Cluiche ri cluiche nan soc
Cluiche nan corcan ‘s nam bian;
A’ chulaidh chomraig a bh’aig an dis
Cha’n fhaca mi roimhe riamh
Each game to the game of the ends,
The game of the whittles and skins,
The battle array that these two had,
I never before have seen.
J.F. Campbell West Highland Tales vol. III, 419.
William H. Calvin believed that the notable expansion in brain size found in early hominids reflected their capacity to throw stones, the one development encouraging and making possible the other until a sufficient level of skill was obtained.1 He was probably correct. It is remarkable how good little boys no more than three or four years old are at estimating distance, weight and speed. This is as near an instinct as humans possess.
The reason why our ability to throw stones far, with power and accuracy was of such importance that it dominated our development over millions of years was that it improved our ability to hunt, and specifically our ability to drive game into an ambush: the communal hunting that I have described in the Hunting chapter. G. doirneag 'a pebble of a good size for throwing' was used by hunters (G. toir 'the chase') while G. càr can mean ‘stone’ or 'to throw'. To move a herd of animals forward, a shower of small stones is very effective. In some places herders still use stones to control their flocks. A stone landing beyond a straying animal brings it back into the flock, a stone which hits the rear of a driven animal keeps it moving forward. A thrown stone is also effective against a predators. Those who faced the driven prey at the ambush site also needed to be able to throw accurately. They used stones of different sizes to stun, immobilise or kill game. At this stage, which in some places lasted until guns replaced all earlier weapons, a stone did not need to be sharp to be effective.
At some time, probably much later, when hunting had become more difficult, hunters found that they could increase accuracy and power of a thrown missile by hitting it with a bat or stick. A century ago little boys in Gaeldom used a split stick, G. sgoiltean to throw pebbles. Other innovations appear. A spear is basically a shaped stone equipped with a permanent handle to improve accuracy and a sharp point to improve its killing power. Without the shaft to direct it, there is no need to sharpen a stone. Arrows are a further improvement, probably first designed to work with a fire drill. More recently a spear or dart might be used with a further accelerator in the form of a spear-holder. The earliest known spear-holder, or reindeer antler, was made in France 15,000 years ago. I will come back to arrows and other inventions.
The Gaels played a great many ball-games, using every possible combination of bat, ball and players, ranging from the one needed by golf to the hundreds involved in the traditional communal football games. The Scottish evidence suggests that all ball games were originally a way of improving a range of practical skills used in hunting, that they were devised by hunters as a way of passing the time before a hunt, or by small boys not yet old enough to join the adults. Golf, in particular, is a very unusual game but ideal for an individual who wants to develop accuracy, range and power. The conjunction of games with hunting is is reported by James Fraser, minister of Wardlaw, near Inverness, who took part in a ‘combined hunt’ or deer-drive in Monar, Ross and Cromarty, in 1655. The participants were prominent Mackenzie and Frasers, together with ‘the flower of all the youth in our country’. Before any hunting took place, four days were set aside to allow the men to engage in “jumping, arching, shooting, throwing the barr, the stone and all manner of manly exercises imaginable”.2 All these 'manly exercises' are designed to hone their skills for what lay ahead. The game of shinty was also a precursor of a deer-drive and was again a way of honing of practical skills while having fun. It still played on New Year's Day, once the day of the great midwinter hunt.
Ball games are not restricted to Scotland, though for its size it appears to have a truly remarkable number and variety. A local form of hand-ball which resembles the Scottish game is also played in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. The Basques, who are after all European, play pelota, the ferocious game of the little ball. Pelota is found also in English as ball, billet, bullet, pellet and in Gaelic as peallaid 'little ball', which is related to peallag 'little bunch of hair' and peallaid 'sheepskin', which are both used in making a pelota. The team game known as shinty, camanachd or bendy to the Gaels and as hurley or hurling to the Irish, is still popular in the Scottish Highlands, wherever there are enough men to make up a team, and much resembles a rough form of hockey. The ball in the horseless polo played in the Himalaya by the Baltic is a stone wrapped in leather thongs, not unlike the Basque pelota. Polo is said to be a Balti word for ‘ball’ and the game resembles shinty played on horseback. In Baltistan today boys play a very fast and accurate form of ‘horseless polo’ which resembles shinty, with roughly-shaped clubs and a ball made of a stone wrapped in leather thongs.3 Such far-flung links may reflect a common origin in the Palaeolithic.
