JANUARY 3 



Commands it not only in virtue of the importance of 

 the subject (for as the M.C.C. is to cricket, so is the 

 Royal and Ancient to golf), but also in virtue of its 

 literary treatment and the admirable illustrations with 

 which it abounds. Mr. Everard has done full justice 

 to his theme in a narrative both lucid and lively, and 

 his publishers have incorporated it in a beautiful 

 volume. 



In a preliminary chapter by Mr. James Cunningham, 

 it is admitted that, although St. Andrews is the acknow- 

 ledged metropolis of golf, the game is an exotic in 

 Scotland, having travelled thither from Holland, where 

 it died out at least two hundred years ago. But it had 

 become so firmly established four hundred and fifty 

 years ago as to interfere with the statutory weapon- 

 shaws and ' schutting at the buttes/ wherefore the 

 Scottish Parliament decreed that ' the fute-bal and 

 golfe be vtterly cryed downe and nocht vsit ' on pain 

 of outlawry. This notwithstanding, the game flourished, 

 spreading from east to west of Scotland, so that in 

 Queen Mary's reign St. Andrews had a vigorous off- 

 spring on Prestwick links. There is evidence, too, that 

 there were hard drivers among the westland players; 

 for in that delectable chronicle of misdoing, TJte Historic 

 of the Kennedyis, we read of the Laird of Bargany, who 

 died about 1578, that ' his neise was laich (nose was 

 flattened) be ane straik of ane goiff ball on the hills of 

 Air in recklesnes.' Be it remembered that balls in 

 those days were neither plain 'gutties,' rubber-cored, 

 nor even feather-stuffed, but turned in solid crab- 

 wood. 



