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.
