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CHAPTER VI.

THE GAME OF THE CELTS.

SOME time ago a correspondent of Notes and Queries, writing about cricket, said that he "did not know that Erin had any national sport, except hunting." As there may be many with the same idea, we propose here to show that the Irish and their brother Celts of the Scotch Highlands have a national game, a sport, in its own way, as typical of the fiery Celt as cricket is of the Englishman.

"Hurling," says Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in his "Ballad Poetry of Ireland," "is a thoroughly national diversion, and is played with intense zeal by parish against parish, barony against barony, county against county, or even province against province. It is played not only by the peasant, but by the students of the university, where it is an established pastime. Twiss, the most sweeping calumniator of Ireland, calls it, if I mistake not, the cricket of barbarians; but, though fully prepared to pay a just tribute to the elegance of the English game, I own that I think the Irish sport fully as civilized, and much better calculated for the display of vigour and activity."

This game flourishes under many different names—hurling, shinty, club, camanach, &c., but everywhere it is played in pretty much the same way.

As most of my readers are probably familiar with the school game of "hockey," which is, in a very mild form, the wild "hurling" of Irish Patrick, or the "camanach" of his brother Donald in the Highlands, I shall say no more of the mode of play in the game than that two opposing parties, armed with

curved sticks, each try to drive the ball through their own goal. Let me rather do for this game what I have already done for golf and football in these pages, give a slight anecdotic sketch of its life among us, with some notable incidents about the game and its lovers.

Donald is disposed to claim an early origin for his favourite game. Golf he looks upon as an effeminate offshoot of it, having its descent through "bandy-ball," a game much in favour with schoolboys as far back as the thirteenth century. Strutt engraves from an old prayer-book of about this period an illustration of two boys playing at bandy-ball, in which the form of the club or bandy is exactly the same as the caman or hurly used by players at our game in the present day.

There appears to be little doubt that this game is the oldest of all ball games in which a bat or other instrument is used; indeed, under one form in which hurling existed in Cornwall, where the bat was subsidiary to the hand, and was only used on occasion, the game is as old as Homer, where, as Pope translates it, the Princess of Corcyra and her maidens play at ball:

O'er the green mead the sporting virgins play,
Their shining veils unbound; along the skies,
Tost and retost, the ball incessant flies.

This, however, was rather the graceful ball play in which the
ancients indulged as a gentle means of exercise: the ball was
thrown from hand to hand without any emulation; it is in the
games in which hostile parties strove for success that we find
the germ of our game. "In the Greek epikoinos, or common
ball," says Mr. E. B. Tylor, "the ball was put on the middle
line, and each party tried to seize it and throw it over the
adversary's goal line. This game also lasted on into modern
Europe, and our proper English name for it is hurling..
Now, as hurling was an ordinary classical game, the ancients
need only have taken a stick to drive the ball instead of using
hands or feet and would thus have arrived at hockey. But Cory-

don never seems to have thought of borrowing Phillis's crook for the purpose it would have so exactly suited. No mention of games like hockey appears in the ancient world, and the course of invention which brought them into the modern world is at once unexpected and instructive." We owe the use of the bat or club in these games to the Persians, among whom Sir W. Ouseley has traced its use back to before the eighth century. However it may have reached this country, we find our pastime under various names firmly established in Britain many centuries ago. Northbrooke, in 1577, mentions it as a favourite game in Devonshire, while from many sources we see that it was a much practised pastime in the Western Counties generally. In those days, unfortunately, there were no men with any learned leisure among the Celts of Scotland or Ireland to tell us when the game was introduced among them, but, from references in early Gaelic songs and elsewhere, it is pretty clear that this ball-play must have been adopted by the Gael very long ago.

In Mr. J. F. Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands" the references to this game show us in what high estimation it was held by the Western Celts. These strange

stories-in which, their collector tells us, "amidst curious rubbish you will find sound sense if you look for it "—are of great antiquity, and have been orally handed down through many generations of story-tellers, who recited them to crowds of people who used to gather during the long winter nights to the houses of those who were esteemed good story-tellers. Many of these stories closely resemble the "Nursery Tales" common to all languages, but though Mr. Campbell's object may have been chiefly to make a contribution to the "new science of 'Storyology,'" the student of Celtic manners will find in the local details of these recitations much most interesting information on life and customs in the West.

It would be impossible for a story-teller, speaking before a critical audience, to make his heroes play habitually at games

thought little of, or seldom indulged in, by his hearers; we are entitled, therefore, to believe that the games oftenest mentioned in the stories were the most popular with the people. Shinty is very often referred to. In the story called "The Knight of Riddles," the Hero of the White Shield takes the wandering boy past a palace, beside which twelve men were playing shinty. The boy thought he would join them, but he had not played long till a quarrel arose and he was violently treated. When Osgar, the son of Oisein, was a boy at school, we are told in another story, the pupils played shinty during the midday interval, and so expert at the game was Osgar that his side always won when sides were of equal number. In the last of these stories we need refer to here, the "Rider of Grianaig," the adventures of the youngest of the soldier's three sons are caused by his persuading his brothers to play the game on the lawn of the Knight of Greenock. "They went to play shinty and Ian won three hails [goals] from his brothers. The Knight put his head out of a window, and he saw them playing at shinty, and he took great wrath that anyone had the heart to play shinty on his lawn, a thing that was bringing the loss of his daughters to his mind and putting contempt on him." The angry Knight had the lads brought before him, and as a punishment he sent Ian away in a ship to search for his daughters. During the voyage the young man meets with many wonderful adventures before he succeeds in rescuing the youngest of the missing ladies, whom he gets for his wife.

Early in the seventeenth century there was no greater "Chief in the North" than Patrick, Earl of Orkney, cousin-german to King James VI. So grand and ambitious were Earl Patrick's views that, in February, 1615, he was beheaded in the High Street of Edinburgh for usurping royal authority in his island estate. Our ball-play appears to have been a favourite game of his, and it is said that when, in 1604, he paid a visit to the Earl of Sutherland, he was "honourably entertained with comedies, and all other sports and recreations that Earl John

could make him," among them being camanach matches. Martin, who visited St. Kilda in 1697, tells us that the natives 66 use for their diversion short clubs and balls of wood. The sand is a fair field for the sport and exercise, in which they take great pleasure and are very nimble at it. They play for eggs, fowls, hooks, or tobacco, and so eager are they for victory that they strip themselves to their shirts to obtain it."

Curiously enough, though we see from Fitzstephen, Northbrooke, and others that the game was a popular one at a very early age of our history, yet it escaped mention in all the Acts against unlawful games, that is, those statutes prohibiting farm servants, labourers, artificers, &c., from playing tennis, football, handball, &c. Indeed, it never appears to have got into Parliament at all, unless the mysterious game of somewhat similar name proclaimed against just before the Restoration was our game. On July 13, 1659, the House of Commons ordered "that a Proclamation be issued prohibiting all horse races, cock matches, bull baiting, out-hurlings, public wrestling, and other meetings of like nature until the first day of October next."

Carew, in his "Survey of Cornwall" (1602), minutely describes two kinds of hurling played there: one, in which the players of the opposing sides "match themselves by payres, one embracing another," and so strive, man against man, to goal the ball; the other, a large gathering of players, not unlike the great district matches that used to take place in Ireland and the Highlands during the last century, and which are being revived again, to a certain extent, in the North of Scotland just now. Carew says that "two or three or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes. The matches are usually made by gentlemen, and their goales are either those gentlemen's houses, or some towns or villages, three or four miles asunder, of which either side maketh choice after the nearnesse of their dwellings. When they meet there is neyther comparing of numbers nor matching of men, but a