Irene A. Reid

University of Stirling

Introduction

Amongst the growing body of literature on sport in Scotland a number of studies have examined the history of shinty, its national governing body and specific clubs. Like other sports, shinty emerged as a modern institutionalised sport during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries, which was a period of radical social and political change throughout the UK state. The Scottish Highlands are the heartland of shinty, yet the radical social and political activities of land reform and Celtic national and cultural identity which was a feature of Highland society a century ago, has been omitted from previous literature on the sport.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the relationship between shinty, nationalism and Celtic politics during the period 1870 to 1922 and to highlight some of the similarities and differences between sport, politics and nationalism in two connected Celtic cultures - Highland Scotland and Ireland. The analysis here demonstrates the connections between sport and political and cultural nationalism, and affirms that such connections must be examined in terms of specific content, time and place. To address these issues the paper has been divided into four sections: (i) a critical overview of literature about sport and nationalism in Scotland; (ii) a consideration of the place of shinty as the sport of a pan-Celtic nation linking the Scottish Highlands and Ireland; (iii) illustrates some connections between shinty and the issues which contributed to radical Celtic politics of land reform in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland during the late nineteenth century; (iv) examines some evidence about the relationship between shinty and nationalist politics during this period.

Sport, nationalism and Scotland

There is an established literature which examines the significance of sport in society, and recently this has paid increasing attention to the links between sport and nationalism. As Whitson and Macintosh explain, sport is one of a number of cultural practices which have an important place in "representing nations to the outside world", and also in "mobilizing national sentiments"2 amongst citizens within particular nations. The growing literature on sport and nationalism has demonstrated that this relationship is evident in social entities which are nation-states and those which are nations within states.3 For over three centuries Scotland politically has been a nation within a state,4 yet incorporation within the UK state did not extirpate Scottish identity and nationalism. The meaning and the ways of expressing Scottish identity and nationalism have fluctuated over these three hundred years, but this is not unique to Scotland. It is illustrative of Smith's idea that nations are not fixed entities but are always being remade according to changing social, political and historical circumstances.5 It is therefore helpful to reflect on the relationships between sport and nationalism as part of the processes of the "formation of nations"6 rather than nationalism as the political ideology of fixed entities.

The connection between sport and cultural nationalism in Scotland has been acknowledged in some analyses of Scottish society7 but it has been through the social and historical analysis of sport and recreation that the relationship has received more thorough critical examination.8 The greatest proportion of studies of sport and nationalism in Scotland have focused on football.9 There is some value in the view that nationalism has been a popular expression related to working class cultural activities like football rather than to politics.10 This however is too restrictive an analysis of the relationship between sport and nationalism in Scotland for at least three reasons. First it tends to overemphasise the significance of football as a national symbol in a diverse Scotland. Second it is informed by, and represents, a specifically male image of Scotland as a nation and third it misrepresents nationalism as a working class ideology in Scotland. The literature now emerging on sport, nationalism and identity in Scotland confirms that a variety of sports have been outlets for expressing images of the nation. This literature demonstrates that nationalism is not the preserve of one social class, or of groups of certain ethnic or cultural origin. The socio-historical analysis of Scotland's diverse sports culture is one way to examine how Scottish nationalisms express some of the "alternative of ways of being `Scottish' - Lowland and Highland, Protestant and Catholic, male and female, black and white".11

The quantity and perhaps quality of literature which examines the social and cultural significance of football for Scottish men is not matched by a similar volume of work on other sports, and other cultural groups which constitute the Scottish nation. The work contained in Jarvie's and Walker's12 collection has provided some fresh topics for exploring other relationships between sport and the nation,13 but there are many sports contexts and other groups still to be examined if we are more fully to understand the multitude of ways that sport contributes to the formation of Scotland.14 One approach which might extend these debates is to identify specific cultural groups and regions to consider how they may use sport as a vehicle for expressing their images of the nation.

Scotland has never been an ethnically or culturally pure nation yet the ways in which specific ethnic or cultural groups might experience the nation and express their Scottish nationalism through sport has been ignored. Foremost of these cultural regions is perhaps the Highlands which is acknowledged as significantly different from other parts of Scotland and which historically has been ignored and marginalised, while its people violently mistreated by both the Scottish and British states.15 The exceptions to the neglect of the theoretical analyses of Highland sporting culture have included Jarvie's work on the Highland games16 and Jarvie's and Jackson's work on sporting estates.17 These studies are important contributions which expand our understanding of connections between sporting practices and wider social-political milieu, but the activities represent on the one hand anglicised forms of indigenous Highland recreations, and on the other the pastimes of private landowners (often from outside Scotland). In contrast it is claimed that shinty (camanachd in Gaelic) is a Scottish sport which has its traditions in the Gaelic culture most closely identified with the Highlands. A social historical analysis of this `Celtic' sport might reveal some evidence of an alternative relationship between sport and nationalism which represents an image of Highland Scotland.

