Around the 1950s, two men, both called Willie MacDonald, were famous Scottish bagpipers. One came from the Highlands city of Inverness while the other hailed from Benbecula, one of the Hebridean isles off Scotland’s wild western coast.
The Inverness McDonald also worked for the local water board. So in the piping world he was nicknamed Watery Willie to distinguish him from his island compatriot.
He was also captain of the shinty team in Inverness. And so that’s where we were last Friday afternoon, as champion piper Duncan MacGillivray led us on to the shinty pitch at Bught Park to hear a tune, Bught, originally composed by Watery Willie.
As a cold wind whipped our ears amid the mournful strains of Watery Willie’s bagpipe lament, masterfully played by a handlebar-moustachioed MacGillivray in full Highlands kilt regalia, I looked up at the grey clouds rolling in over Inverness and thought to myself: “Jaysus – it could hardly get more Scottish than this."
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But it did.
The occasion last Friday was a gathering of local dignitaries for the official opening of Shinty’s Story – Sgeul na Camanachd – an exhibition of the hurling-like sport’s history that had opened in a new development at Bught Park. It is the home of shinty, as Croke Park is of GAA. I wangled my way in on the coattails of an Irish diplomat.
The following day, Scotland would play Ireland at Bught Park in annual women and men’s internationals of combined shinty-hurling and shinty-camogie rules. Celts versus celts. Gaelic kin competing in a clash of their respective ash.
Shinty sticks, or camans, are more like hockey sticks than hurls and the Scottish game is played more along the ground than in the air. But with a few tweaks of the scoring system and a ban on hurlers handling the sliotar, a combined-rules game of shinty-hurling flows easily enough with each side using their traditional equipment.
The exhibition laid out in impressive detail the history of shinty and its contribution to Scottish identity. Its roots are pre-Christian and Irish. The game made its way to Scotland with the expansion of the Dál Riada Gaelic empire. Shinty evolved in its own unique way in Scotland, just as hurling did back in Ireland.
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Shinty is now seen an intrinsic part of Gaelic and Highlands culture, although it is played elsewhere in Scotland too. Trinity College Dublin-educated Peter Mackay, Scotland’s national poet or Makar, wrote a poem for the exhibition about this “game of earth and air, ash on ash, pain and joy”.
The Welsh nationalists of Plaid Cymru are bearing down on power in Cardiff while the Scottish National Party (SNP) is likely to win again in Edinburgh, before a renewed push for independence. Meanwhile, the English nationalists of Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant Reform UK are making the political weather in Westminster.
Each of the constituent nations of the island of Britain is rippling with waves of angst over national identity. I asked Mackay what he made of it all.
“We’ve been having this conversation among ourselves about Scottish identity since at least the 1970s, but the English didn’t start until about 2014,” he said.
When the bigger English nation flexes the muscles of national identity, it makes the others nervous.
While much of Britain is convulsed with anxiety over rising immigration, Scottish authorities believe the Highlands could do with more of it to stave off the effects of depopulation.
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The issue of Scottish identity was on my mind that evening as I strolled the handsome streets of Inverness, seen as the capital of the wildly-beautiful Highlands region. I was on the hunt for dinner.
I found a restaurant, Aye Eat, on the High Street. It had tartan menus, tartan walls, Highlands burgers and Highlands pies. The desserts included Irn-Bru ice cream sundae. It was a Scottish cornucopia, curated for tourists and locals alike.
Yet the staff were all from eastern Europe and were impeccably friendly. I earwigged as Magda, the waitress, advised a young Scottish couple at the next table where to buy clothes for their upcoming wedding. She gave them her mobile and told them to call her for a table the next time. Magda said she would make sure they were looked after. She might be a migrant, I thought, but Magda acts like she feels at home.
Next morning, I was back at Bught Park for the clash of the ash. Ireland’s camogie women won handily. Ireland’s men edged a tighter match. The crowd included John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, and Tom Ryan, director general of the GAA.
At one point during the men’s match, there was a fierce scuffle between the players near the sideline. A few slaps may even have been thrown, but nothing major. Nobody was too bothered.
In a brief lull of quiet at the scuffle, a voice in an unmistakable Irish accent – possibly Galway – rose up from the stand behind me: “Get shtuck into him, now!”
Everybody who heard it – whether Scottish or Irish – burst out laughing together. We all knew the score. We all knew who we were. Some elements of identity just come naturally to us all. Much of the rest can be easily learned.
