Things Seen in Holland
resembled the game as we know it now. Kolfje, or little club, closely resembles the “gowfie” of Eastern Scotland. A Dutch proverb still in use says: “Dat is een kolfje naar mijn hand” (“That lies to my hand like a golf-club”), said of anything that exactly suits the speaker. Does the word “stymie,” the derivation of which still remains mysterious, come from a Dutch source? On this point Mr. Everard writes: “There is a Dutch verb stuiten, meaning to hinder or to stop. I would suggest that when an old Dutch golfer found himself ‘stymied,’ he said, Stuit mij (‘It stops me’). This phrase, with the elision of t before m (which would naturally take place in Scotland), would be contracted into ‘sty my,’ ‘stymie.’” Golf as an outdoor game is no longer much played to-day by the Dutch, although there are at least six golf-links in Holland—at Haarlem, The
134
