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Kay's Originals Vol. 2

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206 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. talents, and standing high in the applause of the world, she was remarkable for simplicity and the absence of everything like professional affectation. The announcement of Mrs. Yates when i~Edin burgh, that the part of Lady Randolph would be her “last appearance in Scotland,” proved to be more literally true than she probably contemplated at the time. Her death, little more than two years afterwards, was thus announced in the journals :-‘‘ At her house (2d May 1787), in Pimblico Terrace, in the fifty-ninth year of her age, Mrs. Yates, who had been justly deemed one of the brightest ornaments of the English stage. The disorder which occasioned her death was dropsy.” At her own request, she was buried near to the grave of her father, in the chancel of Richmond Church. No. CCXLII. ALEXANDER M‘EELLAR ; OR “THE COCE 0’ THE GREEN.” THE game of GOLF (or Scottice Gof)-of which the scene represented in the Print affords some idea-is a pastime, although not entirely unknown in England, more peculiar to Scotland, and has long been a favourite with the citizens of Edinburgh. In the Teutonic, or German, kolhe signifies a club ; and, in Holland, the same word, pronounced kolf, describes a game-of which the Dutch are very fond-in some respects akin to the Scottish pastime of golf.‘ At what period this amusement came to be practised in Scotland is not precisely known; but, from the circumstance of foot-ball being prohibited by a statute in 1424, in which no mention is made of golf, while it is specially noticed in a later enactment, 1457, the presumption is, that the game was unknown at the former period; and consequently that its introduction must have been about the middle of the fifteenth century. The prohibitory laws against foot-ball and golf were enacted that these pastimes might not interfere with the practice of archery ; the bow being then an instrument of war, in the use of which the Scots sometimes fatally experienced the superiority of their English neighbours. But a change having been effected by the invention of gufipowder, archery was no longer of national importance as a military exercise-the laws for its encouragement fell into desuetudeand the people were permitted again to indulge, without restraint, in the popular recreations. An accurate description of kolf is given in the Statistical Account of Scotland-parish of Inveresk-from the pen of the late Rev. Mr. Walker, Canongate, who had been for Borne time resident in Holland.
Volume 9 Page 276
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Volume 9 Page 277
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