99 A Gossip about Curling. Of a' the games that e'er I saw, Was aye the witching channel stane.-The Ettrick Shepherd. As most Englishmen know that curling is a sort of bowls' played upon ice, and most Scots have seen it played, we shall say little in this brief sketch descriptive of a game that owes so much of the undoubted fascination it exercises over a host of enthusiastie devotees to its accompaniments. We propose rather to gather together a few stray notes and anecdotes of curling and curlers, and the feats done on the Transparent Board,' since the Scotch took to this manly and invigorating game. But when was that? Endless disputes have raged about the origin of the sport: papers have been written to prove, on etymological and other grounds, that it was, and that it was not, introduced into Scotland by the Flemish emigrants who came over towards the end of the sixteenth century. All the words in the technical language of the game are of Low country origin; but the 'Noes' thought nothing of that, especially as one waggish enthusiast of their party had, they thought, triumphantly settled the native origin of the game by the lines in Ossian,' telling how Amid the circle of stones, Swaran bends at the stone of might.' He, however, was completely eclipsed by a poet of the old Scot's Magazine,' who tells us, in many verses, how Auld Daddy Scotland sat ae day, Bare-legged on a snawy brae, His brawny arms wi' cauld were blae, The wind was snelly blawing; when to him comes the king of gods, rebuking him for his grumbling against the weather: Quo' Jove, and gied his kilt a heeze, 'Fule carle! what gars you grunt and wheeze, Get up! I'll get an exercise To het your freezing heart wi'. I'll get a cheery, heartsome game, To send through a' the soul a flame, Pit birr and smeddum in the frame, And set the blude a-dinling; and forthwith told him all the mysteries of our game. Where doctors so differ, we shall not attempt to decide; but it is certain that no authentic mention of the game occurs in any work till about the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the Carse of Gowrie, indeed, there is a model of a curling stone in silver, which is played for annually by several parishes. Tradition says that it was given as a challenge trophy by King James IV., himself a keen curler, during Perkin Warbeck's visit to his Court. If it was so presented, then certainly this merry monarch must have omitted to pay his silversmith for it, as in the accounts of his Lord Treasurer, though there are many entries relating to the king's other games of golf, football, cach' (tennis), langbowlis,'' kiles' (skittles), and many others, not a word is said about curling; and it is quite clear James was not a keen player, or else some expense would have been incurred in connection with it. The unfortunate Henry, Lord Darnley, amused himself during the severe winter (1566-7) he spent in exile at the little town of Peebles on the Tweed by curling on a flooded meadow, now part of the clergyman's glebe. He was as fond of this game as was his wife, Queen Mary of Scots, of golf and pall-mall-amusements she liked so much that she put a weapon into the hands of her accusers by playing them in the fields at Seton a few weeks after Darnley's tragic end at the Kirk o' Fields. Camden in his Britannia,' published in 1607, speaks of this game as if it were well known then. He mentions that To the east of the mainland [of Orkney] lies Copinsha, a little isle, but very conspicuous to seamen, in which, and in several other places of this country, are to be found in great plenty excellent stones for the game called curling;' though he was mistaken in calling them excellent,' as, upon trial, that great authority upon this game, Sir Richard Brown of Lochmaben, pronounces them not worth a rap. 6 Sir William Scott, younger, of Harden- -a member of that noted family of Border raiders one of whom is the hero of the 'Micklemouthed Meg' story, when he, a captive, had set before him the alternative of the rope or wedding his captor's ugly daughter, and wisely chose the latter, thereby getting an excellent wife-having got into trouble for his connection with Jerviswoode's and Lord Tarras's conspiracy, and their correspondence with Russell, Shaftesbury, and the 'Carolina Company,' we are told by Lord Fountainhall in his gossipy Decisions' that a party of the forces were sent out to apprehend him, but that a William Scot of Langhope, getting notice of their coming, went and told Harden of it, as he was playing at the curling with Riddell of Haining and others.' It was said Harden was so engrossed in his game, and so unwilling to spoil it by leaving, that he narrowly escaped capture, and had to ride hard before he baffled his pursuers; but Fountainhall does not bear this out, as he makes Harden leave the ice at once. About the same time an unfortunate Bishop of Orkney got into a scrape: his 'process,' says Baillie, in his Letters, came first before us: he was a curler on the Sabbath day;' a libel, as it turned out, on the worthy Bishop, as he neither curled on Sunday nor in Orkney, 'for the Bishop, like other dignitaries of modern times, resided anywhere but in his see.' Many amusing stories are told of such Sunday curling. Long ago it was believed that this was the favourite amusement of fairies on a fine frosty Sunday afternoon, and no doubt this helped as much as anything else to keep superstitious youngsters off the ice, lying there before them temptingly as only forbidden fruit and Sunday ice can. In an early number of Blackwood,' a good story is told of a pedlar, well known in Dumfriesshire, whose love of gain was generally considered as an overmatch for his conscience, but who was withal very fond of the amusement of curling, who chanced to pass Loch Etterick, with his pack on his back, upon a Sabbath morning. The ice was evidently in fine order, and there were a few curling stones lying on the banks of the loch, with which the shepherds of those mountainous districts had been in the habit of occasionally amusing themselves. Watty hesitated a little. . . On the one hand there was the "Lord's Day" and the sin and so forth: but then, on the other, appeared the stones, lying quite ready; the fine board of ice, together with the absence, at present, of all human eye. In a word, the result of this deliberation was an advance made by Watty into the middle of the loch, where he quietly deposited his pack, and had recourse