Golf has reached America, whether to "stay" or not. Tt appears to have arisen in fashionable circles," and to have spread as £ wish cricket could spread—a much better game. With us, in Scotland, yelt is a very old sport, which Parliament tried vainly to put down, in the fifteenth century. Golf took up time which should have been given to learning how to hit an Englishman with a bow and arrow. But that yama our ancestors declined to learn, thinking mere "long bowls" unmanly. Our Scots archers each carried a "sperthe" or battle axe, and, throwing down their bows they went for the English with the cold steel, being shot as they advanced. Archery did not please, in Scotland; to golf we remained loyal.
Now, I have, personally, little doubt that we got golf from Holland, where it is no longer played. From Holland, to be sure, about Froissart's time (say 1380), we got everything we wanted ready-made, ing in wool, fish, leather and other exports. My friend, Mr.' James Cunningham, lately invaded Holland, in search of the Origins of Golf, Thope he will give his results to the world. We know that. the Netherlanders played, for pictures of men drive off, and putting at the hole, occur in a INS. of about 1500, in the British Museum. Mr. Cunningham found pictures in which clubs and balls like ours occur, also painted tiles, of about 1650, but we knew already that' these things were so. His chief dis covery was the Dutch origin of such technical terms of the game as putt," "stymie," and "dormie." If his philology is correct, as I believe, the question ts settled. Holland is the cradle of the game, Scotland dealt very largely with Holland, and had regular trading settlements there, all through the later Middle Ages. The Scots merchants would take up the Dutch game, us we took tennis from France. In tennis, the technical terms are French (dedans, ete.); in golf, if Mr. Cunningham is right, they are Dutch. Our James TV, to encourage home industries, forbade the importation of Dutch golf bulls and, since then, golf has waned, and finally expired in Holland, while it flourishes with us.
Golf is one of a group of accidentally differentiated sports. Chole (" word of 'Peutonic origin) is the Belgian golf, which has an element of hockey, the adversary Veing allowed one back' stroke to the players' three strokes. There is no putting at the hole, the goal is a distant church door or steeple. M. Zola has described the game in Germinal, with his usual romantic exaggeration; and a match with the Devil occurs in the lute M. Deulin's Contes, from Flemish sources.
Again, the Jew de Mult, at least as old as: Queen Mary Stuart's time, when she was a player, is of the same group. A. boxwood ball was driven with a club, shaped ike a light croquet mallet, and, in place of putting, the ball was lofted " through a ring oF into narrow hop. To this purpose a curious instrument, ending in a long piece of fluted steel' (given in, a portrait of about 1650), was employed. The "swing," the style, and the rules ate ' ye} in wonderful harmony with those of golf, as may be read in Lanthier's little work, now very searce (1717-1720). My friend, Mr. H. S. C. Everard, the well-known elfer and writer on golf, bassa copy, which Test saw ata sale 20 years ago, but could not afford to buy; and no other copy have Lever seen. Mr. Everard might reprint it, with the excellent illustrations.
'The historical glories of gulf are well known. Mary Stuart played; her son, Jawes VI, brought yelt to' England, notably to Blackheath. His son, Henry, Prince of Wales, drove well, and not unsuccessfully tried to cut over" his tutor. Charles I insisted on playing out his game at Leith, when news arrived of the Icish Rebellion. So writes Wodrow, the correspondent of Cotton Mather, and no friend of the Stuarts. The Great Rebellion ruined the Royal and Ancient Game in England and. at the happy Restoration, the Duke of York (James VII and IJ), took up jew de mail, asto Mr. Pepys by his drives in the Mall. being loved in England where he was persecuted for his religious opinions, the Duke went to Scotland. There, even the Covenant had not i savoury Christian, Mr. Blair, of St. A drews, an exemplary Covenanter, decorated his sermons (ur his talk) with allusions to the favourite pastime. He compared the union of the Kirk and its sacred Head, to that of the shaft and head of a driving club. Faith was the whipping, Love the So writes the later Presbyterian champion Wodrow. In Scotland the Duke of York Fence his. partnoe was a semi-profers layed in " semi-professional fours"me, at
Phey won, and the tradesman, building buying " house with the stakes, put up for his bearings two clubs, the motto leas of veneral toleration in ly supported, as they were, by William Penn) caused King James to be driven from his throne in 1688, golf ted from England. Though a Hol-
his native pastime. Jo fad der, the Dutch Usurpor was not fond of }lost his nerve (per! his shipwreck, quite a fresh idea), notoriously, was no longer expable of play ug a losing game. The House of Hanover have never excelled in any ball game; besides, cricket, in the eighteenth century, had made her'supremacy secure. Tt was fa cricket ball, I believe, not a golf ball that killed Frederick, eldest son of George IL, who, in his heart, was a Jacobite, like all his descendants, iv sympathy.