Bats or clubs took various forms, some of them evidently designed as weapons in their own right. The bat might take the form of a straight stick (siomaid), a long curved stick (caman), a narrow flat piece of wood, or a short broad piece of wood. The caman evolved into the hockey stick and the golf club, which a few centuries ago were very similar objects. Golf makes sense as solitary practice for driving deer, scooping up a suitable stone from the ground. Along the East Coast both hunting and golf took place on the links or fighdeach, a name derived from G. fiadh ‘deer’. The fighdeach or links are defined as 'a stretch of flat or undulating ground along a sea-shore; hence a golf-course', but this does not explain why golf was played on links. Why did men, alone or in small groups, drive small hard balls along the links, and then back again? Golf might also have begun as a form of solitary practice for the game of shinty, which was played with two teams, two goals and a single ball, each player having his own bat. Boys and young men honed their skills with bat and ball in every spare moment, with whatever equipment they had to hand.
From such practical beginnings, every modern ball-game has evolved: golf, tennis, football, rugby, handball and rounders to mention a few. Within the last century league games have almost entirely replaced the original less organised and often more violent versions, except in some country districts. ‘Football and shinty are now reduced to sciences, with exact rules demanding careful observance, but it is within the memory of some when both of these were played in Scotland in a very rough-and-ready method’4
We can distinguish between team games by their use of bats and balls. The form of a game was determined by the equipment available. In some team games, such as shinty and hockey, every player has his own club or caman but there is only one ball, and all players are in action at the same time. Hockey and shinty represent the division of a muster of hunters into two troops (buidhean), each with its own captain and all of them equipped with bats. In cricket and rounders, there are two teams but they require only one or two bats, and only one or two of the batting team are active at any one time. One can practice bowling with two people, one bat and one ball. Cricket and rounders are typically games for boys with limited equipment. A link between shinty and golf is that each player has his own club.
Football is a primitive game which does not use clubs or bats, the ball being propelled only by the feet, not thrown, though in the communal ball games hosted by several Scottish towns, there were few rules. These annual games of communal hand-ball or football were between two teams representing the entire community and roughly (often very roughly) resembled rugby or football. In the North-East the ball might generally be thrown or kicked or struck with a club or scuddie5 A game of hand-ball, in which kicking the ball was forbidden, was played on Fastern’s E’en in several parts of the Lowlands.6. Everyone must eat meat for his dinner that day, which suggests this was once the date of an important hunt. Like other old hunting events, its date was calculated according the moon7 :
First comes Candlemas, an syne the new moon
The first Tuesday aifter that’s Festren’s e’en. [Fastern's Eve]
That moon done, the neist moon fou, [the next full moon]
The first Sunday after that’s Peace true. [Easter]
Games of hand-ball involving the whole community are known from Kirkwall, Jedburgh, Rattray and Scone. At Scone the game was played on Fastern’s E’en or Shrove Tuesday between the Bachelors and the Married men, but was abolished ‘because of certain inconveniences’ towards the end of the 18th century.8 The others are notable mainly for their idiosyncratic local character. In both Kirkwall and Jedburgh ‘the game takes place through the streets, with no apparent restriction on the number of players who take part. The Kirkwall game is basically football, whilst that at Jedburgh, where the small ball is smuggled under the clothing through the opposition, has closer parallels with what happened at Scone and at Rattray’.9 What happened at Scone and at Rattray appears to be beyond the author's powers of description.
Traditional ball games with features akin to those of golf, hockey, tennis, baseball, rounders, rugby and football were played in many parts of Scotland not much more than a century ago. An invaluable account of the great variety of games played in Argyll no more than a century ago is given in Games and Diversions of Argyleshire10 and is summarised below. Iomairt air an stainchear (‘rounders’), no doubt exported to the States by Scottish exiles, is the ancestral form of baseball, and Iomairt air a Gheata bears an unmistakable similarity to cricket.
There are many variants involving various types of bat, a cat and a ball, a set-out pitch with bases, two opposing teams with batsmen, bowlers, fielders and wicket-keepers. Every village probably had its traditional games. The object is either to accumulate runs or to get the cat or ball into a small hole, or both. Necessary skills include fast and accurate bowling, hard and accurate hitting, fast running and teamwork. These are all necessary skills in herding and, notably, in communal deer drives.
