Hockey Invented In England ... Not Canada

[Uncle Rotter]

I gather from press reports on the new book authored by the Timeline writers and M. Martel that Darwin's experiences at school would have preceded by some years the 1825 Franklin expedition reference.

But not the 1811 Pictou reference (Darwin was 2 at the time)

 

[Uncle Rotter]

Here's another timeline from the Swedish authors:
http://www.sihrhockey.org/new/pdfs/sihr_timeline_Preview.pdf

In the new book, how much of it is from non-English speaking sources? Is it really believable that no French speaking settlers in North America prior to 1850 played games on ice?

 

[Iain Fyffe]

In the new book, how much of it is from non-English speaking sources? Is it really believable that no French speaking settlers in North America prior to 1850 played games on ice?

Games on ice, or hockey on ice? Given that the definition of hockey being used necessarily involves skates, the availability of skates is rather crucial.

 

[Gary Gillman]

But not the 1811 Pictou reference (Darwin was 2 at the time)

Yes, and I'm new at this, but from what I've gleaned, the 1797 painting or illustration shows the same thing (at least) on an English river, i.e., 14 years earlier. The painting is not titled with the name hockey but the Pictou reference to ice hurley doesn't use the term hockey either. So it seems a "wash" except the English practice was older, no?

Gary

 

[Killion]

What of "Ice Polo" in the NE US? There are early accounts of that game being the forerunner to "Hockey" for some time in New England. I believe UConn having in its possession both pictures & documentation from at least the 1880's if not earlier. Anecdotal reports as well, though thin, suggesting it was around for quite some time.

 

[Hanji]

Yes, and I'm new at this, but from what I've gleaned, the 1797 painting or illustration shows the same thing (at least) on an English river, i.e., 14 years earlier. The painting is not titled with the name hockey but the Pictou reference to ice hurley doesn't use the term hockey either. So it seems a "wash" except the English practice was older, no?

Gary

Another significance of the 1797 painting is the depiction of a bung and/or puck.
It's the earliest evidence of a puck being used rather than a hurley or field hockey ball.

 

[frontsfan2005]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...in_the_Snow_(Winter)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

That is a painting by Pieter Brugel the Elder, which is a winter scene painted in 1565 in the Netherlands. If you look closely, you can see two ponds, and there is a person playing a sport with a stick and puck/ball in the bottom corner of the top pond. There isn't a net, and it looks as if the person was playing by themselves, but in the middle of the 16th century there was a game with a stick and puck/ball played on ice.

Also, in that painting, interesting to see a game of curling going on in the lower pond, as well as some sort of game being played by a father/son just under the curling match.

 

[tarheelhockey]

And it still doesn't reconcile the Pictou-based hockey references pre-dating the Croxby Pond account by decades, or the fact that the Dutch - who supposedly brought ice skating to Britain initially - also established themselves in North America long, loooong before 1838, and could figure into the history that we're still missing.

One factor that might (possibly) help support this argument is this illustration from the SIHR document linked above:

[/URL]

Granted, the semantics of bandy/shinty/hockey are very muddy. But it seems pretty clear that the term "hockey" appeared in Britain around the turn of the 19th century, and only in the south.

That suggests three possible interpretations:

1) For reasons unknown, the population of London and southward counties spontaneously started using an invented word for the familiar old game. This seems somewhat unlikely, as broad semantic changes are usually not quite that random.

2) The concept of "hockey" was different in the south than elsewhere in Britain, necessitating a change in terminology to distinguish it as a regional variation. We don't have any record to support that theory.

3) The word was imported from elsewhere through London and the southern port towns, and became widespread in those places which experienced a steady inward flow of former colonists, military, merchants, etc.


Based on the very piecemeal evidence, IMO the best explanation on the table is #3. Which isn't to say this is anything like a smoking gun, but the sudden emergence of a new word in a limited geographic area is consistent with an imported new concept of the game.

