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‘A Fenian pastime’? Early Irish board games and their identification with chess

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Timothy Harding
Timothy Harding*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

Twentieth-century scholars critically re-examining Ireland's origin myths explained how ‘synthetic pseudo-history’ such as the Lebor Gabála érenn arose. Sports, like nations, have need of origin myths, chess being no exception; moreover, sporting preferences have sometimes become bound up with a nation's sense of its unique identity. In the same ancient manuscripts where Celtic revivalists found legends of the earliest people in Ireland, they often also found references to board games. What may be called the myth of Celtic chess then emerged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 145 , May 2010 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2010

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References

1 For example, Carey, John in The Irish national origin-legend: synthetic pseudohistory (Cambridge, 1994), p. 3Google Scholar argued that the key text for the imagined early Ireland of the Milesians, the Lebor gabála Érenn (commonly, if inaccurately, known as the Book of invasions), arose in the eleventh century from a need to reconcile ‘such native origin-legends as survived’ with the Bible and early Christian historiography. He describes the earlier work on this subject by O’Rahilly, Thomas F. as ‘brilliant but in many respects misguided’. O’Rahilly argued from linguistic evidence in ‘The Goidels and their predecessors’ in Brit. Acad. Proc., xxi (1935), pp 323–72Google Scholar. Also consulted for this article were Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, ‘Ireland, 400–800’ in idem (ed.), A new history of Ireland, i: prehistoric and early Ireland (Oxford, 2005), pp 182–234 and Comerford, R.V., Ireland (London & New York, 2003), ch. 2.Google Scholar

2 Rugby football and baseball provide just two examples of these processes.

3 A recent and extreme example is Nugent, Brian, The Irish invented chess! (privately published in Corstown, Co. Meath, 2010),Google Scholar of which large extracts may be found at http://www.indymedia.ie/article95220 (originally posted 29 December 2009). The present article was already in proof before Nugent’s work was seen and therefore is not intended as a refutation of it – but in some respects is so. The author rejects, for example, Nugent’s identifcation (in the book’s preface) of fdchell and brannaimh/brandub as one game, as well as his statement (p. 8) that Irish historians ‘are kind of being bullied into representing’ fdchell as only ‘chess-like’ to accommodate the prevailing view that chess came to Europe by way of India and Persia.

4 Cusack was involved in that society. See Muircheartaigh, Micheál Ó, ‘Whither Ireland of the 1870s?’ in The Celtic Times: Michael Cusack’s Gaelic games newspaper (Ennis, 2003)Google Scholar. The paper ran from 1 January 1887 to 14 January 1888, but the earliest and latest issues appear to be lost. The edition runs from mid-February 1887 to page 2 of the 28 December issue.

5 Leerssen, Joep, Mere Irish and fíor-Ghael: studies in the idea of Irish nationality, its development, and literary expression prior to the nineteenth century (2nd ed., Cork, 1996), p. 4.Google Scholar

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8 Lennon, Joseph, Irish orientalism: a literary and intellectual history (Syracuse, N.Y., 2004), esp. introduction and pp 1–57.Google Scholar Later, he deals with Yeats’s connections with the Orient, and refers to him meeting T.C.D. professor Ali, Mir Aulad. On 23 October ,1885, speaking at the opening meeting of the Dublin University Chess Club’s 1885–6 season, Ali, Mir Aulad stated that ‘if those who are preparing for the army or navy … are trained early in this game they will not be guilty of such miscalculation and blunders, as have lately been committed in the Soudan’, Dublin Evening Mail, 29 Oct. 1885.Google Scholar

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11 On context, Keating’s, see Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Seventeenth-century inter pretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating’ in I.H.S., xxv, no. 98 (Nov. 1986), pp 116–28.Google Scholar

12 The legend of Canute arranging the murder of Danish nobleman Ulf following a quarrel over a board game, c. 1027, is told in Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla, of which there are various versions in English. Icelandic scholar Haki Antonsson advised me, in an email in 2006, that ‘it can hardly be used as evidence for the introduction of chess to England’.

13 Strutt, Joseph, Glig-gamena Angel-deod, or, the sports and pastimes of the people of England (London, 1801), p. iv:Google Scholar ‘Chess was also a favourite game with the Saxons’.