Each game had its specific equipment, most of it still familiar in one form or another. There was generally a straicean or bat, which might be shaped like a cricket bat, a paddle, a hockey stick or a golf club. One game used eight long pointed pegs or pinneachan. Iomairt an Geat used a stannard or standard, a marker pen. There were several variety of camain or shinty sticks, long and short, several types of ball, a siomaid or straight stick, and various types of cat. A cat was a short, stout, rectangular bit of wood, sharpened like a pencil at both ends and used in place of a ball . The cat appears to have been an archaic type of weapon; nothing like it is now used in games or, for that matter, as a weapon. The word cat identifies it as a hunting weapon (archaic G. cath 'hunt'). Other features include the tigh or house, the cailleach or den, the crioch baire or boundary of the field, the toll or hole, the comhar or line (E. crease), and the leth-bhair or hail, the goal. Several games could be played either with a cat or a ball. In some cases the ball was a small heavy object, perhaps latterly of cast-iron, which did not travel very far when hit and which neither rolled nor bounced when it landed.
Ball Games
Iomairt air a Gheata, version 1. Only four players are needed, two playing against two. The den consists of two holes about 14 metres apart, each guarded by a player with a straight stick about 4 ft long. They normally keep one end of the stick in the hole to protect it. The other pair have a long peg or pinne, and the object is to get this peg into one of the holes. It is first thrown to one end of the den and the player stationed there tries to hit it with his stick. If he misses, the wicket-keeper, who is just behind him, tries to catch the pinne and jam it in the hole before his opponent can get his stick back in. Once this is achieved the teams change sides. When the pinne is struck out, the defending pair must exchange ends at least once, and may run as often as they can before the pinne is brought back. A record is kept of the number of runs. If the pinne is struck but caught before it falls to the ground, the defenders are out and the teams change places. The game is won by the first team to run the holes an agreed number of times.
Iomairt air a Gheata, version 2. This game is played with a ball, a bat, a standard and eight pinneachan an geatachan or gate-pins. There are only two players. The standard is stuck in the ground and at a distance of 12-15 metres from it four gates are made by sticking the pins in the ground in pairs about 15 inches apart, forming a square with the standard in the middle, the openings facing the standard. One of the two players takes the bat and stands at the standard, facing the north gate and hits the ball in that direction. If he succeeds in putting it through the gate, he then tries to do the same for the east gate, then for south and west, being allowed only one shot per gate. If he misses he hands the bat over to his opponent. A running score is kept.
Caddog or Cat and Dog. Played by two teams. A den of about 8 m square is marked out by four holes and the team that wins the toss takes possession of the den. Four defenders armed with ‘dogs’ or bats, guard the holes by putting the ends of the bats in the holes. Four attackers are also positioned at the holes to try to get hold of the cat and put it in a hole. The object of the game is for the attackers to get the cat (a peg used in place of a ball) in any of the holes. The cat is thrown at one of the defenders, who tries to hit it while it is still in the air, failing which he must put his bat back into his hole before an attacker puts the cat in it. He is allowed two or three chances, as agreed. Should the attackers field the cat and get it into the hole, the defender goes out and is replaced by another from his team. He is also out if he fails to hit the cat on the second or third try. When the cat is hit, all the defenders or dog men must move at least from one hole to the next but as far as they safely can. (The direction of this movement is not stated but on the parallel of Iomairt air a Gheata, where the action went from north to east, south and west, it was probably clock-wise). If they manage to run a complete round all those of their team who are ‘out’ can join the game again. But if the attackers or cat men can get the cat into a hole while the dog men are running, they have gained the den and become the defenders in a new game. The overall winner is the team with the most complete rounds.
Strac agus Cat, or Cat and Bat. The strac or bat is 50 cm long and the four sides of the cat or speil (a small four-sided wooden peg) are numbered from 1 to 4. A little hole (an cailleach or den) is made in the ground and about 7 m away a line called an comhar is drawn. The team that is in lay the bat across the hole while the others line up behind the comhar and thrown the cat at the bat. A direct hit allows the attackers to get in immediately. If it lands elsewhere, the defenders get the number of strokes shown on the cat. One of them picks up the bat and hits the cat on one of its sharp ends as far as possible from the cailleach, as many times as was shown. The distance back to the cailleach from the final position of the cat is measured in lengths of the strac, five being a score. A similar game called Speilean, which uses a ball, is played in Uist.
