Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/18

 remotest recollections of the oldest players bring them back to the time when these formed the materials of the sport.

A few words, however, on the probable origin of "shinny" will not be amiss in this chapter, as few, very few, know the source from which the game developed.

It is difficult to precisely say from which particular sport "shinny" and hockey are directly sprung. The warlike Romans enjoyed a peculiar game that is most likely the precursor of hockey in England, "hurley" in Ireland, and "shinty" in Scotland, which, in point of fact, are now one and the same. A leather ball stuffed with feathers, and a bat or a club, were the essential requisities of the game, and the object was to knock the ball to a certain boundary line, and thereby score a point.

The original Scotch "shinty" resembled it more closely than did "hurley" or English hockey, but savored a trifle more of Canada's wínter sport, although, in the mildest of sarcasm, it is not probable that the votaries of the former sport would find anything of excitement in ours. It was played on the hard, sandy seabeach, with two or three hundred on each side, and their materials, or, rather, weapons, consisted of roots of trees, with a hard wood knob for a ball. History does not relate the number of casualties that occurred in these matches, of