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| RETURNING FROM GAMES, BALINASLOE, CO. GALWAY. -The artist, in the foregoing picture, has sketched the play ground in the old town of Ballinasloe, where the young men and boys engage in match games of hurling and football once or twice a week in the season of outdoor athletic sports. The people are quitting the field, the games having already terminated. On the right of the picture appear the tower and spire of two churches, the one toward the centre situated on an eminence and visible at a great distance throughout the surrounding country. The long, low structure on the left is the Agricultural building, or hall, well known to all visitors during the stirring period of the annual October fair-one of the greatest in Europe. The play ground is one of the most commodicus in the island. Hurling, not foot ball, is Ireland's national game, and has existed from the earliest times. It is a splendid, martial game, dangerous to life and limb, when fiercely, or carelessly played, but no exercise is better calculated to develop the human frame and make men active and caring. Before the great famine of 1846-50, hurling was passionatly pursued by the young men of Ireland, but more particularly by those of Munster and Connaught. It is played with curved sticks, called "hurlies," the "boss" of the bat, or "hurly" being flattened at the sides, and the handle reaching to the hip of the player. The bail is of hard leather, and somewhat larger than that used by base ball players. "Twenty-one to a side" was the old number, but now, we believe, the game is generally played with less men. |
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