14 Linde, Antonius van der, Geschichte und litteratur des schachspiels (2 vols, Berlin 1874), i, 39:Google Scholar ‘Es war das Schicksal fast aller unbekannten Brettspiele der Aegypter, Inder, Chinesen, Perser, Araber, Juden, Griechen, Römer, Kelten, Skandinavier, ja sogar der Rothhäute, mit dem Schach identifcirt zu warden.’

15 Hyde, Thomas, Mandragorias, seu, historia shahiludii: de ludis Orientalibus, libri duo (Oxford, 1694);Google Scholar the pages are not numbered in the modern fashion, and it is better to search the reprint, Syntagma dissertationum, (Oxford, 1767), in the Eighteenth-century Collections Online (ECCO); the chess references occur early in volume 2.

16 Hyde, , Syntagma, ii, 7. The frst passage begins: ‘Cambro-Britanni & Scoti, Britanniae Magnae partes non ignobiles, hoc Ludo impense delectantur, eumque frequenter exercent. Eique adeo addicti fuere veteres Hiberni …’.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 68; translation of extract from Hyde’s Syntagma published in Victor Keats, Chess: its origin (Oxford, 1994), p. 72. Keats’s book is an annotated translation of some portions of Hyde. Dr Keats has the misprint bnanndab where Hyde had branndab.

18 Lambe, R., The history of chess (London, 1764);Google ScholarMac-Geoghan, Abbé, The history of Ireland, ancient and modern … translated from the French, by Patrick O’Kelly, esq. (3 vols, Dublin, 1831–2).Google Scholar The original was published in French in 1758, but the book naturally made more impact at home when translated.

19 Twiss, Richard, Chess (2 vols, London, 1787–9).Google Scholar According to Notes and queries, vi (15 May 1852), p. 464, Twiss relied to some extent on contributions from Francis Douce of the British Museum. Douce’s contribution probably began with volume 2. The set of Twiss in the Douce collection at the Bodleian consists of three volumes. The frst is an interleaved copy in which Douce inscribed numerous comments and corrections; the third is a manuscript scrapbook that Twiss used to compile the extensive chess material in volume 2 of his Miscellanies (1805).

20 Twiss, Richard, Tour in Ireland in 1775 (London, 1776).Google Scholar

21 Twiss, described O’Flanagan, as professor of the Irish language in the University of Dublin. For an account of O’Flanagan’s complex employment record in translating Irish manuscripts for the university and the Royal Irish Academy, see O’Halloran, Golden ages, pp 173–5.Google Scholar She says O’Flanagan was made a scholar of Trinity in 1787.

22 Twiss, , Chess, ii, 259–65.Google Scholar

23 O’Flanagan to Twiss in ibid., 260.

24 Barrington, Daines, ‘An historical disquisition on the game of chess; addressed to Count de Bruhl, F.A.S.’ in Archæologia, ix (1789), pp 16–38.Google Scholar

25 Hyde’s story said only one move a year was made in the game in order to postpone the decision indefnitely, and was repeated by Lambe and many others. It can be found in the continuation of the passage quoted above from Syntagma, p. 7, but its origin is obscure.Google Scholar

26 Barrington, , ‘Disquisition’, p. 30.Google Scholar

27 Irwin, Eyles, ‘Essay on the origin of chess’ in R.I.A. Trans., v (1795), antiquities section, pp 53–63.Google Scholar Another antiquarian article published around this time, but with nothing to say about Irish chess, was by Douce, Francis: ‘Some remarks on the European names of chess-men’ in Archæologia, xi (1793), pp 397–410.Google Scholar

28 Jones, Sir William, ‘On the Indian game of chess’ in Asiatick Researches, ii (1790), pp 159–65,Google Scholar reprinted in Invenire, Aungervyle Society reprints, 2nd ser. (Edinburgh, 1884). His single-inventor theory of the origins of chess is now discredited; he did not write on Irish chess.

29 O’Halloran, , Golden ages, p. 44.Google ScholarO’Halloran, Drdiscussed Vallancey at greater length at a Trinity College, Dublin, seminar in October 2005. On p. 51Google Scholar of her book, she compares his relationship to his translators with that of colonial scholars dependent on pandits for their renderings from Asian languages.

