silver ball is cast up, and that company which can catch and carry it by force or slight to the place assigned, gaineth the ball and the victory." This game looks more like handball than like the hurling of to-day, but a club or bat was used at the old game. Strutt cites a passage in "Philogamus," a book published in Queen Elizabeth's time, where the instrument is called "a clubbe" or "hurle-batte." Besides, both in hurling and shinty, till recently, "carrying" was quite allowable. A writer in Charles Knight's Penny Magazine (No. 181, for Jan. 31, 1835, in which there is a very spirited drawing of the game as played in Scotland), tells us he witnessed a match in which one of the players, having gained possession of the ball, contrived to run a mile with it in his hand, pursued by all the other players, till he reached the goal and his victory was admitted.

In early days, in all the three kingdoms, Sunday was the great day for this game, as it still is in many parts of Ireland. There are some curious anecdotes told in connection with this. Mr. Halliwell quotes from a Cornish book a curious belief in the county about a "judgment" that overtook a party of Sunday hurlers. There are a number of large stones, set in a kind of square figure, near St. Clare in Cornwall, which are called "the Hurlers," "from an odd opinion held by the common people, that they are so many men petrified or changed into stone for profaning the Sabbath day by hurling the ball, an exercise for which the people of that country have always been famous. The Hurlers' are oblong, rude, and unhewed, and have been conjectured to be sepulchral monuments."

Hugh Miller, in his Cromarty sketches, "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland," tells a somewhat similar story:-"Every Sunday forenoon they [the people of Nigg] attended church, but the evening of the day was devoted to the common athletic games of the country. A robust, active young fellow, named Donald Roy, was deemed their best club player; and as the game was a popular one, his

Sabbath evenings were usually spent at the club. He was a farmer, and the owner of a small herd of black cattle. On returning home one Sabbath evening, after vanquishing the most skilful of his competitors, he found the carcass of one of his best cattle lying across the threshold, where she had dropped down a few minutes before. Next Sabbath he headed the club players as usual, and on returning at the same hour, he found the dead body of a second cow lying in exactly the same place. 'Can it be possible?' thought he, 'that the Whigs are in the right after all?' A challenge, however, had been given to the club players of a neighbouring parish, and as the game was to be played out on the following Sabbath, he could not bring himself to resolve the question. When the day came, Donald played beyond all praise, and, elated by the victory which his exertions had at length secured to his parish, he was striding homewards through a green lane, when a fine cow, which he had purchased only a few days before, came pressing through the fence, and flinging herself down before him, expired at his feet with a deep horrible bellow. 'This is God's judgment,' exclaimed Donald; 'the Whigamores are in the right; I have taken His day, and He takes my cattle.' He never afterwards played at the club, and such was the change effected on his character that at the Revolution he was ordained an elder of the Church, and he became afterwards one of the most notable worthies of the North."

Notwithstanding Donald Roy's defection, the game flourished in the Highlands for the next century after his time. After the "Forty-five," however, for many reasons, shinty and other out-door games fell into disuse among the clansmen. The Rev. A. Stewart, of Moulin in Perthshire, writing in 1793, says:" It is observable that those gymnastic exercises which constituted the chief pastime of the Highlanders forty or fifty years ago, have almost totally disappeared. At every fair or meeting of the country people there were contests at racing, wrestling, putting the stone, &c.; and on holidays, all the

males of a district, young and old, met to play at football, but oftener at shinty. These games are now only practised by schoolboys." About the same time an Irish clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Ledwich, in the Statistical Account of the Parish of Aghaboe, Queen's County, laments that the "national character of the original natives is with us entirely lost. Their diversions of football and hurling are seldom practised."

Both among the Irish and Scotch, however, there were enthusiastic lovers of the game whose devotion to it carried it over this dead portion of its history into the prosperous times of this century. Strutt tells us how greatly amused he was to see the skill and enthusiasm of the Irishmen who "hurled to goals" in the fields at the back of the British Museum; but perhaps as good an instance of love for the game as any can be found in this quotation from Mr. Sylvanus Urban in 1795: "It may be mentioned that Provost Brown, late of Inverary, when 100 years old, headed one of the contending parties at a shinty match, and carried the town colours in procession among the victors. He died in the 116th year of his age."

