I may adduce some circumstances from most ancient history and tradition which have not been applied to this question hitherto, but should have been, for they seem to be apposite and remarkable. In these days Ireland, with a fine spirit, is struggling for better golfing recognition, and should have it. When a game is for the world, what is the Irish Channel? The country has some very splendid links, and has produced some players - if few of them - of the finest quality; but a people who exhibit frequently a fine appreciation of the spirit of the golfing brotherhood, and to the wandering player extend a hospitality of which it can only be said that it is Irish, are treated coldly in championship dignity being withheld from their courses and their not being admitted to the higher councils of the game. I remember with gratitude a very early acquaintance with the golf of Newcastle in County Down, that glorious course in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains, and with Portrush in the north, while about Dublin there are links that fear no comparison with the best of other lands. The ordinary records may indicate that there was no golf in Ireland until 1881, when what is now the Royal Belfast Club was formed; but listen to a story which is brought to me in some spirit of triumph by a friend, Mr. Victor Collins, a golfer, who practises his game, for the most part, not on any mainland but out on the Arran Isles, west of the Irish coast, out on little Inneshmor, where he lives when he is not in London, and where he has a small course of just a few sporting holes for his own delight, one which would have been as agreeable to the golfers of the prehistoric period as it is now to a modern gentleman who occasionally becomes a little tired of over-civilisation and likes to retreat to simplicity and Nature. It is a considerable change from Stoke Poges to Inneshmor, but only a poor soul would not like it for a period. In London one evening we talked of golf and Inneshmor, and he told me a legendary story, the documentary narrative of which he has since produced in the form of an extract from "O'Looney's unpublished MS. translation of the 'Tain bo' Cuailgne' in the Irish Royal Academy, Dublin." Knowing little of these matters, I quote Mr. Collins direct in saying that this is the most famous of Irish epics, and describes the war Queen Maeve of Connacht, assisted by her vassal kings of the rest of Ireland, waged against Ulster to obtain a bull which was reputed to be a finer animal than the one she herself possessed. The central hero of Ulster was the famous Cuchullain, the greatest of all Irish heroes, in truth an Irish Achilles. Fergus, ex-king of Ulster, who had taken refuge with Maeve, tells her who are the champions against whom her armies will have to contend, and these lines occur in the course of his terrifying account of Cuchullain, whose age at the time of this expedition was between six and seven: "The boy set out then and he took his instruments of pleasure with him; he took his hurly of creduma and his silver ball, and he took his massive Clettini, and he took his playing Bunsach, with its fire-burned top, and he began to shorten his way with them. He would give the ball a stroke of his hurly and drive it a great distance before him; he would cast (? swing) his hurly at it, and would give it a second stroke that would drive it not a shorter distance than the first blow. He would cast his Clettini, and he would hurl his Bunsach, and he would make a wild race after them. He would then take up his hurly, and his ball, and his Clettini, and his Bunsach, and he would cast his Bunsach up in the air on before him, and the end of the Bunsach would not have reached the ground before he would have caught it by the top while still flying, and in this way he went on till he reached the Forad of the plain of Emain where the youths were." This young Cuchullain does appear to have been appreciably better than scratch. Apparently he was going to attend something in the nature of a club gathering, and his way of getting there was much in the nature of crosscountry golf with a touch of trick in it; for there are professionals to-day who make a show in their idle moments of pitching up a ball and catching it with their hands. My informer tells me that Cuchullain was not confining his attention to golf alone, but doing feats of jugglery as well in order to while away the journey. "The description of driving the ball before him," he remarks, "evidently contains the germ of golf. Some years ago I saw in an illustrated paper a reproduction of a picture of a tombstone from some place in Ulster dating to the twelfth century. It was the tombstone of a Norseman. On it were a double-headed sword, the sign of his profession, and below it the perfect representation of a cleek and a golf ball, his favourite amusement. It would be interesting to make a serious search in old Irish records for further information on the game. 'Clettini' is from an Irish word for 'feather.' It was evidently a feathered javelin he hurled. 'Creduma' means 'red metal,' that is brass. Hurly of creduma therefore comes curiously near the quite modern brassey. Bunsach is a very obscure word. In middle Irish there was such a word, but it meant a kind of dagger." This discovery opens up an excellent speculation.

The periods of the traditions of course impinge upon each other and softly blend, so that the game some way or other seems to go back continuously from now to the beginning. We have in the most royal and ancient period the Stuart kings playing their golf, and Charles the First hearing of mighty troubles to his throne perpending while he was golfing on the links of Leith; of James the Second with his court playing the golf at Blackheath and sowing seeds that were to bear amazing fruit in the south at a far-off date; of Mary Queen of Scots golfing with her favourite Chastelard at St. Andrews. There was Archbishop Hamilton, who signed the authority that was given to the Provost and magistrates of St. Andrews to put rabbits on the links, which authority recognised the rights of the community to the links, more especially for the purpose of playing at "golff, futball, schuteing at all gamis, with all other manner of pastyme." This was a kind of ratification of a Magna Charta of Golf. There was Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, first captain of the Gentlemen Golfers, now known as the Honourable Company, in 1744. A marvellous man was Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Council, and we know that he played for the Silver Club in 1745 - for the last time, probably, because just then the rising of the clans obliged him to set out for the north, where he exerted himself to the utmost to prevent them from joining the cause of the Young Pretender. And here in passing let it be written that there is good cause to think that Bonnie Prince Charlie himself was the first to play real or Scottish golf on the continent of Europe, for he is believed to have had a course made for himself when in Italy, and was once found playing in the Borghese gardens, so Mr. Andrew Lang once told us. There was the wonderful William St. Clair, of Roslin, so much skilled at golf and archery that the common people believed he had a private arrangement with the devil. Sir George Chalmers painted a picture of him, which is possessed by the Honourable Company, and Sir Walter Scott wrote that he was "a man considerably above six feet, with dark grey locks, a form upright, but gracefully so, thin-flanked and broad-shouldered, built, it would seem, for the business of war or the chase, a noble eye, of chastened pride and undoubted authority, and features handsome and striking in their general effect. As schoolboys we crowded to see him perform feats of strength and skill in the old Scottish games of golf and archery." And from there the tale passes on with life and colour to the beginnings of the Royal and Ancient Club; to the activities of the early members like Major Murray Belshes, and the interest of William the Fourth, whose gift medal is played for at St. Andrews to this day; to such fine gentlemen of the old school as the late Lord Moncrieff and the Earl of Wemyss; to the professionals also like the Morrises and Allan Robertson, and old Willie Park. So on along from the ages past to such as Frederick Guthrie Tait, who gave to the modern history of golf something that glows as well as the best of the old traditions.