Shinty

Shinty - a Scottish Field Game

History of Shinty

Shinty (Scottish Gaelic: camanachd, iomain) is a team game played with sticks and a ball, similar to the Irish game hurling and the Welsh game bando. Rules varied widely from place to place. Stick ball is a game probably as old as the man-made tools. The most notable period reference is in the Irish legend of Cú Chulainn, where a youth named Sétanta saves himself from an attack from a guard dog by using his stick to knock his hurly bhall into the dog's mouth, suffocating it.

Shinty in Caid

I first encountered Shinty playing with a group of Ren Faire folk who called themselves the Gall óglaigh or Gallowglass at the old Renaissance Faire in Agoura. A few years later, in Dreiburgen, we were having trouble keeping our fighting practices up during Dreiburgen's hot summers. I got permission of then-Baron Thurstan to create a Summer Game to use in leu of an armored practice to keep us in shape and give us something to do on regular practice days when it was just too hot to armor up. The game is fast and fun. We did learn that it was not a good idea to allow people 16 and under play with the adults. Kids are vicious, competitive and don't tire.

Equipment and Field

Shinty (as modified and used in the SCA)

• The Caman, or sticks are about 3 - 3 1/2 feet long, matched to the comfort of the player. As I made them, after the Gallowglass model, they rather resembled upside down rounded axes, rather than the field hockey style used in the modern world today. I made ours out of Ash. In a pinch, people did use SCA rattan axes as Caman.
• The Bhall: We tried several different things for the bhall. Probably the best and least difficult was a softball dyed brownish. Tennis balls tended to shoot off too far, and regular field hockey balls were a bit small for what we were doing. We also tried stuffing wool into cloth or leather, but my skill made for a rather lumpy and difficult to control bhall.
• Goal Post(s): Originally, we just had a single stick in the ground at both ends of the field, and if the bhall hit the stick a point was scored. Eventually we used a pair of sticks about 3-4 feet apart and we just needed the bhall to go between the posts.
• The Achaidh or field could be any size available so long as there was room to move, and not too close to on-lookers. We played this at the first Great Western War using no boundaries, and at one point we went right through the Royal encampment much to the displeasure of the King and his entourage.

Rules

Our rules were pretty loose.

• The bhall was placed in the middle of the achaidh and the teams started closer to their own goal. Sometimes we would have forwards, one from each team, who would stand a few feet from the bhall in the middle of the achaidh. A "Lay-on" was called and whichever team was able to get the bhall through the goal won a point.
• For safety's sake, the striking paddle of the caman was never to raised higher than hip level. Even so, beware your shins. I recommend some kind of greaves. There's a reason it's called "Shinny."
• The game generally ran until one team won five rounds... unless we decided differently... unless it was just too hot to keep going.