While golf, in Englind, fled with the Stuarts, it survived with vigour in Scot-lind. "I believe there were only two honest men in Scotland, Forbes of Eu den, and Lochiel," remarked to me the descendant of one of the pir. Forbes of who practically put down the 745, was one of the first elfers In Scotland Prince Charlie had little time for golf, but, before 1745 he had introduced the yama into Ttaly, an played in the Borghese Gardens, "This showed that his heart was in the right place. He was a great innovator, Golf he brought to Italy; Freemasonry to Arras, where Robespierre's father w:
ber of the lodge; and slave fi purpose of improving his style, he means take lessons at St. Andrews from old 'Tom, or Auchterlonie in winter (f cannot} wish' him better or more courteous and agreeable instructors), and, incidentally, he will deliver the St. Andrew's Gifford Lec-! tures on Natural Religion. Tf he could introduce lecture on the old Roman game of Cumbuea, and its relations to golf, Idare say Tom Morris would attend the lectures. As a rule, Tom is content with reve d i and gives the lectures a wide! berth. do not condemn this conduct in a man who has played golf for som" seventy years, and yet, whose natural bent (as displayed in his attitude towards the Abolition of Stymie) 1s favourable to new or even revolution ideas.
About 1750-1760, golf was played near London by Dr. Carlyle to instruct Garri Tregret that Dr. Jenson was not present. Moreover, the Knuckle-Boue Club, xt Blackheath, kept the game alive, in its earliest and Royal English seat. Meanwhile, in Scotland, from Orkney to Skye and from Skye to Musselburgh, golf flourished; chiefly, I believe, on sea-side links. About 1790, the Medal was won at St. Andrews with a score of 95. Recently, the round has been done in 72 (and, I think, in 71) by Mr. Freddy Tait, Auchterlonie, and, I believe, Andrew Kirkaldy. But, in 1890, the links were a very narrow course, beset by whins there was only one set of holes, in and out, feather balls were in use, and there were no bulgers, no patent lofters, while the putting greens were not bowling greens. You cannot think how much wider and easier the links are, even since I was a boy. Thus a score of 95 in 1790, or thereabouts, is quite equal to one of 72 nowadays.
The great golfers of the early and middle century, Alan Robertson, Tom Morris (still on the spot), the Parks, with the contemporary amateurs, were the straightest. of drivers, and their putting was indeed "an inspiration." They did not approach " with irons or iron lofters, but-with the elegant and harmless wooden "baffey spoon."* They did not cut up the links like modern men, making a point. of "cutting their divot," or scrap of turf. I make no doubt that (considering the proportion of nunibers) the ances—al wolfers Were as good as Varney, Taylor, or Mr. Tait.
The middle century saw the supersede ing of feather balls at half-a-crown (Old Tom has made thousands in his day), by gutta percha shilling balls, hammered into tiny knobs, like the box-wood balls in the jeu de mail. The original smooth-bore gutin percha halls did not fly straight hence the manner of jew de mail balls was, quite unconsciously, imitated. About the same time, much lighter iron clubs were introduced (our ancestors tooled with things like tom ks of unusual weight)
Drasseys" came in; finally Mr, Lamb invented the bulger. Short-headed, deep, and thi this club is the reverse of the long-headed, slim, narrow club-head_ of Phelp or Alan Robertson. I doubt if it matters which sort you employ, whether you play as well as Me. Leslie-Balfour-Melville, or as badly as the present outcast.
the sixties, golf began to appear at Wimbledon Common, Westward Hoe, Hoylake, and at Pau in the Pyrenean country. Then arose Mr. Horace utchioson, from Westward Hoe school, as I am told. The wit and wisdom of Mr. Horace Hatchinson, in his Hintson Golf," led to sion of England. There had lier preachers,—the Stuart kings, Dr. Carlyle, the Knuckle-Bone Club, while the Scots, at Calcutta and Bombay, did not cast their in on soil entirely stony. But. these missionaries answer to Paulinus and Augustine; thorns sprang up and choked the doctrine. Mr. Hutchinson, on the other hand, came like Aidan (though not from Lena), and definitely converted England to golf.
Heresies, of course, began to abound. The English count their strokes! Every incompetent foozler has his pencil and paper and delays golfers by pausing to register his tens or thirteen:, he wrangles over invisible points in the rules. The Scot plays in the ancestral spirit of the game. On the links he drops metayhysies (which, indeed, are now scorned in Scotland at large). But the Enzlish revel in subtleties of interpretation, just as Cambridge men (to their defeat xnd confusion) bowl wides on purpose, because there is nothing against it in the rules." Also the neo-golfers of England started " pot-hunting," endless competition for prizes, with monstrous handicaps. They brought in women. Here I am not wholly guiltless, The day before I and a reading party left St. Andrews, about 1873, we played the first foursome with ladies recorded since "Batfed " means laid back, and I have heard a lady's bonnet criticised as too. much baffed."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.