Passing the stick on

A real handmade Irish walking stick will, with normal care, outlast its original user. This is the most distinctive thing about the object and the source of its quiet weight in family life. Sooner or later — through age, transition, change of circumstance, or death — the stick passes to a new owner, and that passing is itself part of how the object works.

The journal hears regularly from readers thinking through this transition. Common questions: when to pass the stick on; whether to modify it for a new user; what to do with provenance; how to handle the inheritance dimension if it has come up suddenly. None of these have a single right answer — the practical and emotional details vary by family and by stick — but the framework below covers the recurring elements.

When the question comes up

There are five common occasions when the question of passing a stick on becomes practical:

The original user can no longer walk far. The stick was a daily working tool; the user’s mobility has declined to the point where a stick is no longer the right aid (a walking frame, a cane with adjustable height, or a wheelchair has taken its place). The handmade stick becomes a heritage object rather than a working one. The natural step is to pass it to a younger family member who will use it.

A milestone in another family member’s life. A coming-of-age, a wedding, a graduation, an emigration, the start of a new career — moments when a small ceremonial gift makes sense, and the stick is the thing the family has to give. Passing the stick at these moments connects the recipient to a continuous family thread.

Retirement. The original user retires from the work that the stick was associated with — farming, military service, a long career — and passes the stick to a successor or a younger relative as part of the broader transition. This is more common with sticks that had a specific working role (a shepherd’s crook, a fishing-pole-doubling-as-stick, a regimental swagger stick).

Emigration. Someone in the family is moving to another country, and a stick is given as a piece of home to take with them. This is one of the older Irish traditions around the stick — many of the shillelaghs that ended up in the Irish-American diaspora moved this way, given as parting gifts rather than carried as personal equipment.

After the original user’s death. The stick is part of the estate. The will may or may not specify who receives it; in either case, the family decides among themselves. This is the most common form of stick-inheritance, and the most likely to involve some minor refitting (the original user is no longer present to advise on adjustments).

The first four occasions are deliberate transitions; the fifth is post-mortem, and the considerations are slightly different. Both register as inheritance in the broader sense, and the stick lands with a new owner who must decide what to do with it.

What to think about before passing

Three practical questions before any actual transfer:

Will the new owner actually use it? A stick that goes to a recipient who is going to hang it on a wall is, in some sense, fine — but the stick was made to be carried, and a working stick that becomes a display piece is a small loss. If the choice is between a recipient who will carry it and one who won’t, prefer the carrier. The stick benefits from continuous use.

Does the new owner have an existing stick? If the recipient is already a stick-owner, the inheritance might displace something they already use, or it might give them a second stick that fills a different role. Both are workable, but it’s worth thinking through.

Will the stick fit? The fitting question is the most practical adjustment. If the recipient is shorter than the original user, the stick can be trimmed to fit. If the recipient is taller, the stick cannot be lengthened — and a stick that is too short for the new owner will be, mostly, decorative rather than useful. Measure the recipient’s wrist height before deciding.

If all three answers point toward the stick getting genuine use in the new owner’s hands, the transfer is a clear win. If any of them is uncertain, it is worth slowing down and considering whether a different stick (a new one, a less elaborate one) might be a better gift, with the inherited piece staying with the original owner or being preserved as a family object rather than transferred to active use.

The fitting adjustment

The most common physical adjustment for an inherited stick is trimming the foot to match the new user’s height. The procedure:

1. Measure the new user’s wrist height in the standard way (floor to underside of wrist bone, arm relaxed, standing upright in normal shoes). See How to choose walking stick height.
2. Compare to the existing stick. Measure from the floor (with the existing ferrule on) to the head of the stick, with the stick standing upright.
3. If the new measurement is shorter, mark the difference at the foot of the stick. Allow approximately half an inch (12 mm) extra for ferrule wear over the next decade.
4. Remove the existing ferrule carefully — pliers, a small twisting motion, patience. The ferrule may come off cleanly; it may need to be cut off if heavily corroded. Save it; it can sometimes be re-fitted.
5. Cut the shaft with a fine-toothed saw, perpendicular to the length. Sand the cut end smooth.
6. Re-fit the ferrule (the original, if salvageable; a fresh one if not). Press it on with a small mallet or a press, ensuring a tight fit; the ferrule should not rotate freely on the wood.

The trim takes about twenty minutes and requires a saw, sandpaper, and a replacement ferrule (if needed). Any working stick-maker will do it for a small fee if you would prefer not to do it yourself.

If the new user is taller than the original — which is the case if the stick was originally a child’s or a shorter adult’s piece — the stick cannot be lengthened. The new user can carry the stick at a slightly low height, accepting the imperfect fit, or treat the stick as a heritage object rather than a working tool. There is no third option.

Refresh the strap and finish

An inherited stick almost always benefits from some maintenance refresh:

The strap. A leather wrist strap that has been on the stick for thirty years is probably soft, dark, and well-worn — possibly to the point of replacement. The original strap can be:

• Kept in place if still serviceable (a real vegetable-tanned leather strap can last 30+ years with care)
• Replaced with a new leather strap, with the original tied off and kept as a small family item
• Replaced and discarded — the cleanest option, though some families want to keep the original for sentimental reasons

A new strap should be vegetable-tanned leather, 4–6 mm wide, threaded through the original strap-hole and either knotted or hand-stitched.

