An Introductory Course of Modern Gymnastic Exercises by George Ronald, R. Tait McKenzie Collection (University of Pennsylvania)
The greatest part of the book is about Gymnastics (not surprisingly) and quotes Capt Clias, Col Amoros and others, and is not reproduced here. What interests us is Roland’s short chapter entitled “British Gymnastic Games” in which he focusses specifically on ‘Scotch Gymnastics’ and the ‘Scottish National Games’, i.e. ‘Putting the Stone and Throwing the Hammer’, for which he gives best performances for a variety of weights and styles – these descriptions are among the first we have. He also refers to the St Fillans Club (that met at the foot of Loch Earn in the Highlands), the St Ronan’s Border Club (at Innerleithen in the Borders), and the Six-Feet Club (that met at The Hunter’s Tryst in Edinburgh), which had been recently formed, ‘for the express encouragement, practice, and promotion of all national and manly games’. Their formation was in the spirit of Sir Walter Scott, who re-ignited an interest in the customs, dress and habits of Scotland’s past, though this was sometimes a romanticised view of the past – prompted by George IV’s visit to Scotland in 1822. His interest in reviving a nostalgically laden version of old, and almost lost, sport, had begun even earlier, shortly after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, when he staged a football match, with a vast number of players on each side, on plain of Carterhaugh, near the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow Water, in the Scottish Borders. The match could not be brought to a finish, so he proposed another, as the decider, but on a smaller scale, with just 100-a-side, but it never took place. Roland’s chapter on Scottish National Games grew out of this new interest in reviving (or re-inventing), the old sports of Scotland, and they had already become a source of Scottish pride and identity.