University of Virginia Library

Who the hero of this song is, I know not, but convicts. from obvious reasons, have been peculiar objects of sympathy in Ireland. Hurling, which is mentioned in one of the verses, is the principal national diversion, and is played with intense zeal by parish against parish, barony against barony, county against county, or even province against province. It is played not only by the peasant, but by the patrician students of the University, where it is an established pastime. Twiss, the most sweeping calumniator of Ireland, calls it, if I mistake not, the cricket of barbarians, but though fully prepared to pay every tribute to the elegance of the English game, I own that I think the Irish sport fully as civilized, and much better calculated for the display of vigour and activity. Perhaps I shall offend Scottish nationality if I prefer either to golf, which is, I think, but trifling compared with them. In the room belonging to the Golf Club on the Links of Leith, there hangs a picture of an old lord (Rosslyn) which I never could look at without being struck with the disproportion between the gaunt figure of the peer and the petty instrument in his hand. Strutt, in “Sports and Pastimes,” (page 78) eulogises the activity of some

Irishmen, who played the game about twenty-five years before the publication of his work (1801), at the back of the British Museum, and deduces it from the Roman harpastum. It was played in Cornwall formerly, he adds: but neither the Romans nor the Cornishmen used a bat, or, as we call it in Ireland, a hurly. The description Strutt quotes from old Carew is quite graphic. The late Dr. Gregory, I am told, used to be loud in panegyric on the superiority of this game when played by the Irish students, over that adopted by his young countrymen north and south of the Tweed, particularly over golf, which he called “fidding wi' a pick;” but enough of this—