Some of the oldest but least common golf traditions have reference to women, and it seems to be the fact that one of the first monarchs in England or Scotland who ever sought pleasure and relaxation in trundling a golf ball over the links was Mary Queen of Scots, and that she played on golfing ground no less celebrated than St. Andrews. This was in 1563. During that winter Mary occupied a house in South Street, and it is generally believed that she yielded to the spell of the place and played golf on the links with Chastelard, the favourite, who was subsequently beheaded. Although the evidence that she did thus play at St. Andrews is not conclusive, it is very likely that she did so, for it is quite certain that she played at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it is variously quoted as a specimen of her heartlessness on the one hand and of her enthusiasm for the game on the other, that she was found playing it only a few days after the murder of her husband. It is suggested that the golfing ancestors of the present lady players were fish girls, and the evidence on the point is comprised in a minute of the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, dated 14th December 1810, which reads thus: “The club to present by subscription a handsome new creel and shawl to the best Female Golfer who plays on the annual occasion on 1st January next, old style (12th January, new), to be intimated to the Fish Ladies by William Robertson, the officer of the club. Two of the best Barcelona silk handkerchiefs to be added to the above premium of the creel.--(Signed) ALEX. G. HUNTER, Captain.” But the modern golfing ladies absolutely ignore all this ancient history, and, in a manner, started afresh with a Year 1 on the inception of their championship, like the French people did at the time of their big Revolution. What happened before did not count. Thus, from their point of view, they arrived at a sort of millennium straight away, having no brakes of custom and conservatism on their wheel of progress.