Hurling or goaling has been a favourite game among the Irish from the earliest ages: played with a ball and a _caman_ or hurley as at present. In the latter part of the last century it declined somewhat in popularity; but now there is a vigorous attempt to revive it. Our modern cricket and hockey are only forms of the old game of _caman_. In ancient Ireland chess-playing was a favourite pastime among the higher classes. Everywhere in the Tales we read of kings and chiefs amusing themselves with chess, and to be a good player was considered a necessary accomplishment of every man of high position. In every chief’s house there was accordingly at least one set of chess appliances for the use of the family and guests; namely, a chequered chess-board, with chessmen and a bag to hold them, which was often made of woven brass wire. From the most remote times in Ireland, kings kept fools, jesters, clowns, and jugglers in their courts, for amusement, like kings of England and other countries in much later times. In the Tales we constantly read of such persons and their sayings and doings. They wore funny-looking dresses; and they amused the people something in the same way as the court fools and buffoons of later times--by broad impudent remarks, jests, half witty, half absurd, and odd gestures and grimaces. King Conari’s three jesters were such surpassingly funny fellows that, as we are told in the story of Da Derga, no man could refrain from laughing at them, even though the dead body of his father or mother lay stretched out before him. Professional gleemen--commonly called _crossans_--travelled from place to place earning a livelihood by amusing the people like travelling showmen of the present day. There were hand-jugglers, who performed wonderful tricks of slight-of-hand. King Conari’s head juggler and his trick of throwing up balls and other small articles, catching them one by one as they came down, and throwing them up again, are well described in the old tale of Da Derga:--“He had clasps of gold in his ears; and wore a speckled white cloak. He had nine [short] swords, nine [small] silvery shields, and nine balls of gold. [Taking up a certain number of them] he flung them up one by one, and not one of them does he let fall to the ground, and there is but one of them at any one time in his hand. Like the buzzing-whirl of bees on a beautiful day was their motion in passing one another.” CHAPTER XXII. HOW THE CHARACTER OF THE OLD IRISH PEOPLE SHOWED ITSELF IN VARIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES AND ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS.