Hurling is Ireland's second-most-popular sport (after Gaelic football). It involves hitting a ball with a stick to score goals; I get the impression it's vaguely related to field hockey.
According to Wikipedia, "The earliest known recorded game of hurling is from times before Christ," and "[h]urling is older than the recorded history of Ireland."
There are apparently a bunch of similar and related games. For example, there's an Irish women's variant called "camogie." There's also a related Scottish game called shinty, and a related British (?) game called bandy; both shinty and bandy are ancestors of ice hockey. And there's another related game that was once very popular on the Isle of Man called cammag.
(Encountered "hurler"--a hurling player--in a story submitted to SH.)
Leave a comment