Iomairt air an Stainchear or Rounders, in Aberdeenshire known as Bases, the origin of American baseball. It requires two opposing teams, one bat shaped like a cricket-bat but much lighter, and one ball made of woollen yarn wound tightly over cork, sewn with linen thread, and sometimes enclosed in moleskin or light leather. A line, an comhar, is made about 50 m from the batting position and the fielders stand beyond it. The bowler is known as the creeshy (E. crease). The players must run round three or four posts some 30 or 40 m apart without being bowled out or by the creeshy putting the ball in the hole which marks the batting position. At one school in Islay the batsman threw up the ball for himself. MacLagan thought this was improper but the same feature is found in Stracair11, in Iomairt air a Bhall-Speil12 and in tennis and is no doubt the older practice. A hunter must have thrown up his own ball in the course of a drive.
Cluich an Tighe, Game of the Houses. Three circles or ‘houses’ are drawn on the ground about 60 m apart, at the corners of a triangle. One player outside the circle has a ball and all the others stand in one of the circles. Their aim is to complete a number of rounds of the circle without being hit by the ball. If hit they become prisoners and have to stand inside the circle.
Cluich-Dhesog The Skilful Game (Golf) ‘is a Highland game, but is more simple than as played in the Lowlands. Two or more persons, by means of clubs of a certain form, strike a small hard ball, the contest being to decide either who shall reach a distant spot, or put the ball into a hole with the fewest strokes.’ So said Logan and it is certain that golf began in this way, as a kind of individual shot-playing, or practice for shinty or for practical use in the field. MacLagan found no trace of Chuich-Dhesog in Argyle, where, by 1901, golf was played according to the modern rules.
Shinty or Camanachd
Camanachd, Cluich air a Chaman, Iomain (driving), also known as Shinty; in Scots chamaire or chamie, and in Ireland as hurley, is the great team game of the Gael. The famous ‘fight’ between twice thirty champions on the Inch of Perth, witnessed by King James ??, was most probably a game of camanachd: it took place within a defined or fenced piece of public ground, like those where camanachd was played. Fionn and other hunters played shinty. When Cuchulainn, aged five, went to live with his uncle to perfect himself in manly exercises, he packed his caman and his silver ball, as well as a throwing-javelin and a toy spear.13 Their purpose is long forgotten but ball-games are still very important at boys' boarding-schools. Shinty was normally played in a delimited field by two teams of players, each equipped with a caman or curved club, though MacLagan adds that In some areas there were no fixed boundaries to the field, and that players might kick and throw the ball, or pick it up and run with it.14 In the modern game the pitch has a goal or den at either end and its object was to score goals by hitting the ball into the den. Shinty was played on New Year’s Day, ‘a single festival which seems to unite even yet Christmas Day, Latha Nollaig, and New Year’s Day proper, An Calluinn, the kalends of January, that is, the 25th of December. It is only comparatively recently that shinty was still placed on Sunday.'15
Martin described a shinty game played on St Kilda c.1695: ‘They use for their diversion short clubs and balls of wood; the sand is a fair field for this sport and exercise, in which they take great pleasure, and are very nimble at it; they play for some eggs, fowls, hooks, or tobacco, and so eager are they for victory that they strip themselves to their shirts to obtain it.’16 According to Logan, ‘great numbers collect on a plain, chiefly about Christmas, and, dividing into parties of twelve and upwards on a side endeavour by means of sticks crooked at the lower end to drive a ball to a certain goal. The balls in Argyleshire are made of wood; in Badenoch they are formed of hair hard and firmly twisted.’17 The caman was commonly a long club played with two hands but in Kintyre it was shorter and played with one hand. Elder wood, being tough and light, was in demand. The base might be flat or round in section.
Bows and Arrows
MacLagan lamented that ‘Archery is a lost art so far as the Highlands are concerned. In the old Gaelic tales mention of the sling occurs frequently, but the bow and arrow, if it is mentioned at all, is spoken of in so vague a manner, that there is no certainty as to what exactly the allusion is. It is doubtful, in fact, if the bow and arrow was a weapon of the early Gael. The Gaelic name for 'arrow', saighead, seems a mere adaptation of the Latin sagitta. Flint arrow-heads are found, of course, in all Gaeldom as elsewhere … but these point to a pre-historic period, as is proved by their name of 'fairy-arrows', saighead-shithe.'18 This equates fairies with hunters from a bygone era but archery probably persisted until guns became available. He notes that in Highland tradition, 'there are a large number of archer tales, and it is interesting to note in these how frequently the archer is called John, and is said to have been little.' However 'John' can be equated with G. aodhan 'fire'. It is possible that he is a personified beacon and the fast arrow that he sends out is the light of a beacon.
