The game of knotty is a Scottish team sport. It is a variation of the game of

shinty Shinty ( gd, camanachd, iomain) is a team game played with sticks and a ball. Shinty is now played mainly in the Scottish Highlands and amongst Highland migrants to the big cities of Scotland, but it was formerly more widespread in Scotland, an ...

as played in the fishing communities of

Lybster Lybster (, gd, Liabost) is a village on the east coast of Caithness in northern Scotland. It was once a big herring fishing port. The Waterlines heritage museum is located in Lybster Harbour and provides information on the history and geology ...

Caithness Caithness ( gd, Gallaibh ; sco, Caitnes; non, Katanes) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. Caithness has a land boundary with the historic county of Sutherland to the west and is otherwise bounded by ...

. It used to be played widely in the town, as was shinty in the rest of Caithness, but it ceased to be played around the end of the 19th century, until 1993 when it was revived by local enthusiasts. It involves a stick (knotty), which can be almost any form of wooden implement, and a cork fishing float as ball with varying sizes of players. Local history books suggest knotty was invented by the fishing wives of Lybster – once one of the Europe's busiest

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

ports – to help keep their men sober when they were ashore. However, whilst this would have been a fine side effect of the game, the sport draws from the same prevalence of stick-ball games throughout Scotland at that time, many of which became codified into shinty in other areas. With the rundown of the industry in the late 19th century, knotty fell into abeyance until local hotelier, the late Bert Mowat, found a copy containing the few rules of the sport wedged between the pages of a Gaelic bible in a bedroom.

World Championship

The Knotty World Championship takes place in Lybster every year, Sinclair Bay Hotel of Keiss being 2006 champions. In 2006, the lack of cork floats made in the traditional style was seen as a threat to the continuation of the sport. The championship has not been held in a few years but the local shinty side still maintain the tradition with a new year gam

References

Images of the 2006 Championship
{{Team sports Shinty Sport in Caithness Team sports