Interestingly, the SIHR folks drew the exact opposite conclusion:

"It is likely that British officers from the London area brought the name Hockey to the New World in the 19th Century -- however, the other names of the game was [sic] already in use throughout North America at the time, introduced by earlier generations of immigrants.

The people behind the earliest Canadian references using the word hockey -- all had their military education located southeast of London."

That last line is striking to me -- the military academies in question were located in Southampton (a port city on the southern coast) and Kent (the far southeastern county, where one would cross to France).

A brand-new word for a very old and already-named game arises among young military officers who are living right along the coastline... and SIHR concluded that the word is an export? That doesn't seem right to me. I think a linguist would take one look at the evidence here and suggest that the word came into Britain around that time, and was picked up by students who were frequently exposed to imperial globetrotters. This seems even more likely considering the word "hockey" itself isn't a compound, corruption, or back-formation of an existing English word. It would be one thing if it were suddenly called something similar to "baseball" or "football" or "basketball", but "hockey" has a foreign ring to it.

The real question, IMO, is where did these military brats learn the word?

 

[Killion]

The real question, IMO, is where did these military brats learn the word?

Well there ya go. Creative thought & pursuit tarheel.... Etymologically the word is believed to have come from the French word "hoquet" (diminutive of Old French hoc - "hook") which is the word for a staff or stave used by shepherds, a stick with a hooked end (to grasp the beasties by the neck) which would have resembled a crude hockey stick.... The first recorded use of the word "hockey" dates from 1363 in a decree issued by Edward the III of England outlawing certain sports including "hockey" as being "idle". An activity he apparently frowned upon along with Handball & couple of others... Theres another isolated reference from Ireland in 1527 from what source Im not sure but the line goes along the track of "the horlinge of the litill balle with hockie sticks or staves". Note as well the spelling, ie rather than ey, though not unusual be it Ireland, Wales or Scotland in comparison to the Kings Bloody English..... another reference from West Sussex circa 1837/38 and so on..... therefore, as Edward the III actually outlawed the game, clearly, some form of "hockey" was indeed being played late 12th early 13th Century in England, and he didnt like it one little bit. No Sir. Be having none of that.

 

[Uncle Rotter]

Here's an interview with one of the authors where he states that Charles Darwin may have played hockey in 1808 (one year before he was born, 1:40)
http://blogs.canoe.ca/lilleyspad/politics/video-the-origins-of-hockey/
Edit:I'm sure he meant 1818

 

[Killion]

^^^ Nice find.......... and catch on that 1808 date. It could be the guy was merely somewhat overwhelmed being on television, momentary lapse of reason & tripped up a bit huh? Seems like a possible explanation. Rather big mistake to be making surely. Like there goes your credibility right out the window so no, theres just no way it wasnt anything more than stage fright... must be & I agree, likely meant 1818.... And he too quite adamant on the Field Hockey Rule Book being the master template used by Creighton & his contemporaries in Montreal with the exception of some minor tweakings to the verbiage I guess. All in all, very interesting.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The first recorded use of the word "hockey" dates from 1363 in a decree issued by Edward the III of England outlawing certain sports including "hockey" as being "idle". Edward the III actually outlawed the game, clearly, some form of "hockey" was indeed being played late 12th early 13th Century in England, and he didnt like it one little bit. No Sir. Be having none of that.

Well there ya go. Someone in England invented the game, Edward III banned it, and everyone was afraid to play it again until 500 years later. Boom. Next topic please

 

[Robert Gordon Orr]

Well there ya go. Someone in England invented the game, Edward III banned it, and everyone was afraid to play it again until 500 years later. Boom. Next topic please

Just to set the record straight:

King Edward III's proclamation 1363 was written in latin and the supposed word 'hockey' was in fact the latin word 'Cambucam'. His letter was sent to all Sheriffs in England. In the first English translation in 1598 by John Stow, the word hockey was not used but rather Bandy-ball and Cambuck.

