1 "They dunna know the game from shinty"

Hugh Dan MacLennan MA, DipEd Aberdeen University, Scotland

"Shinty is very similar to the Irish game of hurling, and some Highland shinty players may have formed the kindred game in Australia, but shinty itself is unknown.”

This statement, taken from Malcolm Prentis' book, "The Scottish in Australia" (Melbourne, 1987, page 119), has unfortunately been taken to be axiomatic in terms of its dismissal of the Scottish contribution to sport in Australia.

There is clear evidence, despite what Prentis says, and despite the perpetuation of this myth by other historians, that shinty was in fact played in Australia and that it was an important part of the cultural baggage taken there by Scottish Highland/Gaelic settlers, particularly in the 1840s-1850s.

There is a significant corpus of evidence in Australian archives detailing interaction between the indigenous population and settling Highlanders in sporting and cultural terms. The trauma of departure and dislocation of a large number of people to the other side of the world was a key factor in the survival of Gaelic and Highland customs and institutions.

This is a field which has attracted little attention and it has to be said that recent books chronicling "the history of sport in Australia" (I use that as a generic title: two spring to mind - Adair and Vamplew’s “Sport in Australian History” OUP,

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1997 and Mosely et al “Sporting Immigrants”, Walla Walla Press, 1997) are fundamentally flawed because of their failure to acknowledge shinty and its part in life in the new continent.

"They dunna know the game from shinty" is, as I understand it, a verbal volley delivered regularly at Australian Rules football matches in Victoria. My informant from Geelong told me that on enquiring about its provenance, he was told that it related to shinty - "a game like hockey, which our ancestors brought with them to these shores."

A drawing of shinty being played in Sydney in 1842

My thesis is that the history of sport in Australia must be re-written in terms of acknowledging the contribution made by Scots. From the earliest years of their settlement in Australia, Scots were conscious of their distinctiveness and were

2 3 quite deliberate in their efforts to maintain this. There was, especially in the foundation years of the Port Phillip District, a strong emphasis laid upon the maintenance of a 'Scottishisness' as Dr Cliff Cumming (Deakin Univ, Victoria) has established. This manifested itself through concern about establishing churches and schools and in the formation of a multiplicity of national organisations in both urban and rural settings. In Port Phillip there emerged an integrated Scottish identity which belied the settlers' lack of a common historical or cultural background.

Sport was also a significant dimension in all this, the evidence for which is principally contained in reports of New Year celebrations. There were numerous attempts to form Highland societies, such as the Comunn Na Fèinne in Geelong, and to restrict membership to Highlanders and Gaelic speakers. Many of these societies practised an open policy when it came to attendance at their games and considerately offered English translations of society business minutes and of the programmes for the Highland Games for the non Gaelic- speaking members and participants.

The earliest evidence I have so far located of shinty actually being played in Australia is in the Port Phillip Patriot of January 6, 1842, in a report which is accompanied by an account of prisoners celebrating the New Year in the local gaol with roast beef and plum pudding.

Shinty.- On New year's Day a splendid game at the good old Scotch game of shinty came off on Mr Donald McLean's farm on the Merri Creek. About twenty stalwart Highlanders ranged on either side, and the game was so keenly contested that after a four hours' struggle under the broiling heat of the mid-day sun the parties were fain to withdraw the game, neither party being able to gain the victory.

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This reference is, in itself, enough to discredit Malcolm Prentis' view that “shinty itself is unknown in Australia”, but it is by no means the only reference to be found. Similarly, we find, more than ten years later at Alma, County Talbot, the following account of Highland Sports on New Year's Day:

One of the best day's sports which ever came off in the colony took place here on this occasion. At ten o'clock in the morning a procession of about 50 men left the John o'Groat Restaurant, Chinaman's Flat, headed by Messrs Andrew Elder and Kenneth McIvor with drawn swords and fully equipped in full Highland costume, followed by Mr David Ross, also in full Highland dress, with his bagpipes discoursing the national music in right good style, followed by flag-bearers with their flags, and all other accompaniments of singular first-class home sports. (Bell's Life in Victoria, January 10, 1857)

Prentis' view of shinty is understandably somewhat dismissive, but he may be forgiven to some extent for making the assumption that the "broiling heat" of an Australian New Year might not be conducive to the celebration of New Year with caman in hand. Early settlers such as Niel Black evidently thought it so:

The mode in which the New Year was welcomed out here was to keep up a constant firing … but was not troubled with first footing. We had a quiet New Year, different indeed from any I had ever seen before. I dined with Eddington … but there was no party in either place. It would have been hard work here to play the Shinty or dance in the heat we have had at present but I thought it might be done. (Niel Black Journal entry for January 1, 1840)

Ossian Macpherson, in a poem in the Spectator of September 24, 1864, wrote:

But may we a' who now are met, Till nature claims her final debt; Be aye resolved ne'er to forget

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Oor ancient Hielan shinty.

For too long now historians, and particularly sports’ historians, have at best under-valued, at worst ignored, the “ancient Hielan’ shinty’s” rightful place and space in world sport - and particularly in Australia.

Much of this 1997 article is based on a research trip conducted in Australia in September/October of the same year. Apparently this article helped start a flow of information which lead to Prentis changing his position on shinty. Hugh Dan MacLennan’s thesis was on the cultural baggage which survived the savage dislocation of Highlanders and other Scots dispersed to Canada and Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. Mr. MacLennan hopes to publish the work through the proposed National Archive for Shinty. His research is ongoing.

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