Previous histories of shinty report that the sport arrived in Scotland around the sixth century AD along with Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland.18 This literature provides a broad sweep of shinty's history, its governing body and of specific clubs like Skye,19 Kingussie,20 Fort William,21 and Kyles Athletic.22 To date, however, the most comprehensive historical analysis of shinty is provided by Hugh Dan MacLennan.23 His work draws on an extensive range of sources in Scotland, Ireland, North America and Australia and includes manuscripts, newspapers, personal papers, poetry, song and folklore retained in oral tradition, and from three languages (English, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic).24

All of the historical studies are important contributions in recording the history of shinty and its place in Highland communities, but this body of literature lacks two key features of sociological and cultural analyses of sport in historical and contemporary contexts. First, previous accounts provide valuable empirical evidence but there is no theoretical framework within which the development of shinty can be examined in respect of issues like structure, agency, identity and power. Second, some important social and political experiences of the Highlands are acknowledged by Hutchinson, Macdonald and MacLennan in particular, but there is no thorough analysis of the ways in which religion, land politics or nationalist politics, for example, may have contoured the development of shinty. The evidence uncovered from empirical research is essential but if we are to understand more fully the significance of shinty in Highland communities, its relationship to Scotland's sports culture and to the development of other sports, this must be examined in relation to the wider social and political context of its experience.

Shinty - the sport of a pan-Celtic nation?

In his study of popular recreations in nineteenth century West Highland communities Telfer25 reflected on the ways in which sports like shinty, stone throwing and running contributed to the sense of community and nation in this part of Scotland. In concluding this case study Telfer asked, "which nation or which expression or image of the nation games such as shinty were talking to Scottish, British, Highland or Celtic?"26 This question reveals the multiple national and cultural identities which people in certain Highland communities may have experienced a century ago and which cultural activities like shinty may have helped them negotiate. These multiple identities are not unique to the nineteenth century as MacAulay demonstrates27 nor are they restricted to the experiences of West Highlanders.28 The place of shinty in Highland culture provides one example of why it is essential to contextualise theoretical definitions of the relationships between sport, nations and nationalisms within specific historical and cultural situations.

The answer to Telfer's question is not easily explained and some might find it odd that it should have been asked since the orthodoxy has been that in Scotland during the nineteenth century it was a "Unionist-nationalism" which supported the image of a British nation.29 Nonetheless claims have been made in previous accounts of the history of shinty which justify the suggestion that shinty may have been a symbol of an alternative image of the nation. Evidence which lends weight to this is contained in two accounts of shinty which were recorded during the early decades of the twentieth century. The first was offered in 1919 by Alexander Macdonald to the Gaelic Society of Inverness, who described the game as "a people's pastime [which was] bulked largely in the Gaelic life of old".30 Macdonald also opined that shinty was "general and a national institution in Scotland from the very earliest times".31 A longer history of "our National Game"32 appeared thirteen years later compiled by Father Ninian MacDonald, a monk at St Benedict's Abbey in Fort Augustus.33 Father MacDonald reflected that shinty was "the national game of the Gael".34 These two accounts give some indication as to the image of the nation which shinty represented during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and point to the cultural roots of the sport.

Many accounts of Scottish history, society and culture acknowledge the Celtic Scots from Ulster as the originators of a pan-Celtic kingdom which once embraced the north-east of Ireland and the western seaboard of Scotland. In foregoing histories of shinty it is accepted that amongst the cultural baggage of Christianity, the folklore of the Ulster Cycle, and the Gaelic language, the Scots brought with them a stick and ball game which was known as camanachd. For instance Macdonald cites a nineteenth century Highland historian who claimed that:

Shinty is one of the oldest games in the world. It is nearly as old as the Gaelic language itself. Wherever in antiquity we find that language, be it in Ireland or Scotland, there, too, have we shinty with it...The oldest legends and myths, written over a thousand years ago, represent the mythic heroes of the Gael...as engaging in gigantic matches all over the lands of the Gael. At the dawn of history proper, with Columba at Iona and King Brude at Inverness, we have historic evidence that the game was played...Camanachd is therefore a game of high antiquity.35

The links between Scotland, Ireland and shinty are also acknowledged by Ó Maolfabhail in his history of hurling.36 He suggests that at one time there were two traditions of hurling in Ireland, "winter camanacht and Leinster summer hurling",37 and that although the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) gave official status to the latter it was probably at the expense of the former, which "survives to the present day in Scotland...known in English as shinty".38 Given the accepted folk origins of the game in Ireland, it is interesting to note that in Scotland in 1507 the Lord High Treasurer to King James IV referred to the King's enjoyment on 17 March of the "Irish gamyne" near Edinburgh.39 The suggestion that this Irish game was an early form of what is now shinty seems reasonable given the connections with the Gaelic language which by the fourteenth century was referred to as Irische in Lowland Scotland.40 This notion of shinty as an Irish game contrasts with Ó Maolfabhail's reflections that in parts of Ireland the sport was understood to have different national associations, as for instance in County Down in 1875 when it was described as "the shinty of Scotland".41

The precise national association of shinty is not important here. More significant is that it is accepted that the modern sport has been developed from a folk game which is rooted in the Celtic culture of Ireland and of Gaelic Scotland, and that it has developed into two related modern forms, hurling in Ireland and shinty in the Highlands. These shared roots connect shinty and hurling as popular recreations in Celtic cultures but by the seventeenth century the notion of the pan-Celtic kingdom which had once connected the sports had long since disappeared, exacerbated perhaps by the religious and political developments of the period which were to become entrenched in Scottish and Irish history. Nonetheless the preservation and the restructuring of shinty as a modern sport was about to get under way and its place as a Celtic sport was an important feature of this process.

A key figure in promoting shinty during the 1870s was the Celtic radical and land reformer John Murdoch. Writing in 1889 Murdoch described shinty as a "grand game, famous and classic since Cuchulain outplayed all the chieftains of Ermania",42 thus acknowledging some of the Irish myths surrounding the game. In his politics Murdoch appeared to advocate at least a pan-Celtic cultural nation if not a nation-state, and he believed that reviving the traditions and practices of Celtic culture like the Gaelic language and Celtic sports such as shinty would "fan the flame of nationality"43 at least in the Highlands. Murdoch's nationalism was an alternative image of Scotland to the Unionist-nationalism that dominated during the nineteenth century. His nationalism was informed by the political and cultural milieu of the Highlands, and was grounded in a belief that "the affectation of English ideas" was a consequence of the Union of Scotland and England in 1707 which contributed to the repression of "the true spirit of Scotland".44 His response to Telfer's question about which image of the nation shinty represented may have been that it was `Celtic' or `Highland', but many of those who shared his concern for Highland social and political identity did not appear to share Murdoch's vision of Celtic nationalism.

Sport, culture and radical Highland politics

During the nineteenth century the Westminster parliament of Britain and Ireland was faced with a series of problems which illustrated the social, political and economic instability which remained in parts of the state. Persistent agitation in Ireland to recognise various nationalist aspirations was often connected to calls for reform of the land laws, and was exacerbated by the devastation and enforced emigration which resulted from the famine of the mid-1840s.45 During this period the Highlands also suffered the devastating effects of social upheaval, economic instability and agricultural failure, but these conditions did not provide the same focus for a radical political movement or for the agricultural violence which was evident in Ireland.46 This was soon to change and from the 1880s until the 1920s calls for land reform and later home rule became intertwined on Britain's Celtic frontier. It was within this radical cultural and political environment that the game of shinty developed further down the road towards formal organisation.

During the 1860s a Celtic cultural revival emerged which included an expansion in the number of Highland and Celtic associations in towns and cities throughout Scotland and parts of England. The purpose of these associations appears to have been two-fold: (i) they provided a social outlet for Highlanders who lived in the urban communities of Britain; and (ii) "they were oriented towards preserving Gaelic tradition and culture"47 through poetry, folkore, music and dance. The formation of organisations which had an interest in Highland culture and affairs was not a new phenomenon in urban Britain. For example the Glasgow Highland Society was established in 1727,48 the Highland Society of London in 1778, and the Highland Society of Scotland was established in Edinburgh in 1784.49 By the 1860s there was a proliferation of similar organisations in places like Edinburgh, Greenock, Paisley, Manchester and London but it was perhaps in Glasgow that the Highland and Celtic societies were greatest in number. As MacAulay explains wherever these organisations were established they had a dual function: on the one hand they had an important role in the lives of exiled Highlanders by providing a distinct space in the urban social environment; in contrast these organisations also provided members with a continued link to their native communities which was often identified in the names adopted by these organisations.50 Newspaper sources of the 1870s appear to provide evidence of MacAulay's assertion as one Glasgow contributor to The Highlander illustrates:

Our countymen are pretty numerous here, and for some months back have been enjoying those social reunions of which they have instituted such a large number within the last ten years. These social gatherings are, I believe, of much value, in as much as they afford natives of the various distircts in the Highlands opportunities of meeting, conversing and enjoying the good fellowship of each other, which otherwise, in a large city like this, could not be obtained.51

Most of Highland, Gaelic and Celtic societies were established outside of the Highlands and were led by professional gentlemen. In September 1871 however the Gaelic Society of Inverness was formed representing the first such society based within the Highlands.52 One of the founding members of the Inverness society was John Murdoch who declared that it should be committed to the material interests of the Highlands and to the "vindication of the rights and character of the Gaelic people."53 These associations may have provided a source of shared comfort for Highlanders dislocated from their traditional communities and its traditions, but they also provided a social framework for shinty play in urban environments. In 1841, for example, the Inverness Courier reported that "Highlanders in London were greatly interested in a shinty match organised by the committee of a body which called itself The Society of True Highlanders."54 It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that specific shinty clubs were established like the Highland Camanachd Club of London,55 and Glasgow Cowal Shinty Club which had close links with the Glasgow Celtic Society and its President John MacKay.56

By the 1870s these Celtic cultural organisations were supported by newspapers and magazines dedicated to the interests of Highlanders and the promotion of traditional Highland culture. One of these publications, The Highlander57 newspaper, carried regular reports on the activities of the various social organisations of this movement. In addition to its coverage of the social and political concerns of the Highlands and its people, The Highlander also carried many reports about shinty matches in Highland and urban communities. In January 1876 the newspaper identified the links between one of the urban Highland societies and shinty:

Amongst the many schemes which the members of the Glasgow Highland Association have originated, the shinty Club is certainly not the least successful. New members are flocking in every week to engage in this most spirited of games. Indeed, the sight of the Queen's Park on a Saturday afternoon would cheer the heart of the most desponding Celt; whilst the cheerful ring of the Gaelic tongue, and the soul-inspring strains of the bagpipes would almost convince him that he was back at his native glens again.58

The editor of The Highlander, John Murdoch, adopted a radical focus in promoting Celtic culture in his newspaper, and also highlighted the achievements of the Irish Land Act (1870), political campaigns for further land reform and Irish Home Rule in Ireland. In so doing Murdoch challenged the various Highland societies to develop a more radical stance on issues like the neglect of the Gaelic language in Highland schools, and the unfair land laws in the Highlands. For instance, in a reference to the Glasgow societies The Highlander suggested

Most of them...have enjoyed themselves surely to a sufficient extent with their annual soirees...and it would not be unworthy of their consideration now for the incoming winter, instead of fiddling and dancing to the tune of £500, to devote say a half of this sum to the purpose of founding one or more Gaelic bursaries, or of helping to endow the proposed Gaelic chair.59

John Murdoch was clear that the Highland societies should develop another dimension to their objective of "fostering a national spirit...and preserving and developing Celtic literature",60 and he had some success in persuading others to support some of these issues. The issue which arguably had the greatest impact on generating radical activities amongst Highlanders still living in those communities concerned the land laws. By the middle of the nineteenth century it is clear that farming and land ownership had already influenced the path of shinty in some Highland communities. In the late 1880s Murdoch reflected on the game which was popular during his boyhood on Islay in the 1830s. Describing the wooded area near the farm where he grew up, Murdoch recalled

Here also could be had sticks with natural crook to be finished off into clubs for the game of shinty: a game very much indulged in there at the time.61

Later in the same volume Murdoch remarked that "As elsewhere, stone throwing, shinty playing...and running were leading pastimes"62 and he described how returning from school on Saturdays "we had quite a field day at Traigh an Luig at shinty playing".63 Murdoch continued

These reminiscences are in striking contrast with the present state of things along that part of the country. Traigh an Luig is now silent under the feet of cattle and the small farms from which the keen players of those days came in such troops are consolidated into larger farms.64

Changes in land ownership and land use did not mark the death of shinty throughout the Highlands and the sport appeared to be surviving in other places in its traditional form. Throughout the nine years of its publication The Highlander carried reports of shinty games at Christmas and New Year in many Highland communities including Skye, Tain, Laggan, Invermoriston, Ardchlach, Newtonmore, Arisaig, and Alness as well as in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Greenock, and Manchester. Nonetheless it appeared that the changing social and political environment had affected other parts of the Highlands in similar ways as had happened in Islay. In one particular case describing the celebration of Christmas on the island of Lismore, there was a subtle attack on the way that landlordism had disrupted this community:

Christmas, we are sorry to say, is almost neglected in these quarters...There were no old and young men in scores on the fields eagerly plying the shinty after the ball, and during the hot engagement, coats, gravats[sic.], and boots used to be stripped off and piled at the side in a corner. But alas! how is this? There are no people, and these innumerable ruins tell a sad tale of the present and the joy of the past. The fields still bearing the furrow of the plough, are covered with brackens, and moss; the dykes which once marked the boundaries of the "crofts" are overgrown and hardly traced. Oh! who had the heart to scatter hundreds of these mirthful family circles and replace them with sheep?...where are the men returning in the dusk with burdens of fish? Where are the winter sports and balls? They are all gone, gone years ago - they have been forced to leave the soil and seek shelter under more hospitable landlords, while their place is taken up by a single individual with a plaid over his shoulder, a stick in his hand, and a pair of dogs at his heels.65

