_Le Grand Choleur_ of M. Charles Deulin (_Contes du Roi
Gambrinus_), gives a great deal of information about French
and Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game
represents a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The
object is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible,
to a given point; but, after every three strokes, the
opponent is allowed to _décholer_, or make one stroke back,
or into a hazard. Here the element of hockey comes in. Get
rid of this element, let each man hit his own ball, and, in
place of striking to a point--say, the cemetery gate--let
men "putt" into holes, and the Flemish game becomes golf. It
is of great antiquity. Ducange, in his Lexicon of Low Latin,
gives _Choulla_, French _choule_ = "Globulus ligneus qui
clava propellitur"--a wooden ball struck with a club. The
head of the club was of iron (cf. _crossare_). This is borne
out by a miniature in a missal of 1504, which represents
peasants playing _choule_ with clubs very like niblicks.
Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353, 1357, and
other dates older by a century than our earliest Scotch
references to golf. At present the game is played in Belgium
with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
beechwood. M. Zola (_Germinal_, p. 310) represents his
miners playing _chole_, or _choulle_, and says that they hit
drives of more than 500 yards. Experiments made at Wimbledon
with a Belgian club sent over by M. Charles Michel suggest
that M. Zola has over-estimated the distance. But M. Zola
and M. Deulin agree in making the players _run_ after the
ball. M. Henri Gaidoz adds that a similar game, called
_soule_, is played in various departments of France. He
refers to Laisnel de la Salle. The name _chole_ may be
connected with German _Kolbe_, and _golf_ may be the form
which this word would assume in a Celtic language. All this
makes golf very old; but the question arises, Are the
"holes" to which golfers play of Scotch or of Dutch origin?
There are several old Flemish pictures of golf; do any of
them show players in the act of "holing out"? There is said
to be such a picture at Neuchâtel.
A. LANG.]
I
Once upon a time there lived at the hamlet of Coq, near
Condé-sur-l'Escaut, a wheelwright called Roger. He was a good fellow,
untiring both at his sport and at his toil, and as skilful in lofting
a ball with a stroke of his club as in putting together a cartwheel.
Every one knows that the game of golf consists in driving towards a
given point a ball of cherrywood with a club which has for head a sort
of little iron shoe without a heel.
For my part, I do not know a more amusing game; and when the country
is almost cleared of the harvest, men, women, children, everybody,
drives his ball as you please, and there is nothing cheerier than to
see them filing on a Sunday like a flight of starlings across potato
fields and ploughed lands.
II
Well, one Tuesday, it was a Shrove Tuesday, the wheelwright of Coq
laid aside his plane, and was slipping on his blouse to go and drink
his can of beer at Condé, when two strangers came in, club in hand.
"Would you put a new shaft to my club, master?" said one of them.
"What are you asking me, friends? A day like this! I wouldn't give the
smallest stroke of the chisel for a brick of gold. Besides, does any
one play golf on Shrove Tuesday? You had much better go and see the
mummers tumbling in the high street of Condé."
"We take no interest in the tumbling of mummers," replied the
stranger. "We have challenged each other at golf and we want to play
it out. Come, you won't refuse to help us, you who are said to be one
of the finest players of the country?"
"If it is a match, that is different," said Roger.
He turned up his sleeves, hooked on his apron, and in the twinkling of
an eye had adjusted the shaft.
"How much do I owe you?" asked the unknown, drawing out his purse.
"Nothing at all, faith; it is not worth while."
The stranger insisted, but in vain.
III
"You are too honest, i'faith," said he to the wheelwright, "for me to
be in your debt. I will grant you the fulfilment of three wishes."
"Don't forget to wish what is _best_," added his companion.
At these words the wheelwright smiled incredulously.
"Are you not a couple of the loafers of Capelette?" he asked, with a
wink.
The idlers of the crossways of Capelette were considered the wildest
wags in Condé.
"Whom do you take us for?" replied the unknown in a tone of severity,
and with his club he touched an axle, made of iron, which instantly
changed into one of pure silver.
"Who are you, then," cried Roger, "that your word is as good as ready
money?"
"I am St. Peter, and my companion is St. Antony, the patron of
golfers."
"Take the trouble to walk in, gentlemen," said the wheelwright of Coq;
and he ushered the two saints into the back parlour. He offered them
chairs, and went to draw a jug of beer in the cellar. They clinked
their glasses together, and after each had lit his pipe:
"Since you are so good, sir saints," said Roger, "as to grant me the
accomplishment of three wishes, know that for a long while I have
desired three things. I wish, first of all, that whoever seats himself
upon the elm-trunk at my door may not be able to rise without my
permission. I like company and it bores me to be always alone."
St. Peter shook his head and St. Antony nudged his client.
