If you were in the market for a shillelagh this weekend, Ed Leon had plenty of them to sell at the Naperville Irish Fest.

All handmade as part of Leon’s newly launched business, Blackthorn & Bramble, the event was the first in which the Naperville resident was selling them live instead of through his website, he said.

He started making shillelaghs, he said, after learning about the walking sticks — once used as weapons when swords were banned — and learning to make them from fallen wood he finds. Traditionally, they’re made of blackthorn or oak.

“I love sharing that history,” Leon said of shillelaghs, believed to have originated in Shillelagh in County Wicklow, Ireland, and now symbolizing Irish resilience.

His was just one bit of the culture shared as part of the annual gathering, hel

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