Skittles

Skittles is a traditional Irish game in which players throw heavy wooden sticks (called pins or sticks) directly at the pins, rather than rolling a bowl. The goal, though, stays the same: knock down all nine wooden pins.

For generations, Skittles was played in village pubs, spaces that in Ireland served as a communal room, sometimes even the informal town hall of the village. Even as the wooden alleys began to close, the game kept holding on, passed down from generation to generation among those who never stopped gathering for a match.

Come try it at the festival, it’s the ancestor of a gesture that, centuries later, became the ten-pin bowling we know today.