30 See, for example, Vallancey, Charles (ed.), Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis (6 vols, Dublin, 1770–1804), iii–iv, 49–52; v, 241.Google Scholar

31 British Chess Magazine, cxxi (Feb. 2001), p. 106, devoted a page to reprinting some of Vallancey’s whimsies, without any expression of scepticism.

32 Twiss, , Chess, ii, 262Google Scholar. Walker’s remarks about ‘fall’ and ‘taibble-fll’ appear to cor respond to the class of Viking table games known as taf, which was researched by Daniel Willard Fiske (1831–1904) of Cornell University. He never completed his projected work on chess history, but the part on Scandinavian board games appeared posthumously as Fiske, D.W., Chess in Iceland and Icelandic literature (Florence, 1905)Google Scholar.

33 Walker, J.C., ‘Anecdotes of chess, in Ireland’ in Vallancey, (ed.), Collectanea, v, 366–8.Google Scholar

34 Lennon’s, Irish orientalism, p. xvi,Google Scholar reprints a striking woodcut produced for Vallancey showing an Irish round tower at Ardmore beside a similar tower in India. Vallancey’s linking of fdchell and ‘phil’ can be viewed as analogous to that.

35 Leerssen, , Remembrance, p. 4.Google Scholar

36 For summaries of O’Donovan’s, life and caree, see Cathá, Diarmiad Óin, O’Donovan/Seán, ‘JohnDonnabháin’, Ó in D.I.B., vii (2009), 418–21,Google Scholar and Webb, Alfred, A com pendium of Irish biography: comprising sketches of distinguished Irishmen, and of eminent persons connected with Ireland by offce or by their writings (Dublin, 1878), pp 394–5Google Scholar. For O’Curry’s profle, see Ó, DiarmaidCathá, in, Curry/Eoghan, ‘EugeneComhraí’, Ó in D.I.B., vii (2009), 326–9, and Webb, ibid., pp 387–8.Google Scholar The two men were related by marriage.

37 Madden, Frederic, ‘Historical remarks on the introduction of the game of chess into Europe, and on the ancient chess-men discovered in the Isle of Lewis’ (privately circulated, London, 1832, subsequently published in Archæologia, xxiv (1832), pp 203–91). Madden worked at the British Museum,Google Scholar and his article includes detailed descriptions and drawings of the Lewis chessmen, but some of its speculations about origin and dating are suspect.

38 O’Donovan, was dismissed from the survey work in 1833 but re-employed when Petrie became head of the department, and remained until 31 January 1842: see Peter Murray, ‘George Petrie’ (M.Litt. thesis, T.C.D., 1980), pp 91–2;Google ScholarCooper, David, ‘George Petrie’ in D.I.B., viii (2009), 81–4.Google Scholar

39 Leerssen, Joep, ‘Petrie: polymath and innovator’ in George Petrie (1790-1866): the rediscovery of Ireland’s past (Kinsale, 2004), pp 7–11.Google Scholar

40 Stokes, William, The life and labours in art and archaeology of George Petrie LL.D., M.R.IA. (Dublin, 1868), p. 196.Google Scholar

41 Murray, , ‘George Petrie’, pp 107–8,Google Scholar goes into detail about their good relations and cites a letter of 2 October 1837 from O’Donovan to Petrie to support that view.

42 O’Donovan, John, ‘The Battle of Clontarf in Dublin Penny Journal, i, no. 17 (20 Oct. 1832), pp 133–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Versions published later change the language and spelling slightly but keep essentially to O’Donovan’s wording - for example, in the Celtic Times of 16 July 1887. The original source for this incident can be found in Todd, J.H. (ed.), The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, from the middle Irish Cogadh Gael re Gallaibh (London, 1867), pp 144–5, n. 4Google Scholar (where ficilli is translated as ‘chess’): ‘It happened also that he had some hasty words with Murchadh son of Brian, and Conaing, who were playing chess. Maolmordha taught a move against Murchadh by which the game went against him. Murchadh became angry at this move, and he looked at Maolmordha and said to him, “Thou art he who gavest advice to the foreigners on the day when they were defeated.” Maolmordha said in great wrath, “I will give them advice again and they shall not be defeated.”‘