At Westminster the politics of land use and its impact on shinty were of little concern to Highland or other Members of Parliament. As things stood the law favoured landlords who could fix high rents, and had turned large tracts of land into sheep farms or sporting estates at the expense of crofters. The election of Charles Fraser-Mackintosh as the MP for Inverness Burgh in 1874 marked a turning point in Highland politics and its place at Wesminster. The anti-landlord newspaper The Highlander welcomed Fraser-Mackintosh's involvement in Highland politics because "he is a Highlander not only in blood but in feeling and character",66 and because he pursued the interests of Highlanders, particularly through the status of Gaelic teaching in Highland schools. With support from Dr Charles Cameron, a Liberal MP for Glasgow and chairman of the Federation of Celtic Societies, and some Members from the Irish Home Rule Party including Donald H. MacFarlane who was the MP for County Carlaw, Fraser-Mackintosh began to speak out for land reform in the Highlands. Like many of those who participated in the social events of the Highland societies, MacFarlane and Fraser-Mackintosh were from Highland crofting communities and were fully aware of the difficulties in these parts. Support also came from the radical Irish paper The Nation and from certain members of the Irish Land League including its leader Michael Davitt, but radical Irish and Highland politics ran separate paths with a degree of cooperation. Yet the radical Irish politics of the 1880s until the 1920s was to influence the politics which emerged in the Highlands during this period.

In 1881 a second Land Act for Ireland was passed by the Liberal government. It was a consequence of an organised campaign of rent strikes engineered by the Irish Land League. By the late 1870s the Highland societies provided a forum through which a more coherent political voice could be articulated, but campaigners for land reform who were associated with these societies continued to press the crofters themselves to take their complaints to their landlords. This happened in dramatic fashion in 1882 in the district of Braes in Skye in an episode that became known as "The Battle of the Braes".67 More protests in the form of rent strikes and resisting eviction spread through many crofting communities, and in Janaury 1883 twenty-one Scottish Liberal Members of Parliament called for a Royal Commission to examine the crofters' grievances. The similarity with Ireland did not go unnoticed amongst Highland landlords and their supporters who claimed this was a subversive conspiracy of the Irish Land League, but in February 1883 the Liberal government established the Napier Commission to examine the conditions of the crofters.

The more political figures within the Celtic cultural societies were concerned that the Napier Commission would favour the interests of landlords. In March 1883 a meeting was convened in London with the purpose of forming an organisation that would press for the interests of crofters and for a Land Act similar to that of Ireland. The founding members of the Highland Land Law Reform Association (HLLRA) were mostly southern middle-class professional men and included: John Stuart Blackie the Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University who had a passion for all things Celtic; Angus Sutherland the President of the Glasgow Sutherland Association; Dr Roderick MacDonald, president of the Gaelic Society of London; Dr G. B. Clark a doctor who lived in London who had a career in radical and socialist politics; the Inverness politician Fraser-Mackintosh and D.H. MacFarlane. Membership of the HLLRA however was open to anyone who supported its objectives and John Murdoch continued to travel throughout the Highlands in order to recruit members, and to assist crofters prepare their evidence to the Napier Commission. By June 1884 the HLLRA had around 5000 members, and no doubt the evidence presented to the Napier Commission contributed to its recommendation in April 1884 that there should be reforms to the land laws in the Highlands.

In 1885 the political landscape of the Highlands began to change significantly not least because the extension of the franchise to greater numbers of the male population now included some crofters, who had previously had no political voice. In the general election of 1885 five representatives of the HLLRA stood for election in Highland constituencies, four of whom were returned to Westminster. The arrival of the HLLRA members, dubbed the Crofters' Party, on the political landscape contributed to the passing of the Liberal administration's Crofters Act in June 1886. Although it did not campaign for Home Rule or independence, the Crofters' Party, it might also be argued, was the first specifically Scottish political party. As Hunter has demonstrated however, the future of the HLLRA and of Scottish politics in general was not entirely free from the spectre of Home Rule, particularly where this concerned Ireland.68

The campaign for land reform in the Highlands was not resolved in the 1880s but continued into the 1920s. The 1880s marked the beginning of radical politics around this issue, but the process began through the movement which was initially interested in preserving Celtic cultural traditions and activities. Shinty was not itself a vehicle for furthering land reform wars but it was a popular activity for many of the men who came to lead the political campaign for land reform in the Highlands. In urban and rural communities Celtic radicals considered shinty to be part of the cultural identity which they sought to revive through their initial involvement in the Highland societies, and which sustained the game through the 1890s and early 1900s.

