archery practice necessary to make the Scots fit to meet “our auld enemies of England." This Act of 1457 is the first of a series, extending to the time of James IV., who, thirteen years before he fell at Flodden, made the last of these attempts to put down golf and make archery popular by Act of Parliament. This monarch, however, was one of the first to break his own law; an example followed by that king of good fellows, James V., who dearly loved a day on the green.

When gunpowder made archery a thing of the past, the conflict between love of country and love of golf ceased, and the game went on prospering under the smiles of royal favour, surviving proclamations of various town-councils directed against sacrilegious golfers, whose sin was held to be, not so much that they played on Sunday, as on that part of the day called “ the tyme of the sermonnes." This matter was set at rest by the decree of James VI., of Scotland, who, in 1618, sent from his new kingdom of England an order that after divine service "our good people be not discouraged from any harmless recreation," but prohibiting "the said recreations to any that are not present in the church, at the service of God, before their going to the said recreations"; or as Charles I., when subsequently ratifying this order, puts it, "having first done their dutie to God."

James VI. and I. was a good friend of golf, both in his old kingdom and in his new, into which he probably introduced it some time before he founded the Royal Blackheath Club, in 1608. In England, Strutt tells us, "it should seem that golf was a fashionable game among the nobility at the commencement of the seventeenth century, and it was one of the exercises with which Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., occasionally amused himself, as we learn from the following anecdote recorded by a person who was present (Harl. MS., 6391): 'At another time playing at goff, a play not unlike to pale maille, whilst his schoolmaster stood talking with another, and marked not his highness warning him to stand farther off, the prince,

thinking he had gone aside, lifted up his goff club to strike the ball; mean tyme, one standing by said to him, "Beware that you hit not Master Newton"; wherewith he, drawing back his hand, said, “Had I done so, I had but paid my debts."'"

A cherished event in the anecdotic history of the game is that Charles I. was playing on Leith Links when a courier arrived with tidings of Sir Phelim O'Neal's rising in Ireland, in 1641. No doubt Dr. Dryasdusts shake their heads at this, but golfers believe it, and Sir John Gilbert has immortalised the incident-so, what more could one want?

When the Duke of York came to live at Holyrood, in 1679, he studied to make himself popular with all classes. He joined heartily in all the pastimes of the time, and when his daughter, afterwards Queen Anne, joined him in 1681, Holyrood was gay with balls and plays, much to the horror of the more rigid Presbyterians. Mr. William Tytler, who had conversed with many who remembered the Duke's visit, tells us that "the Duke was frequently seen in a party at golf on the links of Leith, with some of the nobility and gentry. I remember in my youth to have often conversed with an old man, named Andrew Dickson, a golf club maker, who said that when a boy he used to carry the Duke's golf clubs, and to run before him and announce where the balls fell."

"In the Canongate of Edinburgh, nearly opposite to Queensberry House," says Dr. Robert Chambers, in his "Traditions of Edinburgh," "is a narrow, old-fashioned mansion of peculiar form, having a coat-armorial conspicuously placed at the top, and a plain slab over the doorway containing the following inscriptions :

Cum victor ludo Scotis qui proprius esset,
Ter tres victores post redimitus avos,
Patersonus, humo tunc educebat in altum,
Hanc quae victores tot tulit una domum.
'I hate no person.'

It appears that this quatrain was the production of Dr.

Pitcairn, while the sentence below is an anagram upon the name of John Patersone. The stanza expresses that, when Patersone had been crowned victor in a game peculiar to Scotland, in which his ancestors had also often been victorious, he then built this mansion, which one conquest raised him above all his predecessors. We must resort to tradition for an explanation of this obscure hint."