43 Eales, Richard, Chess: the history of a game (London, 1985), pp 39-48;Google ScholarGamer, H.M., ‘The earliest evidence of chess in Western literature: the Einsiedeln Verses’ in Speculum, xxix, no. 4 (Oct. 1954), pp 734–50;Google Scholar Ian Riddler, D., ‘Anglo-Norman chess’ in J., AlexanderVoogt, de (ed.), New approaches to board games research: Asian origins and future perspec tives (Leiden, 1995), pp 99–109.Google Scholar

44 O’Donovan, John (ed.), Leabhar na gCeart, or the book of rights (Dublin, 1847), pp lxi–lxiv, 35, 70–1.Google Scholar See also Forbes, Duncan, The history of chess (London, 1860), appendix D, pp xl–xlvi,Google Scholar who wrote that ‘to pretend, as their chroniclers do, that they were acquainted with the game in the frst century of the Christian æra is simply absurd’. Later chess historians were very critical of Forbes’s work on oriental manuscripts. Irish writers seem to have ignored his comments.

45 J., HaroldMurray, R., The history of chess (Oxford, 1913), pp 759–60.Google Scholar

46 This was a little unfair to O’Flanagan, who had mentioned the possible chess refer ences in Cormac’s glossary to Twiss.

47 O’Curry, Eugene, On the manners and customs of the ancient Irish: a series of lectures, ed. O’, W.K.Sullivan, (3 vols, Dublin & New York, 1873).Google Scholar

48 See O’Rahilly, Cecile, Táin bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster (Dublin, 1967), for example, p. 152Google Scholar (with the Irish in line 550 on p. 16) and p. 158 (Irish in line 745 on p. 21). Variant spellings of both game names occur, such as brandub (meaning ‘raven-black’) which also appears as brandubh, brannamh, brannumh, brannaib and so on.

49 In the Crith-Gablach, appendix to O’Curry, Manners, iii, 506–7.Google Scholar

50 O’Donovan, to Petrie, , 2 Oct. 1857 in Stokes, Petrie, p. 380.Google Scholar

51 It is known that his son, also John O’Donovan, played chess to a good standard. In 1866 he began a friendly match with the young star of Irish chess, James Alexander Rynd, who told the story in one of the frst chess columns that he wrote for the Dublin Evening Herald, 19 Mar. 1892.

52 O’Halloran, , Golden ages, pp 97–126Google Scholar discusses James Macpherson’s collections of poems (1760–3), which purported to be translations from Gaelic of the works of a third- century Scottish bard, and the controversy they aroused.

53 Chess Players’ Chronicle, new ser., 1 (1853), p. 91, referring to Abbé James Mac-Geoghegan, History of Ireland, ancient and modern, trans. O’Kelly, Patrick (Dublin, 1844), p. 82.Google Scholar

54 This outline of Stokes’s career is based on Ó Muraile, Nollaig, ‘Whitley Stokes’ in Oxford D.N.B., lii (2004), 872–4;Google Scholar see also Georgina Clinton and Sturgeon, Sinéad, Stokes’, ‘Whitley in D.I.B ., ix (2009), 105–7.Google Scholar

55 Stokes, Whitley (ed.), Three Irish glossaries (London, 1862), pp li–lii; see also pp 21–2Google Scholar for entry on fdchell, which starts in Irish, concludes in Latin and features religious references.

56 Power, J. Wyse, ‘The revival of Irish games’ in Irish Fireside, vi, no. 133 (2 Jan. 1886), p. 29.Google Scholar

57 Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X. and Byrne, F.J. (eds), A new history of Ireland, viii: chro nology (Oxford, 1982), p. 358.Google Scholar

58 Celtic Times, 16 July 1887 (capitalisation as in the original).Google Scholar

59 Stokes, Whitley (ed.), ‘The Second Battle of Moytura’ in Rev. Celt., xii (1891), pp 52–130Google Scholar (and corrections, pp 306–8); see ¶69 (p. 78 in Irish, p. 79 in English) for the passage in question, where the king orders that ‘the chessboards of Tara should be fetched to him’. For original manuscript, see L., B., MS, Harl. 5280. Stokes also notes (p. 117) ‘fdchell. chessboard? W. gwyddbwyll’, and (p. 127)Google Scholar that in the text, Lug is said to have invented fdchell and ball play and horsemanship.

60 When the Free State government revived the Tailteann Games, chess tournaments formed part of the proceedings in 1924 and 1928, but the printed programmes for the games did not include claims for an Irish origin of chess.