This patriarch may have seen the dawn of shinty's new day. With this century the game got a new lease of life, which it is not likely again to lose. On New Year's day (in the old style) this is the game nearly always played in the Highlands. District plays district, or the picked men of one county strive against the flower of another. Most interesting, perhaps, are those mimic fights between neighbouring clans, that recall the contests of a century ago. When the writer was a boy in the Highlands, crowds used to assemble from far and near to be spectators of the annual shinty match in Strathglass, between the Frasers-often headed by Lord Lovat, their chief, or some of his family-and the Chisholms, under their chief. The annual contest may be, and most probably is, still played every "old New Year." At Edinburgh, one of the "things to be done" by the holiday-makers on New Year's day is to witness the "wild Highlandmen" resident in the Scottish

capital play their annual match at our game. Almost thoroughly civilised Macs, whose "brawny limbs" for three hundred odd days in the year are hidden by the garb of "the Saxon," and whose hands usually know no mightier weapon than the pen, on that day don their kilts, grasp their camans, and spend two hours of wild excitement and violent exercise in the Queen's Park at their national game. Of course, there are among them players who practise hard for most of the cold weather, but the majority of the "grave and reverend seigniors," notable citizens, whose presence gives interest to the contest, renew on this day only their hot and lusty youth.

Want of time and opportunity to practise their game is a great drawback to its enjoyment in many country districts. It is not that men who have been working hard all day are too tired to indulge in such an energetic amusement, but that, by the time the day's task is over in the shinty season, the short day has closed in, and there is no daylight left for the game. There are no Saturday half-holidays in most country districts yet, so the only thing left is to play by moonlight. On many a clear, frosty moonlight night do the country lads contend for the honour of "hailing" (goals are always “hails” in Scotland at our game) the ball, and wonderful is the skill which the crack players display, as they "birl" (or "dribble," as football players call it) the ball along-running it on past all obstacles and attacks, and keeping it well within reach of their club-head until they have passed all their opponents, and the hail lies before them within reach of the good player's first long shot.

At Candlemas time, and on Fastern's E'en, the game is played in some districts still, but the matches on these occasions nowadays are extremely few when we compare them with the contests of the old days, when these festivals were religiously observed as holiday times all over the Highlands. At the old pagan festival of Beltane, too, a shinty match was, till times almost within living memory, a "survival" of the old

sun-worship handed down to us from our fire-worshipping forefathers. At Edinburgh, about the beginning of the century, Hallowe'en was the appointed time, and the great market called Hallow Fair, the proper place for all players to provide themselves with shinty sticks and balls. Boys usually preferred to play with part of the vertebral bone of a sheep instead of a ball, but if one did buy a ball, undoubtedly the best were the " 'penny Herioters "-excellent balls made by the foundationers of "Jingling Geordie " Heriot; a branch of business, by the way, still cultivated by the inmates of the Hospital, though, like everything else, their price has risen since then, and Christopher North could no longer talk in his hearty way of an hour's brisk fun behind a "penny Herioter."

It is easy to account for the popularity of this game among Celtic peoples. It is a stirring, impetuous pastime, with no dry intervals to test the patience-exactly the game suited to the Celtic nature. There may be something in another reason alleged, that Donald or Patrick always likes a weapon in his hand, both in the contests of peace and war. When Englishmen quarrelled, they fought with fists, but the Celt always used claymore or cudgel. So in their games, and it is perhaps this that gave to their manly game, in Celtic eyes, many recommendations that football-the nearest approach to it in Lowland games-lacks. Mr. J. F. Campbell tells two little anecdotes that show how hot and furious Celts on both sides of the water sometimes get over their game, but it is only fair to say that contests, as a rule, even between keenly rival parishes, are conducted with much good humour and quite as few disputes as in many big football matches.

Mr. Campbell was once at a Christmas hurling match in Ireland, where the game was played on ice on a lake. The owner of the lake sent down his Scotch butler with bread and cheese and whisky for the players. For no apparent cause, a furious battle began, "but in ten minutes the storm was over, the butler was up again in his cart dispensing the refreshments, the man in