to a pair or two of the best stones he could select. Everybody who understands the game knows quite well how Watty would proceed. He would just set a stone on each tee, and then try to hit it off. The sport, no doubt, was imperfect without a companion, and so Watty felt it to be. He gave a glance or two to the surrounding hills, as if half desirous that "Will Crosby," a rattling, reckless body, might heave in sight and bear a hand, but there was no human creature within view. The play became tiresome, and Watty, in order to rest and resolve upon future measures, seated himself quite at his ease upon his pack. No sooner had he done this, however, than, with a boom and a roar that made the ice shake and sink beneath him, an invisible and consequently a fairy curling stone came full drive against Watty's shins. The instinct of self-preservation restored Watty immediately to his legs, and, in the course of a certain number of hasty strides, to the adjoining bank. This was doubt less a visitation upon him for his profanation of the Sabbath. What was to be done? The pack was in the power, at least within the dominion, of the " Fairy Queen," and to contest the possession upon her own element seemed little short of madness. At this instant another fairy stone made its presence audible, and Watty, unable any longer to resist his terrors, fled. He fled to a shieling about four miles off, and with the assistance of Will Crosby, whose faith was not much stronger than Watty's, possessed himself next morning of his lost goods. The story I have often heard him tell with a serious countenance; nor have I the smallest doubt that he believed every word which he said.' About the beginning of last century the good folks of Edinburgh used to curl on the Nor' Loch; and so highly was the game esteemed, that the Town Council used to march in a body to the ice, headed by a band. When this loch was drained, the headquarters of curling in the east were shifted to Duddingstone Loch in the shadow of Arthur's Seat; and under the auspices of this and many other clubs the game was immensely improved and turned into a highly scientific exercise, instead of the rough and clumsy amusement it had been in its early years, when it bore a strong resemblance to quoits on ice, indeed, in many places it was called Kuting and was played with channel stanes' picked out of the bed of a stream, and roughly shaped into an oblong form, with a niche to admit the points of the player's fingers. In December 1830, a kuting stone of this kind, bearing the initials I. M. and the date 1611, was dug out of the foundations of an old house in Strathallan; and the Duddingstone Society possess several like it, which were fished out of Linlithgow Loch early in this century. 6 6 The curlers of Lochmaben in Dumfries have long been celebrated for their excellence. They have given a phrase to the game, 'Soutering,' which has puzzled philologers to explain before now. Soutering means defeating an opposing party in so hollow a way that they stand 'love' when the victors are 'game.' In Lochmaben there was a rink of seven players, all shoemakersScoticè, souters-by trade, who were so expert that, not only did did they conquer all comers, but often without allowing their opponents to score a single shot; hence the phrase. On the same loch, during the French war, there was another rink, headed by Sir James Brown of Colstoun, famed all over curling Scotland as the Invincible Board of Lochmaben.' Many are the feats recorded of these doughty champions; so marvellous was the skill of Deacon Jardine, chief of the Souters,' that he could with his stone thread a needle! he attached with a piece of shoemaker's wax two needles to the side of two curling stones, just the width of the 6 one he played with apart; then upon two stones in front, similarly apart, and in the line of direction, having affixed two‘birses'— bristles he played his stone so accurately that, in grazing through the 'port' or opening between the stones, it would impel the birses forward through the eyes of the needles. Unique as was this feat, it has often been rivalled in difficulty by delicate shots of other curlers. There have been instances of a curling stone being thrown a mile upon the ice. Sir Richard Brown says that in his day there were many alive who could throw a stone across the Kirk Loch,'—one of the many lakes at Lochmaben,- a feat not much short of the above.' Once a celebrated player of Tinwald, named Lawrie Young, challenged the Lochmaben curlers to a trial of strength. Their president stepped forward, and, taking his stone, threw it with such strength across the 'Mill Loch' that it jumped off the brink upon the other side, and tumbled over upon the grass. Now,' said he to Lawrie, go and throw it back again; I will then confess that you are too many for us.' Captain H. Clapperton, R.N.-an African traveller of some repute sixty years ago—used to play with an enormous mass of granite, known far and wide as 'the Hen.' This rough stone weighed about seventy pounds; and yet such a strong man was Clapperton that he not only played some capital shots with it, but could hold it out at arm's length, and whirl it about as if it were a feather. An uncle of his used even a heavier stone, because, as he said, no other curler on the Lochmaben ice could throw it but himself. These were roughly-shaped stones almost as they were when found, and would never be allowed on a rink nowadays. One of the Dukes of Athole, very fond both of curling and skating, suggested a game in which both were combined. The skater, armed with a long pole, impelled his curling stone with it; but though it was described as an elegant mode-making a highly interesting game,' it never took either with curlers or skaters, never at any time best of friends on the ice. At a time when the game was not as fashionable with the Scottish nobility as it is nowadays, Archibald the Handsome,' the ninth Duke of Hamilton, was a great patron of curling. He often headed rinks from Hamilton in contests with other parishes, and took the keenest interest in the 'spiel.' Once in the dear years,' when meal was meal, the fate of a game depended on a critical shot being played; his Grace called out to the player about to attempt it, 'Now, John, if you take the shot and strike away the winner, your mother shanna want meal a' the winter— I'll send her a boll-a prize John had the satisfaction, both as a curler and a son, of winning. |