61 Dublin Evening Mail, 22 Apr. 1886 (chess column, p. 8). This seems to have been the frst occasion the myth was propagated in a Dublin chess column. Rowland’s version reads as follows: ‘It may not be generally known that the game of chess was established in Ireland in 1430 b.c. by Tuatha de Dannianx, and that it is supposed that the thirty-two pieces represent the thirty-two counties. In different parts of the country, particularly in Meath, tournaments were held once a year, lasting from 15 August till the middle of September; valuable prizes were given to the victors, and their fame was sung by bards and echoed all over the land. These peaceful games continued to the eighth century, when the Anglo-Normans put an end to the tournaments, as well as almost everything else that was ennobling. Still vestiges of the ancient game remained suffciently to cause it to occasion ally glow.’

62 Celtic Times, 6 Aug. 1887.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., 1 Oct. 1887. Inter-county matches were beginning to be played in England, and became a regular feature of the twentieth-century chess calendar; however, this did not happen in Ireland.

64 See Lloyd, H.J., ‘The antiquity of chess in Ireland’ in Royal Hist. & Arch. Assoc. Ire. Jn., 4th ser., v, 7 (1885–6), pp 659–62.Google Scholar This article recounts various references to board games in Irish literature and myth. O’Donovan included in The book of rights, pp lxi–lxii, a brief version from ‘The wooing of Etain’ about how the queen of Tara was won from her husband by a strange warrior, Midir, in a game of fdchell . For the full version of the tale, see Bergin, Osborn and Best, R.I., ‘Tochmarc Etaine beos’ (‘The wooing of Etain’)’ in Ériu, xii (1938), pp 174–7.Google Scholar

65 Tenison, C., ‘Chess in Ireland’ in R.S.A.I. Jn ., 5th ser., ix (1899), p. 127.Google Scholar

66 Rowland’s, Frideswidechess column in Kingstown Society (Sept. 1899).Google Scholar For more on her role in promoting chess, see Timothy Harding, ‘Ireland’s queen of chess: Rowland, Frideswide and her world’ in History Studies 6 (Limerick, 2005), pp 48–63.Google Scholar

67 Herbert, Jane Emily, A short history of Ireland from the earliest periods to the year 1798 (Dublin, 1886).Google Scholar The Rowlands frst referred to ‘Irish chess of olden times’ items from this book in their column in the Dublin Evening Mail, 24 Feb. 1887.

68 Kingstown Society (Oct. 1899), p. 11.

69 The first number of Mrs Rowland’s magazine, The Four-Leaved Shamrock (Jan. 1905), pp 3–4Google Scholar retold the Maelmordha/Morogh anecdote in terms of modern rules such as the double-pawn advance, modern bishop and queen moves, and castling. Evidently, she composed a game to ft the old story. In issue 7 of the magazine, she repeated the myth that ‘Chess was established in Ireland in 1430 b.c. by Tuatha de Dannianx …’ etc.

70 O’Halloran, , Golden ages, p. 185; Leerssen, Remembrance, p. 149,Google Scholar aptly refers to the machismo in O’Grady’s versions of Irish history, and on page 153 he discusses the tension between O’Grady’s writing for popular and juvenile audiences, and his attempts at more scholarly work, which ‘runs squarely into the intractable confusion between Irish myth and Irish historical fact’.

71 O’Grady, Standish, Silva Gadelica (I–XXXI.): a collection of tales in Irish (2 vols, London & Edinburgh, 1892), ii, 250.Google Scholar Compare Stokes, Whitley and Ernst Windisch, Irische Texte, 4th ser., 1 (Leipzig, 1900), lines 7052–7.Google Scholar

72 This can also be seen by comparing Stokes & Windisch ibid., line 2169, which mentions two different games: ‘Tri cét sciath ina tigh tall. Tri cét brandub is f[d]chell’. But instead of rendering this as 300 brandub sets and 300 fdchell sets, wrongly, O’Gradytranslates the text as: ‘Three hundred shields there were within her house, three hundred sets of chess-men and three hundred boards’ (Silva, p. 154).Google Scholar

73 Gregory, Lady [Augusta], Cuchulain of Muirthemne: the story of the men of the Red Branch of Ulster (London, 1902), p. 35.Google Scholar