Shinty, nationalism and Celtic politics

The boundaries of the nineteenth century nation-state that was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland may have been based on political, economic and imperialist aspirations but this did not extirpate the national identities of Celtic nations within the state. It has been suggested that from the 1880s three factors contributed to the emergence of Home Rule on the political agenda of Scotland. These were: (i) increased demands that the government should pay more attention to Scotland; (ii) the Liberal Party leader Gladstone's own conversion to Irish Home rule from 1886, and a shift towards Home Rule for Scotland and Wales as part of this process; and (iii) an increasing populist English nationalist identity which Scots perceived as showing an insensitivity to Scottish nationality within the Union and the British imperial state.69 After 1886 the issue of Home Rule for Ireland caused discontent and division throughout Scottish politics and the HLLRA was not immune from the impact. The original Scottish party was unable to extend its influence into other parts of Scotland, and many of its leaders believed that it should campaign solely for the interests of Highlanders and not be dragged into other issues.

By the end of the 1880s accommodations by the Liberal Party to continued land agitation contributed to the decline of the significance of the HLLRA in the Highlands.70 In contrast to some cooperation over land reform, it appeared that Irish nationalist and Home Rule campaigns were issues which contributed to Highlanders dissociating themselves from their Celtic cousins. A Scottish Home Rule Association was established in 1886, and from then until 1914 it brought seven motions in Parliament for either Scottish home rule or federal home rule to the nations comprising the UK. In spite of interest for home rule on both sides of the Irish Sea two key differences appear to have ensured that the Scots and Irish did not work together: (i) the different religious cultures that marked Scotland as firmly a Presbyterian community, and Ireland as predominantly Catholic; and (ii) the anti-British orientation of the Irish nationalist movement. There is some evidence that in the development of their traditional sports these national issues were relevant. It is the anti-Britishness of Irish identity which is considered here.

Previous accounts of the history of shinty have suggested that the sport is Scotland's national game. These claims might be summarily dismissed given the game's strongest appeal in the Highlands, with little interest in other parts of the nation. MacLennan has argued this was not always the case and there is some documentary evidence which confirms that at least until the seventeenth century a game similar to shinty was played throughout Scotland although it was known by a variety of names.71 At its inception in 1893 the Camanachd Association, the governing body of shinty, did not appear to comment on the national status of the game, stating only that

The Clerk [Mr John Campbell, Honorary Secretary of Kingussie Club] had been requested by its members to call this conference in terms of letters which they had received from several influential gentlemen throughout the country desirious of having a central Association formed to regulate the Game of Shinty."72

In contrast to this neutral statement, the formation of an organisation for Irish sports in 1884 took a more political line as illustrated by Archbishop Croke's letter to the founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association:

we are daily importing from England...her accents, her vicious literature, her music, her dances, and her mannerisms, her games also and her pastimes, to the detriment of our own grand national sports.73

The desire to promote a distinctive Irish identity through cultural pursuits like sport has been well-documented, and the history of the GAA and its links to Irish politics described in de Búrca's work, including the infiltration of the organisation by the revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood.74 The IRB aside, from its inception the GAA had a nationalist purpose and although in its early years English sports like athletics featured heavily in its activities Cusak was concerned that "nationalists...control Irish athletics" and that sport was open "to every social class".75 The objectives of the GAA unashamedly included using sport to foster an Irish identity and it appears the role of Michael Cusak was central to this commitment. In a forthcoming article on Cusak's role Marcus de Búrca suggests that the founder of the GAA believed that the "continued British presence in Ireland...killed the separate Irish cultural identity".76 The message here is similar to John Murdoch's views that the adoption of English practices had repressed "the true spirit of Scotland",77 yet this does not appear to have had much support within the Camanachd Association. The Highland social historian Jim Hunter reflected that like Irish nationalists and revolutionaries Murdoch believed that Highland sports were integral to his sense of Highland identity. 78

By the time the Camanachd Association was established in 1893, Murdoch was a more marginal figure in Highland politics than he had been a decade earlier, and his politics were probably more socialist than the politics of those involved in the formation of shinty's governing body. In spite of the promotion of shinty in his failed newspaper, Murdoch was not present at the inaugural meeting of the Association on 10 October 1893 in Kingussie. The influential gentlemen invited to be office bearers and patrons of the Camanachd Association may, like Murdoch, have been proud of their Celtic and Highland identity, but this did not extend to campaigning in their public and sporting roles for either Highland or Scottish independence. The names of Captain Chisholm of Glassburn, the first Chief of the Association, Lord Lovat the first President and later Chief of the Association, and Vice-Presidents Cluny MacPherson and C.J.B. Macpherson of Balaville are indicative of the social class of many of the Association's patrons. The shinty credentials of these individuals may not be in doubt as in the case of Captain Chisholm who was described in an issue of the Celtic Monthly "as an enthusiastic upholder of our national game of shinty", founder of the Strathglass Shinty Club in 1879 and author of the "booklet of rules, regulations. and diagrams for the game of shinty" which was revised in 1888.79 One former shinty player, now a shinty scholar suggests, however, that these gentlemen had a considerable influence on the development of the sport throughout Scotland:

