to make his fullest gain of her, and by the economical young bachelor who buys a slave-girl as his first venture towards future house-furnishing. A case occurs to me as I write : let me call it THE FORTUNATE LAUNDRY-MAID. A REMARKABLY handsome young cavalry officer, half Greek by descent (his mother, a Christian girl, had been taken prisoner in the Greek war of 1827, first made a slave and then married to her captor), having, as a bachelor, no means of getting his linen properly attended to, determined to buy a tchamachirjee (a laundry-maid). Having taken this resolution, he attended a soirée at the rooms of the Chief Eunuch, where several of these blacks had assembled from neighbouring hareems in order to enjoy a good chat over their mistresses' affairs, and where in all probability they had purposely been bidden with a view to the business in hand. The young Bey went, however, as a chance visitor, and, finding such an assembly, was prevailed on to remain and seat himself amongst the guests. The condescension of taking coffee with the rest was by no means omitted by him; more than that, backgammon was resorted to with great success, and between the games several eligible young women were mentioned as about to be disposed of at the pleasure or convenience of their masters or mistresses. Bir aye kiz istiorum; guzel; dorou; khabahatsizleh.' (A good girl is what I want; pretty, well-made, and without faults of any kind). The young man, having adroitly made his business known and duly impressed the assembly with his wishes in the matter, then withdrew; and the negotiation was thus effectively put en train. Reports were soon brought in to him from various quarters, but he preferred to be slow and sure in making his choice. At last the very thing to suit him was found somewhere by one of his black friends. Before purchase the girl was brought on approval to the house of a rich patron of her future master. She was tall, muscular, symmetrical, had perfectly regular features (the Greek cast of countenance), was fresh-coloured, and the picture of health and good temper. She would do! So some five hundred liras must have been paid down for her, and it was arranged that she should continue to remain where she was, duly washing and ironing her basketfuls of linen. The girl was very quiet and well-behaved, but not one the Turks would deem fit to become a hatoun (lady). So everybody was surprised when, about two years after the purchase, the young Bey set up a house (which is the literal expression in Turkish for got married). No ceremony, however, was necessary in taking the slave to her new home, where she soon after became the mother of her master's eldest born. Whether the Bey has since taken home a wife also I am not aware. It was understood that he had but to choose amongst the richest heiresses of Stamboul, and it was thought that he was waiting to make an advantageous alliance which would advance his interests in diplomatic circles. Undoubtedly the pretty tchamachirjee considered herself a very fortunate woman. She was extremely proud of her lord and master; for this young Bey had been trained in one of the large public schools of Europe, and in all the usages of our modern society might have passed for a most finished and fastidiously refined gentleman. F. E. A 184 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 purpose 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. 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, The Romans had a game called 'Harpastum,' about which little is known, but it is probable from its derivation that it was akin to our game. However this may be, 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. It is a game eminently suited to the Celtic nature. Donald or Patrick always liked a weapon in his hand, both in the contests of peace or war. When Englishmen quarrelled, they fought with their fists, but the Celt always used claymore or cudgel. So in their games. In Celtic eyes their manly game has many recommendations that footballthe nearest approach to it in Lowland games-lacks. One of the episodes of the long feud between the Clan Gregor and the Colquhouns of Luss-a quarrel that ended in the proscription of the MacGregors in 1603-is connected with a match at shinty. Two subsections of the Clan Alpine, who had had some cause of disagreement, had settled the vexed question, and, to celebrate the renewal of perfect friendliness, the clansmen of both families agreed to meet and spend some time in a merry-making. One of the chief events was to be a shinty match between the men of each family. That their visitors and kinsmen might be royally entertained, the hosts organised a foray into the Colquhouns' country by Loch Lomond side, and carried off many head of fat cattle. Next day, in a level glen among the hills, the MacGregors, men, women and children, were assembled, the men armed for the time only with the sturdy clubs to be used in their game. The ball was thrown up, sticks rattled, all the shouts and cheers of the game were heard, when suddenly, high above the noise of the players, rose a shriek of the women, as from all sides of the glen advanced the hated Colquhouns. The clansmen, though surprised and unarmed, at once formed up, back to back, and with their clubs prepared to meet the swords of the foe; but tough ash and cold steel had hardly met, when, with screams of fury, a naked dirk in each right hand and a bundle of claymores under each left arm, the women of the clan cut through the Colquhouns, and brought to their husbands the broadswords that soon swept the men of Luss back again to Loch Lomond side. About this time 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 enterteened with comedies, and all other sports and recreations that Earl John could make him,' among them being camanach matches. 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.' 6 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 game 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 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 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 6 |