74 Yeats, W.B., Collected plays (Dublin, 1934), esp. p. 191.Google Scholar Yeats’s dedication (p. 170) says Patrick, MrsCampbell played the role of Deirdre in Dublin and London, and Robert Gregory designed the set. Deirdre was restaged for the Yeats Festival at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, in 1991.Google Scholar

75 The collected letters of Yeats, W.B. (online resource) includes three unpublished letters of Yeats on this topic, notably one to Lady Gregory, 19 Dec. 1908.Google Scholar

76 Wickstrom, Gordon M., ‘Legend focusing legend in Yeats’s Deirdre ‘ in Educational Theatre Jn., xxx, no. 4 (Dec. 1978), pp 466–74.Google Scholar

77 Other examples of writers on the topic are Barry, Albert, ‘Chess in ancient Ireland’n New Ireland Review, xxi (May 1904), pp 140–9;Google ScholarJoyce, P.W., A social history of ancient Ireland (2 vols, London, 1903), ii, 477–81;Google Scholar idem, A child’s history of Ireland (Dublin, 1907), p. 32.

78 MacDonnell, A.A., ‘Origin and early history of chess’ in Jn. Royal Asiatic Soc. (Jan. 1898), pp 117–41.Google Scholar

79 Stoep, Arie van de, A history of draughts: with a diachronic study of words for draughts, chess, backgammon and morris, translated by Monique de Meijer (Rockanje, Netherlands, 1984). The Murray papers in the Bodleian Library also include correspondence and essays on the history of draughts.Google Scholar

80 Correspondence relating to chess and draughts between Harold Murray, J.R. and White, John, 1900–18 (Cleveland Public Library, John G. White collection (microflm)).Google Scholar For White’s letters, see Bodl., Murray, H.J.MS 167. Among the relevant letters are White to Murray, 6 Oct., 1 Nov. 1904, 7 Apr. 1905, 21 Feb. 1906.Google Scholar

81 For example, Dillon, Myles, in his edition of Lebor na cert, the book of rights (Dublin, 1962), pp 156–7,Google Scholar says nothing about the word fdchell, and only repeats the conventional translation to ‘chess’.

82 Gamer, , ‘The Einsiedeln Verses’, pp 734–50.Google Scholar

83 See Eales, , Chess, p. 49; also idem., ‘Changing cultures: the reception of chess into western Europe in the Middle Ages’ in Finkel, Irving (ed.), Ancient board games in perspec tive (London, 2007), pp 162–8.Google Scholar Unfortunately, there is nothing on Celtic board games in that substantial volume, which was based on a British Museum conference. For Murray’s notes on game references in Welsh and Irish, see Bodl., H. J. Murray MS 167.

84 This can be seen in the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Hencken, H.O.originally wrote on the game board in Acta Archaelogica, iv (1933), pp 85–104.Google Scholar Slightly rewritten and updated, it forms part of a longer article on the crannóg in Proc., R.I.A., xliii (1936), sect. C, pp 103–239.Google ScholarJohnson, Ruthchallenged some of his conclusions in ‘Ballinderry crannóg no. 1: a reinterpretation’ in R.I.A. Proc ., xcix (1999), sect. C, no. 2, pp 46–71.Google Scholar

85 Serendipity enabled Murray to solve the problem that had baffled Fiske, as he explained in a letter to G., JohnWhite on 10 April 1910: ‘by an extraordinary chance, I have lighted upon the solution’. A Cambridge book-barrow man spotted something he knew would interest Murray: James Edward Smith’s edition of Linnaeus’s diary on his Lappland tour with the account of tablut . See Murray to White, 10 Apr. 1910 (Cleveland Public Library, John G. White collection (microflm)).Google Scholar

86 McGinley, P.T., ‘Chess in ancient Ireland’, with an afterword by Harold Murray in B.C.M., liii (Dec. 1933), pp 501–4Google Scholar. McGinley, was president of the Colmcille Chess Club, Dublin.Google Scholar

87 Lewis, Frank, ‘Gwerin Ffristial a Thawlbwrdd’ in Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, session 1941 (London, 1943), pp 185–205.Google Scholar This paper is mostly in English.

88 Owen, Aneurin (ed.), Ancient laws and institutes of Wales (2 vols, London, 1841).Google Scholar

89 National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 158, p. 4; translation in Harold Murray, A history of board games other than chess (Oxford, 1952), p. 63.