 

[Gary Gillman]

This, is, I believe, the source of the 1527 Galway prohibition of "horlinge" (hurling) in which "hockie sticks" are used:

http://books.google.com.na/books?id...&ved=0CCsQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=hockey&f=false

It's a book from 1801, by Joseph Strutt, but the reference to the Galway statute appears added by the 1903 editor, J. Charles Cox (since it is identified by asterisk and speaks of Strutt as a third person).

Now, consider this. Galway was, at the time, ruled by a group of Anglo-Norman families, the so-called tribesmen. They were a pre-Cromwell subset of the original English settlers. Most settled on the east in the so-called Pale, but there were isolated pockets of settlement elsewhere in Ireland. Thus, the term "hockie", which is just an alternate spelling (amongst others) of hockey, is part of the Anglo-Norman tradition. I don't regard it as "isolated", the fact that any reference appears so long ago, with a lengthy subsequent gap, to a sport viewed moreover with disfavour by authorities should not be a matter of surprise. I believe the term for the stick was, in fact, Norman French in origin and the fact of the Galway polity in 1527 reinforces that. It is not as if the term pops up in Gaelic Ireland with no seeming connection to Anglo-Normans; to the contrary. The Anglo-Normans in southern England and Ireland both would have used the term. Its intermittent appearance in records is just a matter of happenstance and the vagaries of record-keeping, basically.

And finally the term, now used to describe the game of hurley, or being at least an alternate description, borrowed from the main implement of the game, pops up with more regularity in the 1700's as records are kept more systematically and we have surviving examples.

My conclusion: the term is clearly Norman French for a hooked stick; the Normans brought the word to England and the parts of Ireland they dominated; the stick was used in field hockey and, "a la longue", ice hockey, both also called hurley and shinny; and finally, hockey became the official name for the main forms of these sports, through slow accretion and habit.

Gary

 

[Killion]

Just to set the record straight:

King Edward III's proclamation 1363 was written in latin and the supposed word 'hockey' was in fact the latin word 'Cambucam'. His letter was sent to all Sheriffs in England. In the first English translation in 1598 by John Stow, the word hockey was not used but rather Bandy-ball and Cambuck.

I see. And how could someone have so mangled a translation ya reckon?

I don't regard it as "isolated", the fact that any reference appears so long ago, with a lengthy subsequent gap, to a sport viewed moreover with disfavour by authorities should not be a matter of surprise....

Interesting. Thanks for digging that source up Gary. By "isolated" I was referring to the fact that the splinter and much smaller group of Normans who settled in Ireland (variously called the Hibernian Normans etc) did so by choice, removed, somewhat divorced as it were from the main body of their Norman brethren who settled in England.

 

[Mayor Bee]

3) The word was imported from elsewhere through London and the southern port towns, and became widespread in those places which experienced a steady inward flow of former colonists, military, merchants, etc.


Based on the very piecemeal evidence, IMO the best explanation on the table is #3. Which isn't to say this is anything like a smoking gun, but the sudden emergence of a new word in a limited geographic area is consistent with an imported new concept of the game.

Interestingly, the SIHR folks drew the exact opposite conclusion:

"It is likely that British officers from the London area brought the name Hockey to the New World in the 19th Century -- however, the other names of the game was [sic] already in use throughout North America at the time, introduced by earlier generations of immigrants.

The people behind the earliest Canadian references using the word hockey -- all had their military education located southeast of London."

That last line is striking to me -- the military academies in question were located in Southampton (a port city on the southern coast) and Kent (the far southeastern county, where one would cross to France).

A brand-new word for a very old and already-named game arises among young military officers who are living right along the coastline... and SIHR concluded that the word is an export? That doesn't seem right to me. I think a linguist would take one look at the evidence here and suggest that the word came into Britain around that time, and was picked up by students who were frequently exposed to imperial globetrotters. This seems even more likely considering the word "hockey" itself isn't a compound, corruption, or back-formation of an existing English word. It would be one thing if it were suddenly called something similar to "baseball" or "football" or "basketball", but "hockey" has a foreign ring to it.

The real question, IMO, is where did these military brats learn the word?