The finish. Refresh the wood with linseed oil and beeswax (the standard process in How to care for a blackthorn stick). The first oiling under the new owner’s care is a small symbolic moment; the wood comes back to depth, and the stick reads as cared-for again rather than as static heritage.

The ferrule. If the foot was just trimmed for re-fitting, a new ferrule is going on anyway. If not, but the original ferrule is worn or loose, replace it. A working stick should have a solid ferrule.

Engraving (optional). Some families add a small engraved name plate at the head of the stick when it passes to a new owner — a brass or silver plate, a millimetre or two thick, engraved with the new owner’s initials and the year of transfer. This is a real tradition in some Irish and British families and works particularly well on sticks that already have a presentation register. A working stick-maker can fit a small plate; an engraver can add the inscription.

Provenance and named-owner records

For a stick that has been in the family more than one generation, the provenance is part of the object’s value — both sentimental and (occasionally) financial. Some families keep a written record of the stick’s history; others rely on oral tradition; many lose the provenance entirely after two or three generations.

A simple record-keeping practice:

A small written card — postcard-sized, stored with the stick in a drawer or attached to the strap loop — listing the stick’s history. The card might include:

• Where the wood came from (county, hedge, or workshop, if known)
• The maker (if known)
• The year of cutting and the year of finishing
• Each successive owner, with the year of transfer
• Any notable occasions where the stick was carried (a wedding, a state visit, a regimental ceremony)

The card can be added to with each transfer. After three or four generations the provenance becomes genuinely significant, and the cumulative card is the only reliable record of it.

For a stick that has just come to the new owner with no provenance card, start one now. Even imperfect information — “from my grandfather, who I think bought it in the 1970s; I don’t know the maker; he carried it on holidays in Connemara” — is better than no record at all, and the next generation will appreciate having the starting point.

The cultural register

In Irish family tradition, the inherited stick has a quiet but real cultural register. It is one of the few personal objects that survives a normal lifetime in a usable condition; it is one of the few inherited objects that the recipient is expected to actively carry rather than display; it is gendered toward the male line in older accounts (though this has loosened considerably in modern practice), with some traditions of fathers passing sticks to sons at specific milestones.

The cultural register has not, the journal observes, been particularly studied or written about. There is no body of folkloric scholarship on the inheritance of Irish walking sticks comparable to the literature on, say, the inheritance of Irish wedding rings or family Bibles. The practice exists; it is observed by many families; it is rarely documented.

A reader inheriting a stick from a family member is participating in this quieter tradition. The act has cultural weight even when no specific ceremonial form is observed. The stick acquires another name on its provenance card; the new owner takes up a tool that has known another hand; the connection across generations is renewed in a small but real way.

What if the stick can’t continue

Sometimes the inheritance ends. The stick is broken beyond repair; the family has no younger member who would use it; the recipient has no place to keep it; the original user has specified that the stick should be cremated with them (an unusual but documented practice in some Irish families [VERIFY]).

If the stick cannot be passed on, the journal’s view is that there are several appropriate dispositions:

Donate to a museum or heritage organisation — particularly if the stick has notable provenance (a known maker, a documented previous owner, a regimental history). The Irish Folklife Division of the National Museum of Ireland accepts donations of working folk-craft objects with sufficient context [VERIFY current acquisition policy]; smaller regional and county museums sometimes do too.

Sell it on the secondary market — through a stick-and-cane antique dealer or a heritage-craft auction. The proceeds can be marked for an appropriate purpose (a charity, a new gift, a contribution to a family event); the stick goes to someone who will use or care for it.

Give it to a stick-maker — particularly if the stick is too damaged for use but has interesting wood character, useful for the maker’s reference collection or for harvesting components.

Keep it as a household object without active use — the stick stays in the family on a wall or in a stand, retained as a piece of family history but not actively passed on. This is the default for many sticks and is perfectly appropriate when the alternatives don’t fit.

What is not the right disposition is to throw it out or burn it casually. A real handmade stick has carried the work of the maker, the seasoning of the years, the use of the previous owner; it deserves a deliberate end if it is going to end. Most of the dispositions above amount to the same thing: the stick gets to continue, in some register, even after the active use has stopped.

A small thought to close

A reader who has just inherited a stick is in a position that the original user, in some sense, prepared. The stick was made to last; the original user kept it in working condition; the inheritance was an option that was preserved by all the small care that went into the object across the years. The new owner is, by accepting the stick, accepting the next chapter of that work.

This is part of why a real handmade stick is a different object from a manufactured one. The cheap version cannot be inherited because it does not survive. The real version can be inherited because it does. The continuity is what the price difference is, in the end, paying for.

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The maintenance side of stick ownership is in How to care for a blackthorn stick. The vintage and second-hand market is in Vintage vs new sticks. For a first stick, see Your first stick.