When we hear a golfer use this word, when we hear a Scotch person ask for an _aschet_, instead of a dish, or see the queer expression _petticoat-tales_ on a tin of Edinburgh shortbread, we are taken back to the close connection between the French and Scottish Courts which existed in the days of Mary Stuart. For _caddie_ is a corruption of the French “cadet” (younger son), whence also modern English _cad_ and _cadet_; _aschet_ is a form of the French ‘assiette’; and _petticoat-tales_ a corruption of ‘petits gateaux’ (little cakes). Another phenomenon of history which is very faithfully preserved in the English language is our long-standing and not always creditable nautical relations with the Dutch. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century Dutch sea words continued to trickle into the language, the fourteenth seeing the arrival of _bowsprit_ and _skipper_, the fifteenth of _freight_, _hoy_, _keel_, _lighter_, _pink_, _pump_, _scout_, _marline_, and _buoy_, the sixteenth of _aloof_, _belay_, _dock_, _mesh_, _reef_, _rover_, and _flyboat_, while the seventeenth century, when Van Tromp nailed his broom to the mast, the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway, and William of Orange sat upon the English throne, gave us _avast_, _bow_, _boom_, _cruise_, _cruiser_, _gybe_, and _keelhaul_. Besides these maritime words English possesses certain military memories of the Dutch. _Freebooter_ goes back to the war with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth, and _cashier_, _domineer_, _drill_, _furlough_, and _onslaught_ are also among the words brought back from the Low Countries by English soldiers. A particularly freakish Dutch borrowing is the apparently English _forlorn hope_, which is in reality a popular corruption of the Flemish ‘verloren hoop’, a phrase that has nothing to do with hope and means a ‘lost expedition’.