"Soccer" is as dissimilar to "football" as "hockey" is to...well, whatever. And yet in the 19th century, the word "soccer" seemed to spontaneously generate in southern England (specifically Oxford), where it was then exported to North America and then largely disowned in the land of origin.

And one needs only take a cursory glance at cockney slang (early- to mid-19th century origin) to see how easily a basic word can end up being very quickly contorted into something else entirely, also within the same region of southern England.

 

[Gary Gillman]

I see. And how could someone have so mangled a translation ya reckon?



Interesting. Thanks for digging that source up Gary. By "isolated" I was referring to the fact that the splinter and much smaller group of Normans who settled in Ireland (variously called the Hibernian Normans etc) did so by choice, removed, somewhat divorced as it were from the main body of their Norman brethren who settled in England.

Certainly true, however the old Norman presence is important in my view to the appearance of the word hockie in this area - that is what connects its use in England (albeit only recorded later). Hurling is also a Latinate word if I am not mistaken, not Gaelic. So in an area of old Norman settlement and dominance it makes sense that these two words appeared. The text as quoted in the Strutt book appears to have been written in English, one would need to check the Mss reference in the footnote to be sure, but I'd think this likely. Also, "hockey" is just too similar to words such as hook and hooky for it to have appeared spontaneously in my view in the 1700's: it has to be connected to the 1500's Galway usage and these other words.

I wonder if cambucam is Latinised Gaelic so to speak, i.e., not Latin or French, since it sounds like cambogie a lot, the women's field game still played in Ireland, and that term has a Gaelic origin I believe.

By isolated I was referring really to the term as used in that Timeline from 2010. It is isolated in a purely temporal sense to be sure but I think the long lapse of time between recorded appearances is not relevant to its history ultimately.

Gary

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

Certainly true, however the old Norman presence is important in my view to the appearance of the word hockie in this area - that is what connects its use in England (albeit only recorded later).

I wonder if cambucam is Latinised Gaelic so to speak, i.e., not Latin or French, since it sounds like cambogie a lot, the women's field game still played in Ireland, and that term has a Gaelic origin I believe.

By isolated I was referring really to the term as used in that Timeline from 2010. It is isolated in a purely temporal sense to be sure but I think the long lapse of time between recorded appearances is not relevant to its history ultimately.

Gary

Which is interesting, because depending on how much further back than 1838 we go, we start getting into the era of colonization which brought tens of thousands of Gaelic people to Nova Scotia and PEI. Maybe it's not of little note that the most common language of our founding fathers was Gaelic, and that Pictou is where the Gaelic immigrants would have landed/settled on the mainland at least as early as 1770. What could have been a fairly established activity among a persecuted population (hence a period of time that seems light in remaining details back "home") may have been allowed to develop/flourish and gain popularity/structure unimpeded over here.

 

[tarheelhockey]

"Soccer" is as dissimilar to "football" as "hockey" is to...well, whatever. And yet in the 19th century, the word "soccer" seemed to spontaneously generate in southern England (specifically Oxford), where it was then exported to North America and then largely disowned in the land of origin.

And one needs only take a cursory glance at cockney slang (early- to mid-19th century origin) to see how easily a basic word can end up being very quickly contorted into something else entirely, also within the same region of southern England.

"Soccer" has a well-recorded origin as an abbreviation of the word "association" (as in association football) plus the -er suffix which is an Oxford signature. Its origin wasn't spontaneous, simply a collision of a particular sporting term with a particular style of slang.

"Hockey" doesn't have that kind of clearly structured and documented etymology, which Ohashi_Jouzu correctly notes would be expected of a popular term which originated in 19th century southern England. That was a literate society full of newspapers, journals, periodicals, diary writers, advertisements, and so forth. It really pushes the boundaries of plausibility that a word would have emerged out of the clear blue and gained widespread use over a period of decades without being recorded by anyone. I'm not saying it's utterly impossible, but it's very unlikely to have happened that way.

Either way, my strong suspicion is that we would find the word used in southern English newspapers of the time. Unfortunately it would seem that research on this topic is mostly conducted online, where the best source material is out of reach.