...if you look at the membership of the first Association and the chiefs and what not...you've got Lord Lovat, Colonel this, Colonel that...that undoubtedly was the reason that it [the Camanachd Association] went the way it did...their influence was always conservative and the preservation of Highland culture, not on turning it into a national sport.80

The political and religious differences which separated the national aspirations of the Highlands and Ireland and the governing bodies did not appear to prevent some communication between shinty and hurling clubs. For instance Hutchinson reports that in June 1897 Glasgow Cowal Shinty club beat Dublin Celtic Hurling club 11-2 at Parkhead, the home ground of Glasgow Celtic football club. A return match in Dublin in August was reportedly refereed by Michael Cusak when once again the shinty team was victorious.81 By the 1920s any official contact between the two governing bodies appears to have ceased despite compromise rules being established as late as 1933 which would have allowed `international' matches between the two codes of the ancient Celtic sport. In the course of my own research on this matter one interviewee said that contact took place occasionally up to the early 1920s, but believed that the so-called internationals tended to involve players in the Glasgow area. When I asked why these links might have been severed he replied:

Aye well...I've got to admit it was my grandfather that stopped it...He must've been President at the time...I think it was...because of the Irish politics...it appears he obviously questioned the motives of the Irish courting us, and felt that it was done for political purposes, rather than for...interest in helping us further the sport...I seem to recall that there was pressure, in other words that he was just being used to curtail it...because remember too there would also be...strong pressures in a lot of the areas here...not to associate with Catholics...there would be a religious and a political connection there.82

The issue of Irish nationalist politics and their anti-British dimension was still a source of concern even after the secession from the British state in 1922. The veracity of this account from one individual whose grandfather had been President of the Camanachd Association during the period 1925 until 1931 would appear to be supported by evidence in the Camanachd Association's minutes, which records "that as the Gaelic Athletic Association had an anti-British political flavour the Camanachd Association had been advised by one in high authority to have nothing to do with international shinty/hurling matches."83

It is evident from these two accounts that although the Camanachd Assocation did not adopt an explicit political or nationalist stance, like all cultural activities its work was not immune to the political environment in which it operated. Perhaps in its willingness to comply with any discreet requests to break its links with the GAA there is evidence of the latent nationalist aspirations of its patrons. The Camanachd Association was one of a number of organisations through which members could display their Celtic or Highland cultural identity and autonomy, without contradicting their political leanings which appear to have been in the Unionist-nationalism camp. In this dual national approach the Camanachd Association may have differed little from other institutions of Scottish civil society early in the twentieth century.

Conclusions

This paper has attempted to illustrate some of the ways that the Highland sport of shinty may have related to radical politics and cultural activities in Scotland and Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has situated this brief analysis in relation to other studies of the sport and to the growing body of work on the significance of sport and nationalism in Scotland. The analysis here reveals that although shinty was not integrated into a nationalist political movement in Scotland, as happened with hurling in Ireland, the sport may have provided a vehicle through which Highland Scots could articulate their cultural image of Scotland. More work is necessary to uncover in more detail the ways in which particular individuals interconnected their cultural and national aspirations with the development of shinty. It is clear however that like other sports in Scotland, shinty cannot be divorced from the social and political milieu of its environment.

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Notes

1 This paper is drawn from a social historical analysis of shinty, nationalism and cultural identity during the period 1835 to 1945, which examines the development of shinty in the social and political context of the Highlands during this period. I am grateful to Professor Grant Jarvie, University of Stirling, and Professor Lindsay Paterson, University of Edinburgh, for their guidance in the development of the study.

2 Whitson and Macintosh, 1993, p.1.

3 Duke and Crolley, 1996.

4 McCrone, 1992 uses the term `stateless nation', while Nairn, 1981 reflects on a decapitated national state. In another analysis of Scotland's political relationship with the UK state Paterson (1994) argues that for over 300 hundred years Scotland has enjoyed relative political and cultural autonomy and had until 1945 an outlet to participate on an international stage through the Empire.