Despite MacLagan's lament, it appears that in parts of the Highlands, bows and arrows remained in use into the seventeenth century. in 1633 the Laird of Glenurchy sent a number of his friends, followers and dependants, in their best array and equipage, with 'trewes, bowes, dorloches and other thair ordinarie weapouns' to Perth, in order that Charles I might see Highlanders ‘in thair countrie habite and best order’. The dependants were probably natives of Breadalbane, a very conservative but typical Highland district. In addition, John Macculloch, writing in 1824, tells us that in 1665, in a dispute between Locheil and Macintosh, Cameron had as part of his force three hundred archers. He also mentions that another action of the same sort about the same date took place between Glencoe men and Breadalbane men, and these were the last instances of the use of the bow as a weapon of war in Scotland.19 In 1695 or thereabouts, the inhabitants of the Isle of Lewis, another remote area, were, on the authority of Martin, 'very dexterous in the exercise of swimming, archery, vaulting or leaping'.20 According to the people of Argyll, the perfect bow was made of wood from the yew of Easragan , the perfect arrow feathered by an eagle from Loch Treig, and headed by the Ceard Macpheidearan.21 There are several similar rhymes.
Another sign of an archaic tradition is that Highland gentlemen carried a supply of the necessary eagle feathers stuck in their bunnets. This suggests that bows and arrows, like swords, were a weapon used by those whose role was to confront the horde of driven deer at the ambush site. Great accuracy was not needed in such circumstances. Feathers might be obtained from captive eagles. Burt, writing in the eighteenth century noted that ‘In the west and north-west of Scotland there is great repairing of a fowle called the erne, of a marvellous nature, and the people are very curious and solist to catch him, whom thereafter they punze off his wings that he shall not be able to flie againe. … The people do give him such sort of meat as they think convenient, and such a great quantity at a time that hee lives contentedly with that portion for the space of fourteene, sixteene, or twenty dayes, and some of them for the space of a month. The people that doe so feed him, doe use him for this intent, that they may be furnished with the feathers of his wings when hee doth cast them, for the garnishing of their arrowes, either when they are at warre or at hunting; for these feathers onely doe never receive rayne or water as others doe, but remayne always of a durable estate and uncorruptible’22
The Sling
Another way of propelling a stone, in addition to the stick or club, was the sling. ‘The ordinary sling of an oval piece of leather with a hole in the centre and a cord from either end is of course known in the Highlands. There is a loop on the one cord which is passed over the thumb, the end of the other is firmly grasped between the thumb and fore-finger, the sling with a stone in it is whirled rapidly round the head, and the unlooped cord loosed when sufficient momentum is gained. It is well known that with continued practice great accuracy in striking can be acquired, but no one takes the trouble to practise sufficiently, though boys with their slings do compete against each other in a rough and ready way both for accuracy in striking, and distance in throwing.
‘The Gaelic name for a sling is Crann Tabhuil which shows that the stick of the loop (sling), which seems the translation, was the instrument of the Gael. Wooden slings are still used in various forms and under various names. What seems to have been the Gaelic throwing-stick is what is now called, in some places, Dealgan-Leathair. This is really a sling in which the one cord is represented by a stick. A somewhat, but not too limber wand has upon the farther end of it, nearly at the point, a slice or two cut off it so as make a flat surface, in the middle of which again a depression is cut. Immediately beyond this a double cord as long as the stick is firmly attached to it, and knotted so that a stone placed in the notch of the stick will be held firmly in it when the string is drawn right at the proximal end of the stick with the thumb. The way it is used then is, keeping pressure on the stone, the wand is swung round the head and switched at the end of the swing, the thumb being disengaged from the string at the same moment. From a wand about three feet long, a thin flat stone can be thrown a hundred and fifty yards.
‘A more primitive sort of Crann Tabhuill is made by slitting a hazel wand of from two to three feet long, for some three inches at the one end; in the slit a stone is inserted, being retained by the spring of the wood. This also is whirled round the head and the stone is disengaged by the jerk at the end of the swing. This is called, on Lochaweside at any rate, a sgoiltean or sgoiltean bioran (a thing split: split stick). It is clear that the latter instrument has not the capabilities of the Dealgan Leathair (the leather spindle). Other Gaelic names for a sling are tailbh, tailm, a word applicable to instruments in general. Armstrong gives the word glochdan, glocan, which seems to connect it with a forked stick, glocan, a fork.’23 MacLagan thought glocan might be the Gaelic word for a catapult, though he realised that modern catapults, with rubber springs, are later than Armstrong.