 

[Killion]

... It is isolated in a purely temporal sense to be sure but I think the long lapse of time between recorded appearances is not relevant to its history ultimately.

Yes I agree. And I cant help but wonder if perhaps the Normans themselves brought the game into England & Ireland from Normandy in 1066 and that the game may well have been long established & played in France & the lowlands of the Basque Countries at a time when winters were harsher & the climate much colder than it is today.

 

[Gary Gillman]

Yes I agree. And I cant help but wonder if perhaps the Normans themselves brought the game into England & Ireland from Normandy in 1066 and that the game may well have been long established & played in France & the lowlands of the Basque Countries at a time when winters were harsher & the climate much colder than it is today.

Well put and I believe that is the history, in fact. This ties in as well to hockey being a game of the elite into the 1800's. Even the 1875 Montreal game was played by members of the Establishment. The Normans' games would have been those of the elite, since they were rulers and landowners in England, until finally the games - or at least their names - percolated through other levels of society. The Timeline, and I'd think the new book (I don't have it yet) makes a point about the high status of hockey in English society until relatively recently. Even Darwin's recollections can be viewed in this vein.

Gary

 

[Gary Gillman]

Just for fun (and I had no clue about this before) I searched "jeux traditionnels Normands" and it turns out there are a number of associations or groups which promote interest in the traditional sports and games of Normandy.

I picked one at random:

http://jeuxtradinormandie.fr

That looks a lot like a hockey stick, eh? The game mentioned is "choule crosse". True enough the term hockey is not used, but that may have been a sub-regional variant, or a later usage taken from a term in Norman French as used in England and Ireland. This site states that their federation will demonstrate choule crosse in the September 2014 La St-Michel, a Norman fair taking place at Mont St-Michel. Crosse is clearly connected to lacrosse, itself part of the complex of related games of which hockey is one.

I wonder if youtube has examples of people playing Norman choule crosse. It must be very similar to field hockey.

Gary

 

[Iain Fyffe]

Here's an interview with one of the authors where he states that Charles Darwin may have played hockey in 1808 (one year before he was born, 1:40)
http://blogs.canoe.ca/lilleyspad/politics/video-the-origins-of-hockey/
Edit:I'm sure he meant 1818

He did mean 1818. He has stated that he misspoke during the interview. (As did the host, who got the precise name of the book wrong both times he said it!)

 

[Gary Gillman]

Which is interesting, because depending on how much further back than 1838 we go, we start getting into the era of colonization which brought tens of thousands of Gaelic people to Nova Scotia and PEI. Maybe it's not of little note that the most common language of our founding fathers was Gaelic, and that Pictou is where the Gaelic immigrants would have landed/settled on the mainland at least as early as 1770. What could have been a fairly established activity among a persecuted population (hence a period of time that seems light in remaining details back "home") may have been allowed to develop/flourish and gain popularity/structure unimpeded over here.

Indeed, and it seems likely they brought Irish field games to Canada, perhaps under different names depending on where they came from and social status.

 

[Gary Gillman]

Here's an image of choule crosse in Normandy:

http://www.le-petit-manchot.fr/uploads/image0169179.jpg?img0

Looks familiar... Other images from the Internet show a similar-shaped stick except it is shorter and used with one hand, very similar to the stick you see in the 1797 English painting on the cover of the new book. I think the shorter stick probably evolved into the longer one, and the longer one shown here might be a more recent development in Normandy, a rebound effect of the hockey implement as it looks today in Canada and other ice hockey countries. Or, perhaps there were variant sizes of stick, and therefore the way it was handled, depending on what part of Normandy you came from. But either way you look at it, it's a hockey field game from across the Channel and clearly preceded the English development of the game.

Here's another thought: French Canada has always dominated the sport. True, Quebec has lots of ice in the winter, but so do many other parts of Canada, and the U.S.. Perhaps the love of hockey has been handed down through generations in Quebec as an inheritance from Normandy: the bulk of French immigrants to Quebec were from - Normandy.

Gary