5 Smith, 1991.

6 Smith, 1991, p.43.

7 Harvie, 1998; Kellas, 1980; Lynch, 1991; Nairn, 1981.

8 Bradley, 1998; Jarvie, 1989, 1991; Jarvie and Walker, 1994.

9 Bairner, 1994; Finn, 1994a, 1994b; Giulianotti, 1992; Holt, 1994; Moorhouse, 1987, 1994; Murray, 1984, 1988.

10 Kellas, 1980; Harvie, 1998.

11 McCrone, 1992, p.193.

12 Jarvie and Walker, 1994.

13 Lowerson, 1994, Telfer, 1994; Walker, 1994.

14 An obvious gap in the literature about sport in Scotland on concerns the place of sport as a cultural activity for women. Some research about women and sport has been published but it is limited in comparison to the critical analysis of mostly male forms and participation in sport.

15 Hunter, 1976; MacAulay, 1994; Withers, 1988.

16 Jarvie 1991.

17 Jarvie and Jackson, 1998.

18 Hutchinson, 1989, p.11; MacLennan, 1993, p.29, 1995, p.2.

19 Macdonald, 1992.

20 Robertson, 1994.

21 MacLennan, 1994.

22 Thorburn, 1996.

23 MacLennan, 1993, 1995, 1998a, 1998b.

24 I am grateful to Dr MacLennan for making his doctoral thesis (September 1998) available to me.

25 Telfer, 1994.

26 Telfer, 1994, p.123.

27 MacAulay, 1994, pp.39-41.

28 Kemp, 1993, p.17; McCrone, 1992, p..193.

29 Morton, 1996, p.257.

30 Macdonald, 1919, p.27.

31 Macdonald, 1919, p.33.

32 MacDonald, 1932, `Foreword', p.i.

33 MacDonald, 1932.

34 MacDonald, 1932, p.16.

35 Dr Macbain, reference unknown cited Macdonald, 1919, p.32.

36 Ó Maolfabhail, 1973.

37 Ó Maolfabhail, 1973, p.2.

38 Ó Maolfabhail, 1973, p.ix.

39 MacDonald 1932, p.62.

40 MacAulay, 1994, p.35; Withers, 1988, p.4.

41 Knox, History of County Down, 1875 cited Ó Maolfabhail, 1973, p.26.

42 Murdoch, unpublished autobiography, Vol. 1, p.24.

43 The Highlander, 13 April 1878, p.13

44 The Highlander, 13 April 1878, p.13.

45 Kee, 1972.

46 Hunter, 1976.

47 MacPhail, 1989, p.8

48 MacLennan, 1998b, p.167.

49 Hutchinson, 1989, p.66.

50 MacAulay, 1994, p.41. For example in Glasgow by the 1870s in addition to the Glasgow Highland Society and the Glasgow Celtic Society, the city's list of Highland organisations included the Glasgow Cowal Society, the Badenoch Highland Society, the Glasgow Lochaber Society, the Glasgow Skye Association and the Lewis and Harris association.

51 `Our Glasgow Letter', The Highlander, 16 May 1873, p.9.

52 Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Vol. 1, 1892.

53 Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Vol. 1, 1892, pp.126-7.

54 cited Hutchinson, 1989, p.75.

55 Hutchinson, 1989, p.80.

56 Hutchinson, 1989, p.107.

57 Murdoch began publication of The Highlander in Inverness on 16 May 1873 and produced a weekly paper until May 1881. It was then published as a monthly paper from July 1881 until January 1882.

58 The Highlander, 1 January 1876, p.6.

59 The Highlander, 16 May 1873, p.9.

60 The Highlander, 16 May 1873, p.9.

61 Murdoch, unpublished autobiography, Vol. 1, p.58.

62 Murdoch, unpublished autobiography, Vol. 1, p.67.

63 Murdoch, unpublished autobiography, Vol. 1, pp.68-69.

64 Murdoch, unpublished autobiography, Vol. 1, p.69.

65 The Highlander, 9 January 1875, p.6.

66 The Highlander, 23 August 1873, p.9.

67 Hunter, 1876, p.136.

68 Hunter, 1974, 1975.

69 Finlay, 1997.

70 Hunter, 1974, 1975.

71 MacLennan, 1993, pp.22-29; 1998a, p.1.

72 Camanachd Association, Minute, 10 October 1893.

73 cited Hunter, 1975, p.191.

74 de Búrca, 1980.

75 de Búrca, 1980, p.23.

76 de Búrca, in Jarvie, forthcoming 1999, p.159. I am grateful to Grant Jarvie for making the manuscript of this text available to me prior to publication.

77 The Highlander, 13 April 1878, p.13.

78 Hunter, 1986, p.14.

79 Celtic Monthly, Vol 1, No. 5, February 1893.

80 Hugh Dan MacLennan, interview conducted for PhD research, September 1995.

81 Hutchinson, 1989, pp184-185.

82 identity withheld, PhD research interview, September 1997.

83 Hutchinson, 1989, p.186.