IV
"When I play a game of cards, on Sunday evening, at the 'Fighting
Cock,'" continued the wheelwright, "it is no sooner nine o'clock than
the garde-champêtre comes to chuck us out. I desire that whoever shall
have his feet on my leathern apron cannot be driven from the place
where I shall have spread it."
St. Peter shook his head, and St. Antony, with a solemn air, repeated:
"Don't forget what is _best_."
"What is best," replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly, "is to be the
first golfer in the world. Every time I find my master at golf it
turns my blood as black as the inside of the chimney. So I want a club
that will carry the ball as high as the belfry of Condé, and will
infallibly win me my match."
"So be it," said St. Peter.
"You would have done better," said St. Antony, "to have asked for your
eternal salvation."
"Bah!" replied the other. "I have plenty of time to think of that; I
am not yet greasing my boots for the long journey."
The two saints went out and Roger followed them, curious to be present
at such a rare game; but suddenly, near the Chapel of St. Antony, they
disappeared.
The wheelwright then went to see the mummers tumbling in the high
street of Condé.
When he returned, towards midnight, he found at the corner of his door
the desired club. To his great surprise it was only a bad little iron
head attached to a wretched worn-out shaft. Nevertheless he took the
gift of St. Peter and put it carefully away.
V
Next morning the Condéens scattered in crowds over the country, to
play golf, eat red herrings, and drink beer, so as to scatter the
fumes of wine from their heads and to revive after the fatigues of the
Carnival. The wheelwright of Coq came too, with his miserable club,
and made such fine strokes that all the players left their games to
see him play. The following Sunday he proved still more expert; little
by little his fame spread through the land. From ten leagues round the
most skilful players hastened to come and be beaten, and it was then
that he was named the Great Golfer.
He passed the whole Sunday in golfing, and in the evening he rested
himself by playing a game of matrimony at the "Fighting Cock." He
spread his apron under the feet of the players, and the devil himself
could not have put them out of the tavern, much less the rural
policeman. On Monday morning he stopped the pilgrims who were going to
worship at Notre Dame de Bon Secours; he induced them to rest
themselves upon his _causeuse_, and did not let them go before he had
confessed them well.
In short, he led the most agreeable life that a good Fleming can
imagine, and only regretted one thing--namely, that he had not wished
it might last for ever.
VI
Well, it happened one day that the strongest player of Mons, who was
called Paternostre, was found dead on the edge of a bunker. His head
was broken, and near him was his niblick, red with blood.
They could not tell who had done this business, and as Paternostre
often said that at golf he feared neither man nor devil, it occurred
to them that he had challenged Mynheer van Belzébuth, and that as a
punishment for this he had knocked him on the head. Mynheer van
Belzébuth is, as every one knows, the greatest gamester that there is
upon or under the earth, but the game he particularly affects is golf.
When he goes his round in Flanders one always meets him, club in hand,
like a true Fleming.
The wheelwright of Coq was very fond of Paternostre, who, next to
himself, was the best golfer in the country. He went to his funeral
with some golfers from the hamlets of Coq, La Cigogne, and La Queue de
l'Ayache.
On returning from the cemetery they went to the tavern to drink, as
they say, to the memory of the dead,[21] and there they lost
themselves in talk about the noble game of golf. When they separated,
in the dusk of evening:
[21] _Boire la cervelle du mort._
"A good journey to you," said the Belgian players, "and may St.
Antony, the patron of golfers, preserve you from meeting the devil on
the way!"
"What do I care for the devil?" replied Roger. "If he challenged me I
should soon beat him!"
The companions trotted from tavern to tavern without misadventure; but
the wolf-bell had long tolled for retiring in the belfry of Condé when
they returned each one to his own den.
VII
As he was putting the key into the lock the wheelwright thought he
heard a shout of mocking laughter. He turned, and saw in the darkness
a man six feet high, who again burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" said he, crossly.
"At what? Why, at the _aplomb_ with which you boasted a little while
ago that you would dare measure yourself against the devil."
"Why not, if he challenged me?"
"Very well, my master, bring your clubs. I challenge you!" said
Mynheer van Belzébuth, for it was himself. Roger recognized him by a
certain odour of sulphur that always hangs about his majesty.
"What shall the stake be?" he asked resolutely.
"Your soul?"
"Against what?"
"Whatever you please."
The wheelwright reflected.
"What have you there in your sack?"
"My spoils of the week."
"Is the soul of Paternostre among them?"
"To be sure! and those of five other golfers; dead, like him, without
confession."
"I play you my soul against that of Paternostre."
"Done!"
VIII
The two adversaries repaired to the adjoining field and chose for
their goal the door of the cemetery of Condé.[22] Belzébuth teed a
ball on a frozen heap, after which he said, according to custom:
[22] They play to points, not holes.