In Irish tradition Furbaide, whose mother had been killed by her sister Medb, saw his aunt bathing in Loch Ree and found out who she was. Not wanting to pick up a stone – since the movement would alert his prey – he put the cheese he was eating into his sling, waited until she turned her face towards him, and killed her with one shot24 This story conceals a pun between G. càise ‘cheese’ and G. caise ‘wrinkle, fold, privy parts of a female’ which identifies a deer-ambush. The circumstances suggest that in the original account, Medb was a hind, soiled in the lake, and Furbaide kills her with a sling-shot. The trick was evidently to carry a spare stone in the mouth. Smooth round stones of an ideal size for sling-shot occur naturally in Scotland, in rivers, lake-shores and on certain of the beaches of the West Coast.
A multi-layered pun with the same sexual connotation is hidden in the incomprehensible story of the caisean-uchd, said by Dwelly to be ‘the breast-strip of a sheep killed at Christmas or on New Year’s Eve, and singed and smelled by each member of the family as a charm against fairies and spirits. MacAlpine adds ‘in Islay at any time but never for the sake of the fairies’. The words caisean, uchd, uan, the fairies and the midwinter date provide links with the midwinter hunt and with the private parts of the goddess. The ritual, like most other incomprehensible Gaelic traditions, was probably a way of preserving this sacred fact while disguising its context.
Clach Neirt ‘Strength Stone’ and Clach Deuchainn ‘Trial Stone’.
In addition to the small but deep-cutting stones thrown, hit by bats or hurled by slings, hunters also appear on occasion to have thrown very large stones, no doubt to stun very large prey. Trials of strength which involved lifting, carrying, and throwing very heavy stones were a standard feature of traditional Highland life. A youth was obliged to lift or throw the clach-cuid-fir, ‘stone of a man’s portion’, before he could wear a bonnet, a test which no doubt meant that he was then strong enough to join the men as a hunter.25 The custom survives at Highland Games in the ‘heavy events’ such as putting the shot and throwing the hammer, and to some extent in games such as bowls and quoits.
The use of heavy stones as weapons is found in the Irish Dindsenchas, a kind of naive place-name lore. Gris, a poetess, caused the death of Maistiu, daughter of Oengus, by lampooning her. Then Daire, to avenge her, threw a ‘soldier’s battle stone’ that he had and made fragments of her head, which fell into the stream of Snuad.26 In archaic language a soldier was a hunter, a battle was a hunt, and Daire or doire was a hunter (G. toire ‘to chase, hunt’). It seems probable that large stones were used by particularly powerful individuals to kill particularly large and dangerous animals. Otherwise the game of putting the shot has no practical purpose, and that runs against everything we know of Gaelic culture.
Cluiche nan soc ‘the game of the ends’, or the Tug-of-War.
Its English name suggests that it had some connection with hunting. It may test the strength and coordination needed to pull a large animal out of a bog, or it might have tested the strength and integrity of a rope. The rope used in a tug-of-war was called G. camul (E. cable). Is there a link with Arthur’s Camelot or with the meaningless Gaelic phrase 'Cinn-camelo' which is found in games as ‘King Come Along’ and ‘Kinga Below’.
There is a reference to a two-handed Cluiche nan soc in an archaic hunting context. ‘There was a young lad in the Fheinn, who was called Coireall, and he used always to be in the house of the women, because he had not come to the age of a man. It is Goll that had Mir mora na Feinne, the great morsel of the Feinne, that was every bit of marrow that was in every bone to be gathered together and brought to him. Coireall came in, and he took with him some of the marrow, and he and Goll fell out. Fionn ruled that they should drive bones through the wattled rods that divided the house, and the one with whom the bone should go, the marrow to be his.’ Wattled rods were the common means of making a partition in a Highland cottage: sticks were woven into a kind of rude basket-work, and plastered with clay. ‘They did that and Goll dragged Coireall through the wattled rods with the bone. After that they went to try each other to the strand and Coireall won of Goll, and he left the women’s house.’27 Which is to say that when a young lad beat an adult hunter in a game or contest he himself became an adult. The games of the Gael were of much greater significance than we might now imagine.