The story tradition tells is that, during the Duke's visit, "he had on one occasion a discussion with two English noblemen as to the native country of golf; His Royal Highness asserting that it was peculiar to Scotland, while they as pertinaciously insisted that it was an English game as well. The two English nobles proposed, good-humouredly, to prove its English character by taking up the Duke in a match, to be played on Leith Links. James, glad of an opportunity to make popularity in Scotland, in however small a way, accepted the challenge, and sought for the best partner he could find. By an association not at this day surprising to those who practise the game, the heir-presumptive of the British throne played in concert with a poor shoemaker named John Patersone, the worthy descendant of a long line of illustrious golfers. If the two Southerns were, as might be expected, inexperienced in the game, they had no chance against a pair one member of which was a good player. So the Duke got the best of the practical argument, and Patersone's merits were rewarded by a gift of the sum played for. The story goes on to say that John was thus enabled to build a somewhat stylish house for himself in the Canongate; on the top of which, being a Scotsman, and having, of course, a pedigree, he clapped the Patersone arms -three pelicans vulned; on a chief three mullets; crest, a dexter hand grasping a golf club; together with the motto, dear to all golfers, Far and Sure.

"It must be admitted there is some uncertainty about this tale. The house, the inscriptions, and arms only indicate that Patersone built the house after being a victor at golf, and that

Pitcairn had a hand in decorating it. One might even see, in the fact of the epigram, as if a gentleman wit were indulging in a jest at the expense of some simple plebeian, who held all notoriety honourable. It might have been expected that, if Patersone had been enriched by a match in which he was connected with the Duke of York, a Jacobite like Pitcairn would have made distinct allusion to the circumstance. The tradition, nevertheless, seems too curious to be entirely overlooked, and the reader may therefore take it at its worth."

With the Stuarts went out for a time royal countenance of the game, till William IV. became patron of the Royal and Ancient Club of St. Andrews, and presented to it for annual competition that coveted golfing trophy, the gold medal.

But though there came kings who knew not golf, the game lost none of its old popularity. Still, as before, pre-eminently the game of the people, we find it associated with many a notable scene and character in the history of Scotland. So fond of the game was the great Montrose that hardly had the minstrels ceased to serenade the boy-husband and his bride, "Sweet Mistress Magdalene Carnegie," when we find him hard at work with clubs and ball. That fifty years later it continued to be the favourite arnusement of the aristocracy of the Scottish capital, we can gather from the curious books of expenditure of Sir John Foulis, of Ravelstoun, who seems to have spent most of his leisure time "losing at golfe" on Musselburgh and Leith Links, with Hamilton and Rothes, and others of the highest quality of the time. We read of Balmerino's brother, Alexander Elphinston, and Captain Porteous, playing in 1724 66 a solemn match at golf" for twenty guineas on Leith Links. Eight years afterwards, on the very ground where he had won this match, Elphinston shot his man dead in a duel, while the other player in the match was the victim of the famous “Porteous Mob." On these Leith Links might there very often be seen Lord President Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, who

was so keen a golfer that, when the links were covered with snow, he played on the sands by the sea-shore.

Golf has had many enthusiastic votaries, but perhaps never one so devoted, heart and soul, to the game as "the Cock o' the Green," Alexander McKellar, the hero of one of "Kay's Portraits." He played every day and all day long on Bruntsfield Links; even when night fell he could not tear himself away, but played the "short holes" by candlelight. Yet, with all his excessive practice, he was by no means a dexterous player. As McKellar could not play on Sundays, he acted on that day as doorkeeper to a church in Edinburgh. One day Mr. Douglas Gourlay, a well-known club and ball-maker, on entering the church, jocularly placed a golf ball in "the plate " instead of his usual donation; as he anticipated, this prize was at once secured by McKellar, "who was not more astonished than gratified by the novelty of the deposit."

Perhaps the most remarkable match at golf ever played was the one Mr. Wheeler gives, in his "Sportascrapiana,” in the words of that veteran sportsman, Captain Horatio Ross. The match, Captain Ross says, was got up at the race ordinary at Montrose, by Mr. Cruickshank, of Langley Park, and Lord Kennedy-both very good players. "They got up a match of three holes, for £500 each hole, and agreed to play it then and there. It was about ten or half-past ten p.m., and quite dark. No lights were allowed, except one lantern placed on the hole, and another carried by the attendants of the player, in order that they might ascertain to whom the ball struck belonged. We all moved down to the golf-course to see this curious match. Boys were placed along the course, who were quite accustomed to the game, to listen to the flight of the balls, and to run to the spot where a ball struck and rested on the ground. I do not remember which of the players won the odd hole; the match was won, I know, by only one hole. But the most remarkable part of the match was that they made out their holes with much about the same number of strokes