90 In Hrervar’s saga and Friðþjof’s saga; Murray cited an English version in Magnusson, E. and Morris, W., Three northern love stories (London, 1875), p. 73.Google Scholar

91 Lewis to Murray, 28 May 1946 (Bodl., H. J. Murray MS 159).Google Scholar

92 MacWhite, Eoin, ‘Early Irish board games’ in Éigse, v (1945–7), pp 25–35;Google Scholar see also O’Keeffe, J.G. (ed.), ‘Mac da Cherda and Cummaine Fota’ in Ériu, v (1911), pp 32–3.Google Scholar Nugent, Irish chess, begins his work with a lengthy quotation from the latter, but com pletely misses the point that the Mac da Cherda and Cummaine Fota passage is actually one of the best proofs that fdchell was not chess, because the methods of capture are entirely different.

93 In relation to brandub, MacWhite acknowledged that Dr Eleanor Knott had collected most of the evidence and published it in a footnote to an edition of poetry in the 1920s.Google Scholar See Knott, E. (ed.), The bardic poems of Tadgh Dall Ó hUiginn (2 vols, London, 1922–6) ii, 198–9.Google Scholar

94 Murray wrongly believed that there was another game called cennchaem Conchobair, because he mistook the proper name of Connor’s fdchell set for a game name. That mistake appeared in his 1933 letter to B.C.M., and was repeated in Board-games, , p. 35. MacWhite pointed out the mistake both in his article and in his review of Murray’s book in Anthropos, 48 (1953), pp 1005–6.Google Scholar

95 O’Rahilly, , Táin bó Cúalnge, p. 182:Google Scholar ‘No one came into the plain unnoticed by Láeg and yet he used to win every second game of búanbach from Cú Chulainn’.

96 It is conceivable that the Roman soldiers learnt their game from the Celts rather than the other way around.

97 Sterckx, Claude, ‘Les jeux de damiers Celtiques’ in Annales de Bretagne, 77, 4 (1970), pp 597–609.Google Scholar An offprint of this article is available for consultation in the Royal Irish Academy library.

98 Ibid., p. 599: ‘Le fait que ces noms été appliqués au jeu d’échecs dès son introduction dans les pays Celtiques, et qu’il le désigne encore aujourd’hui, a malheuresement trop longtemps entraîné traducteurs et commentateurs des vieux textes à n’accorder aucune attention aux passages où ils ont été cités, et à y voir aussi systématiquement qu’erronément le jeu d’échecs classique.’

99 Ibid., p. 602. Comparison with the Lewis article shows the mistake clearly.

100 Ibid., p. 605.

101 Marie, CatherineO’Sullivan, , Hospitality in medieval Ireland, 900–1500 (Dublin, 2004), p. 239.Google Scholar

102 Gleason, Angela, ‘Entertainment in early Ireland’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, T.C.D., 2002), p. 310.Google Scholar

103 MacWhite, , ‘Games’, p. 29;Google ScholarKeating, Geoffrey, Trí bior-ghoithe an bháis (‘The three shafts of death’), (2nd ed. with introduction, indices and glossary by OsbornBergin, Dublin & London, 1931), p. 30,Google Scholar line 852 et seq . The origin of the ‘Innocent morality’, on which this passage is modelled, is discussed by Eales, Chess, pp 64–5.

104 See, for example, Comerford, Ireland, ch. 7, esp. p. 213.Google Scholar

105 Garnham, Neal, ‘Accounting for the early success of the Gaelic Athletic Association’ in I.H.S., xxxiv, no. 133 (May 2004), pp 65–78, esp. pp 75–6.Google Scholar

106 Leerssen, Joep, ‘The cultivation of culture: towards a defnition of romantic national ism in Europe’, Working Papers European Studies Amsterdam, 2 (2005), p. 4.Google Scholar This article is online at http://cf.hum.uva.nl/~eurstu/pdf/wpesa2.pdf (downloaded 10 Oct. 2008).

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111 In the long gestation of this article, many people made useful comments on several versions. In addition to the anonymous peer reviewers, I wish to thank Drs Angela Gleason, Conor Kostick, W. E. Vaughan, Mary Ann Lyons, Professor David Hayton, and also those T.C.D. postgraduates who heard my seminar paper on this topic in 2006.