species, which were adopted by surrounding hedgerows. Grassland, woodland and wetland plants along with foxes, badgers, hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, weasels, rats and mice have found home in their thorny branches and earthen banks. Although several thousand miles of hedges have been lost in Ireland due to neglect and construction, these scruffy boundaries still make up 1.5% of the land area, accounting for most of the remaining trees.[7] Hedgerows stand as “reservoirs of biodiversity in an otherwise impoverished landscape” and the fields they surround would fail to be pollinated without the life teeming within them.[8] Post-deforestation, much of Ireland would be bare without hedges, leading to flooding and erosion.[9] These adaptive habitats demonstrate a universal necessity for conservation and an avenue for hope, which acknowledges the flexibility and strength of the landscape and their stewards.
Material Culture
Blackthorn as material culture, in the form of a shillelagh, carries the dichotomous nature of Blackthorn as a plant of protection and danger and mirrors the strong and resilient character of the people of Éire through time and space. The stick as an extension of the body is accepted as a gift from the land and the Otherworld as an adaptation to both persistent and changing threats and a celebration of ancestral knowledge. The stick holds stories of warrior prowess and Shillelagh Law, which have been otherwise perverted and erased in response to oppression and internalised prejudice. Through cultural performance a fighter embodies the attributes of the land and mythic and human ancestors to overlay present conflicts with lessons from the past. As a tool of defence, the shillelagh transfers the danger of the sidhe to the defeat of a repressive adversary and as a tool of community justice, the fighter employs non-carceral means to resolve disagreements and encourage accountability. Tales of satirical admonition and Blackthorn stories of ritualised battle provide a framework for community-based accountability that embraces abolition and rejects carceral punishment. Similarly, the rites of passage involved in clandestine fighting and other skills-based education lend themselves to present needs of community defence in response to structural oppression and sanctioned violence. Cú shared that several members of our predominately queer, trans and/or disabled faction have had to use their shillelaghs to protect themselves or others.[10] For this author, the blackthorn stick provides a rooted association to ancestral story medicine as a salve for disconnection, a portal for negotiating complex identities and an invitation to further exploration of personal responsibility for disruption, resulting from emigration and colonisation.
As I struggle to become naturalised to place, my fighting practice imbues me with ancestral values and traditions, which have been transmuted through lived experience and new challenges that echo old patterns. As a tradition-bearer and an ancestor, originating from the landscape of my ancestors, Blackthorn aids in identity formation that weaves together old stories and new, while emphasising the disruptive nature of my presence on stolen land and my responsibility as a being that is neither here nor there, but in becoming and in relationship with complex histories and futures.
Reclamation of bataireacht, as a cultural reinoculation of collective performance that was held by tradition-bearers in the Irish diaspora, carries lessons of both cultural conservation and communal co-creation of new mycelial threads that apply ancestral knowledge to contemporary problems, through interaction with intersectional identities, which resist historic norms. This legacy of resistance is modelled by coding in butter witch tales, retribution in “The Table, the Ass and the Stick” and the carnivalesque defiance of the Buachallí Bána.
Final Thoughts
Complex symbiotic relationships between people and the landscape are reflected in the resistance stories of oppressed groups. Tracing the history of deforestation on the island of Éire uncovers not only patriarchal and exploitative concepts of land ownership, but a concerted effort to extinguish the native resistance to colonisation. A proverb from the rule of Elizabeth I states, “the Irish will never be tamed while the leaves are on the trees.”[11] This British complaint refers to successful resistance in cooperation with the landscape, which concealed Irish rebels and aided attacks. In response, the English tore down huge swaths of native forest, depriving the insurgents of their natural allies. Similar techniques are being employed by the Israeli Army in Palestine as they strip the life-giving olive trees from the landscape.[12] In a piece about the danger to these plants, Grace Gordon outlines their economic and cultural significance:
The olive trees of Palestine are more than just trees; they are silent witnesses to history, stories, struggles, and aspirations. They embody the essence of Palestine – its resilience, resistance, and undying hope. While the challenges faced by the Palestinian olive industry are significant, the tree’s deep roots, much like the spirit of the Palestinian people, remain unyielding. – Gordon 2023
The similarities between this description and Irish folkloric relationships with Blackthorn are evident. These storied correspondences and shared experiences of oppression bestow the means for solidarity and global collective action that can be applied to any number of injustices. Although, the ongoing dominance of colonialism and White supremacy can be crushing, co-created story medicine in relationship with Blackthorn and other ancestral allies offers guidance, agency and interconnection.
The author expresses extreme gratitude to Dr Kelly Fitzgerald and Dr Tiber Falzett for their overwhelming support through the dissertation process and with the MA program overall. They would also like to thank Aoiffe Kenny-Deegan and Tracey Hayes for their incredible instruction and flexibility. The author is indebted to the National Folklore Collection Archive with special thanks to Ailbe van der Heide, Jonny Dillon and Simon Ó Laoghaire. They would also like to thank Pamela Keeler for proofreading assistance and Jen Ducharme for advice and moral support.
[1] Taboos/curses
[2] Bascom 1954
[3] McCann 2025
[4] McCann 2025; Alderson 2019
[5] Turner 1969
[6] 2025
[7] Foulkes 2007; McCourt & Kelly 2007
[8] McCourt & Kelly 2007, 3
[9] Vaughn 2015, 56
[10] 2025
[11] Falkiner 1997
[12] Gordon 2023
Bridging Appalachia 
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