Native Irish Games
"The distinctive games of Ireland to-day are hurling and Gaelic football. Hurling is a game with some resemblance to hockey and until recently it was popular in Protestant Ulster country-places…
From: 1909 C.E. To: 1909 C.E.
Location: Ireland
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in Ireland by Robert Lynd, 1909.
Ireland is almost sufficiently rich in native games to be able to amuse herself without importing from abroad any games at all. She is short of light summer games, indeed, though I have seen it contended that both tennis and golf are games of Irish origin. Dr. J. P. Henry recently discovered a passage in the old heroic literature, describing a game played by Cuchullain, and certainly this had many features of modern golf. I see even the game of croquet attributed to Irish invention in Mr. Woodgate's wildish book of reminiscences. I do not know what grounds Mr. Woodgate had for making this charge.
The distinctive games of Ireland to-day are hurling and Gaelic football. Hurling is a game with some resemblance to hockey and until recently it was popular in Protestant Ulster country-places as well as in other parts of Ireland. It is known there as "cammon" or "shinty," and I have myself played it with other boys of bits of stick in a haggard. Hurling is a game played between teams of seventeen men a side, and one of the main differences between it and hockey is that the hurler is not forbidden to raise his stick higher than his shoulder or to hit with both sides of the stick.
A hurler, however, will tell you that hurling is as different from hockey as night from afternoon. Besides goal-posts of ordinary width, there are two wider posts outside the others, and when the ball passes between these, a point is scored. Three points are equal to one goal. The player is allowed to catch the ball in his hand, but is not allowed to lift it from the ground except on the point of his hurley. The game is rapid and vigorous, and is said to be more dangerous for the inexperienced than for the expert. It is being played more and more throughout the country every day, and there is no doubt that it deserves to be popular on its merits, apart from all question of national sentiment. Girls play a variety of hurling called camóguidheacht.
Irish athletes are not as a rule so positive regarding the merits of Gaelic football as they are regarding those of hurling. I have heard more than one of them declare that, though Gaelic football is a better game than association [soccer], it is not so good a game as rugby. It would be foolish for an unathletic person like myself to offer any dogmatic opinion on the matter, but I think Gaelic football could be mended into as good a game as any.
It has been suggested at different times that it would be a more exciting game if points were abolished and only goals allowed to count in the score, for the point system exists here as in hurling. As it is, however, it is a fine game when played between two well-matched teams of seventeen a side. It may be described as a catch-and-kick game, for the player is allowed to catch the ball and to bounce it before kicking it, but not to hold it and run with it.
Gaelic football and hurling are played all over Munster and Leinster and in the Falls Road district of Belfast. But Connacht is a province in which, for some reason or other, the old Irish games do not flourish as they ought, though, of course, even here they are played in some places. Munster seems to have more sporting vigour than any of the other provinces. In the industrial parts of Ulster, the working classes play association football to a great extent, and in nearly all the large towns through the country there are rugby clubs for the middle-classes. It must be said that the rugby game has been nationalised to a far greater degree than association, and it is claimed that the game as played in Ireland has various distinctions and virtues when contrasted with the rugby football of other countries.
Cricket has never aroused much interest in Ireland except within a comparatively narrow circle, and lacrosse, at which the counties of Antrim and Down excelled for a good number of years, seems now to be dying out of existence. Lacrosse, by the way, has always been played in Ireland as a summer game, not as a winter game, according to the English custom.
Polo is a favourite game with the wealthier classes, and rounds for racing, steeple-chasing and jumping are plentiful in many parts of the country. Irishmen are all supposed to be good judges of a horse. Certainly, a great proportion of country gentlemen, rich farmers, and professional men are enthusiasts for riding and hunting, and the mettle of Irish riders and horses is proverbial.
Cock-fighting is still a favourite pastime in some of the midland counties of Ulster, and encounters between the cock-fighters and the police now and then form the subject of a newspaper paragraph.
As for indoor games, the only distinctively national indoor game I know of is spoil-five with its variants. This is a card game which is played in all parts of Ireland, and in which the value of the cards must seem extraordinarily topsy-turvy to players of games like nap and bridge. The five of trumps is the best card, and after it, if I remember right, come the ace of hearts, the ace of trumps, Jack, King and Queen in order, while among the other cards the highest card in a red suit wins, and the lowest card in a black suit.
There is a great deal of gambling over spoil-five and other games in some of the farm-houses, and, where money is rare, it is not unusual to play for the delf on the dresser, the geese in the field, and even bulkier stakes. Cards, indeed, are a passion in many Irish homes, and Mr. Yeats's lines about "old men playing at cards with a twinkling of ancient hands" give us a picture of many a farm parlour and kitchen on a winter evening.
I know a house in which regularly every winter evening at seven o'clock the game begins, and I think this is no exceptional instance of enthusiasm. Of course, the better-known card-games are common as well as spoil-five, but spoil-five may be regarded as essentially the national game, though I do not know whether it is Irish in origin or not.
Chess is a game of which we are constantly hearing in the old heroic legends, and the chess-boards and chess-men of the kings were often decorated with gold and studded with jewels. There is a doubt, I believe, as to whether the game played anciently by the Irish resembled more closely chess or draughts. At the present day, both games are played a good deal, but not to a remarkable extent.
Robert Lynd, Home Life in Ireland (London: Mills, & Boon, 1909), 198-202.
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