"From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three strokes will you
run in?"
"In two," replied the great golfer.
And his adversary was not a little surprised, for from there to the
cemetery was nearly a quarter of a league.
"But how shall we see the ball?" continued the wheelwright.
"True!" said Belzébuth.
He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly in the dark
like an immense glowworm.
"Fore!" cried Roger.
He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose to the sky like
a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three strokes it crossed
three-quarters of the distance.
"That is good!" said Belzébuth, whose astonishment redoubled. "My turn
to play now!"[23]
[23] After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back,
or into a hazard.
With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the roofs of Coq
nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league away. The blow was so violent
that the iron struck fire against a pebble.
"Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my aid," murmured the
wheelwright of Coq.
He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain, the club
seemed to have acquired a new vigour. At the second stroke the ball
went as if of itself and hit the door of the cemetery.
"By the horns of my grandfather!" cried Belzébuth, "it shall not be
said that I have been beaten by a son of that fool Adam. Give me my
revenge."
"What shall we play for?"
"Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers."
IX
The devil played up, "pressing" furiously; his club blazed at each
stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Condé to
Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six
leagues from there.
It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers
followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to
understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.
In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six
defunct golfers. Belzébuth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.
"Shall we go on?" said the wheelwright of Coq.
"No," replied the other; "they expect me at the Witches' Sabbath on
the hill of Copiémont.
"That brigand," said he aside, "is capable of filching all my game."
And he vanished.
Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went
to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belzébuth.
X
Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he
little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the
workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.
"Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?"
"No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted."
"Then how can I serve you?"
"By following me: your hour is come."
"The devil," said the great golfer, "could you not wait a little till
I have finished this wheel?"
"Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a
smoke."
"In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at
your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound."
"That's good, faith; make haste."
And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm
trunk.
Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work.
At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:
"Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?"
The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:
"Attendez-moi sur l'orme;
Vous m'attendrez longtemps."
"I don't think he hears me," said Death. "Ho! friend, are you ready?"
"Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent, Jean,
Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent,"
replied the singer.
"Would the brute laugh at me?" said Death to himself.
And he tried to rise.
To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the _causeuse_.
He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
"Let us see," he said to Roger. "What will you take to let me go? Do
you wish me to prolong your life ten years?"
"J'ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatière,"
sang the great golfer.
"Will you take twenty years?"
"Il pleut, il pleut, bergère;
Rentre tes blancs moutons."
"Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?--may the devil admire you!"
The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage."
In the meanwhile the clock of Condé had just struck four, and the
boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a
creature who struggled on the _causeuse_, like a devil in a holy-water
pot, surprised and soon delighted them.
Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death
watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at
him, singing in chorus:
"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage."
"Will you take a hundred years?" yelled Death.
"Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred
years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am
not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age."
"Then what do you want?"
"From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. 'Si
jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!' says the proverb. I wish to
preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to
acquire the knowledge of an old one."
"So be it," said Death; "I shall return this day a hundred years."
"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage."
XI
The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed perfect
happiness, which was increased by the certainty of its not ending for
a hundred years. Thanks to his experience, he so well understood the
management of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
shop.[24]
[24] _Vivre à porte close._
He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had not foreseen. His
wonderful skill at golf ended by frightening the players whom he had
at first delighted, and was the cause of his never finding any one who
would play against him.
He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his travels over French
Flanders, Belgium, and all the greens where the noble game of golf is
held in honour. At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be
admired by a new generation of golfers, after which he departed to
return twenty years later.
Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before long
became a burden to him. Besides that, it bored him to win on every
occasion; he was tired of passing like the Wandering Jew through
generations, and of seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of
his friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced to making
new friendships which were undone by the age or death of his fellows;
all changed around him, he only did not change.
He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which condemned him to
taste the same pleasures for ever, and he sometimes longed to know the
calmer joys of old age. One day he caught himself at his
looking-glass, examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the snow on the
forehead of the old.
XII
In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise that he was no
longer amused at anything. If sometimes in the tavern he had a fancy
for making use of his apron to pass the night at cards: "What is the
good of this excess?" whispered experience; "it is not sufficient to
be unable to shorten one's days, one must also avoid making oneself
ill."
He reached the point of refusing himself the pleasure of drinking his
pint and smoking his pipe. Why, indeed, plunge into dissipations which
enervate the body and dull the brain?
_The wretch went further and gave up golf!_ Experience convinced him
that the game is a dangerous one, which overheats one, and is
eminently adapted to produce colds, catarrhs, rheumatism, and
inflammation of the lungs.
Besides, what is the use, and what great glory is it to be reputed the
first golfer in the world?
Of what use is glory itself? A vain hope, vain as the smoke of a pipe.
