Sporting History
'Ye fit bawe and ye golf'
The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer prove that in early 1506 King James IV bought ‘xii golf ballis’, and later that year some ‘golf clubbes’. But then as now, golf was popular with all kinds of people. So popular, in fact, that in the mid 1400s King James II had decided it was distracting citizens from their archery practice. He issued an Act of Parliament insisting 'ye fit bawe* and ye golf be utterly cryt done and not usyt.’
Scotland’s – and Stirling’s - enduring passion for both ‘ye fit bawe’ and ‘ye golf’ shows that his Act didn’t have the desired effect!
