Mildly Interesting Article

[saffron sam2]

From yesterday's Irish News

THE grave of Magnus MacOrriston, a 16th century gallowglass warrior, lies in a windswept ancient cemetery at Clonca church, near Culdaff in county Donegal.

Obviously a formidable opponent, the memorial tells of a man as well known for his caman skills as his battle skills – certainly not someone to be messed with on either field. Carved into his headstone are a caman, a ball and a claymore sword.

Half a millenium later, MacOrriston's spirit lives on in Inishowen.

Nearby club Burt is an island of hurling in a footballing ocean – the club's caman ties stretch back to the time of the warrior and beyond.

The club's finest hour came in July 1907 when Burt Hibernians, representing Donegal, gave Antrim a stick and ball lesson on the way to winning the 1906 Ulster Hurling Championship.

The Tir Chonnail men ran riot against the defending champions, racking up 5-21. Antrim managed a single point.

It was a final moment of glory for the caman code, Burt's code. But it's time was over and the ioman code was about to take over completely.

Burt Hibernians beat Antrim playing caman, anglicised to 'commons', the game on which shinty, still played competitively in the Highlands of Scotland, is based – 'camanachd' is the Scots gaelic word for shinty.

Caman was played exclusively in the northern half of the country – roughly north of the imaginary line between Dublin and Galway.

It did not allow handling of the ball, was played with a narrow, crooked stick and used a hard wooden ball, the 'crag'.

Meanwhile, ioman, the version played by Antrim in 1906, had traditionally been restricted to the south of Ireland.

In ioman, the ball could be handled or carried on the hurl, which was flat and round-headed. The ball (the sliothar) was soft and made of animal hair.

Caman was a winter pursuit, ioman a game for the summer months.

Antrim's team had adopted ioman after the game had been rubber-stamped by the Gaelic Athletic Association soon after its formation 30 years earlier.

When the GAA was founded, in 1884, Michael Cusack and others were anxious that Ireland's culture and sporting tradition was being eroded and that games like soccer, rugby and cricket would become dominant.

It soon became obvious to Cusack that a choice had to be made between caman and ioman and ioman – the game which he was most familiar because of his childhood in county Clare – was selected as the template for what we know today as hurling.

The standardisation of the ioman game meant that the southern counties had a massive head start in perfecting the skills of the game of hurling.

But, more immediately, it also ensured that the writing was on the wall for the demise of the northern code.

Caman was driven to the fringes of the land, but the game lingered on in isolated pockets like Burt, an area with a rich tradition of ad hoc games which took place from hedge to hedge between rival parishes.

The game flourished in the area until the 1930s when the last team took the field before hurling took over.

Even then, the caman/shinty tradition endured. Hughie Whoriskey, a local stalwart, played with a shinty stick on the hurling team until he retired in the 1950s.

Nowadays, Burt players Niall Campbell, who represented Ireland's shinty side against Scotland in Inverness in 2005, and former U21 stars Enda McDermott and Martin McGrath keep the flame alive.

The Burt club is one of the oldest in Ireland – it predates the formation of the GAA.

Club secretary Damian Dowds grew up listening to stories of caman and shinty and the glorious deeds of yesteryear.

But it was not until he saw shinty being played that history became alive for him.

"It wasn't until I saw the boys playing shinty that I had a 'eureka' moment and I realised that was how the game was played in Burt until the 1930s," he said.

"People sometimes question the links the GAA has with Aussie Rules, but the link between shinty and hurling is true – shinty has preserved the old northern game of caman which was played in Ulster."

Two of Damian's great-grandfathers, George Dowds, the team captain, and the goalkeeper, Jamie McLaughlin, played in Burt Hibernians' historic Ulster championship win.

A keen student of the game, Damian unearthed some of its history when compiling the history of the club.

"There's no shinty now at all, but there is a rich history in the area," he said.

"Even today, a lot of the lads who play for Burt are descendants of the Hibernian players of 1906.

"The game was played from 'deek to deek', from ditch to ditch.

"It was Burt parish against Newtowncunningham parish. Maybe 60 people would play in the game.

"A number of men from the parish – including Willie Dowds who started a club in Dundee – went to Scotland and settled over there and played shinty."

It's hard to make a case that Ireland's sporting fields are worse off for Michael Cusack's

preference for ioman over caman. But maybe there was room for both games?

"I've often said it was the codification of the rules by the GAA that killed the game of caman in Ulster stone dead," said Damian.

"Michael Cusack based hurling on what he remembered being played in county Clare – if he'd been from Antrim (or Donegal) instead Ulster would probably be the stronghold of hurling today (not Munster and south Leinster).

"But, I suppose, it's easy to say that. In 125 years we've had ample opportunity to get our heads around the new rules!"

He added: "The sideline cut is probably the only remnant of the caman game, in that the ball is hit off the ground, not picked up on the stick."

Looking back on the Hibernians' remarkable win, Damian imagines an Antrim side being out-muscled.

"Antrim probably struggled to deal with the shape and size of the sticks the Burt team used. Big camans could easily smash hurls," he said.

"The team in Burt never changed (to the smaller, lighter hurls) and they found it was quite successful."

Over 100 years on from their Ulster win, Burt continue to prosper on the hurling field.

The club, which fields teams at all underage grades from U10s to U21s in hurling set a national record of 16 consecutive Donegal senior hurling titles between 1991 and 2006.

The stick, the ball, the native sod. In Burt they play because they love the game and they play to win.

Just like MacOrriston, the warrior.

[Lecale2]

Interesting.

[muppet]

Interesting.

The swines, we should replay all games since 1906.

[Aerlik]

"The game was played from 'deek to deek', from ditch to ditch.

That is so interesting.  Moneydig, just north of kilrea is Muine Dige in Irish (easily the only thing Irish about the place!) which translates roughly as the plain of the ditches.  That is the first time I have heard the use of deek, although locals pronounce it Moneydeeg.  My mother, a Dungiven woman, still teases us for pronouncing it 'deeg'.  I will hazard a guess and suggest it is a derivation of the Dutch (?) word dyke, also meaning ditch.  In that area the auld folk still talk about "nikt rang" meaning nothing wrong.