When experience had thus bereft him one by one of his delusions, the
unhappy golfer became mortally weary. He saw that he had deceived
himself, that delusion has its price, and that the greatest charm of
youth is perhaps its inexperience.
He thus arrived at the term agreed on in the contract, and as he had
not had a paradise here below, he sought through his hardly-acquired
wisdom a clever way of conquering one above.
XIII
Death found him at Coq at work in his shop. Experience had at least
taught him that work is the most lasting of pleasures.
"Are you ready?" said Death.
"I am."
He took his club, put a score of balls in his pocket, threw his sack
over his shoulder, and buckled his gaiters without taking off his
apron.
"What do you want your club for?"
"Why, to golf in paradise with my patron St. Antony."
"Do you fancy, then, that I am going to conduct you to paradise?"
"You must, as I have half-a-dozen souls to carry there, that I once
saved from the clutches of Belzébuth."
"Better have saved your own. _En route, cher Dumollet!_"
The great golfer saw that the old reaper bore him a grudge, and that
he was going to conduct him to the paradise of the lost.[25]
[25] _Noires glaives._
Indeed a quarter of an hour later the two travellers knocked at the
gate of hell.
"Toc, toc!"
"Who is there?"
"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
"Don't open the door," cried Belzébuth; "that rascal wins at every
turn; he is capable of depopulating my empire."
Roger laughed in his sleeve.
"Oh! you are not saved," said Death. "I am going to take you where you
won't be cold either."
Quicker than a beggar would have emptied a poor's box they were in
purgatory.
"Toc--toc!"
"Who is there?"
"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
"But he is in a state of mortal sin," cried the angel on duty. "Take
him away from here--he can't come in."
"I cannot, all the same, let him linger between heaven and earth,"
said Death; "I shall shunt him back to Coq."
"Where they will take me for a ghost. Thank you! is there not still
paradise?"
XIV
They were there at the end of a short hour.
"Toc, toc!"
"Who is there?"
"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
"Ah! my lad," said St. Peter, half opening the door, "I am really
grieved. St. Antony told you long ago you had better ask for the
salvation of your soul."
"That is true, St. Peter," replied Roger with a sheepish air. "And
how is he, that blessed St. Antony? Could I not come in for one moment
to return the visit he once paid me?"
"Why, here he comes," said St. Peter, throwing the door wide open.
In the twinkling of an eye the sly golfer had flung himself into
paradise, unhooked his apron, let it fall to the ground, and seated
himself down on it.
"Good morning, St. Antony," said he with a fine salute. "You see I had
plenty of time to think of paradise, for here we are!"
"What! _You_ here!" cried St. Antony.
"Yes, I and my company," replied Roger, opening his sack and
scattering on the carpet the souls of the six golfers.
"Will you have the goodness to pack right off, all of you?"
"Impossible," said the great golfer, showing his apron.
"The rogue has made game of us," said St. Antony. "Come, St. Peter, in
memory of our game of golf, let him in with his souls. Besides, he has
had his purgatory on earth."
"It is not a very good precedent," murmured St. Peter.
"Bah!" replied Roger, "if we have a few good golfers in paradise,
where is the harm?"
XV
Thus, after having lived long, golfed much and drunk many cans of
beer, the wheelwright of Coq called the Great Golfer was admitted to
paradise; but I advise no one to copy him, for it is not quite the
right way to go, and St. Peter might not always be so compliant,
though great allowances must be made for golfers.
THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got
an indistinct impression of it as of a grey shadow outlined against
the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense
stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay
was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a
weird, seignorial residence, like a dream palace, strange and
beautiful--this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying
day.
The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my
eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a
cameo, and as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my
admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or
more perfect.
As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I
wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns,
raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which looked like rockets
starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of
gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of
stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate
architecture.
As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me
and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and
the devil.
A sceptical genius has said: "God made man in his image and man has
returned the compliment."
This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write
the history of the local divinity of every continent, as well as the
history of the patron saints in each one of our provinces. The negro
has his ferocious man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan fills his
paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical people, deified all
the passions.
Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting
saint, modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant
and victorious angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the
victorious, the conqueror of Satan.
But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and
tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint
and the devil.
To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil, Saint Michael
built himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an
archangel; and only such a saint could build a residence of such
magnificence.
But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he
surrounded his domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the
sea.
The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the
salt marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded
valleys and all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint
ruled only over the sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint
Michael was as poor as a church mouse.
After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of
affairs and began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the
matter was by no means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.
He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he
walked across to the shore. The demon was eating his soup in front of
his door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him,
kissed the hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him
refreshments.
Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: "I have come here
to propose to you a good bargain."
The devil, candid and trustful, answered: "That will suit me."
"Here it is. Give me all your lands."