De blog van ancientgolf

This year it is 30 years ago that the late Steven J.H. van Hengel, the Netherlandish colf and golf historian, published his study ‘Early Golf’. It was the first ever research on the continental colf game and its relation to Scottish golf. His findings stirred the international golf history community as no other ‘golf history’ book had done before.
The reactions on the research of Steven van Hengel were and still are divers.
The majority of authors have accepted the research as genuine and used the information in their own publications. Others just burked the information probably because the findings were not of interest in the history of golf. Again others fulminated against the research outcome because it did not fit in the conservative conclusive ideas of golf history.
On the occasion of this anniversary we republish an article about Steven van Hengel, previously published in the December 2007 issue of the magazine ‘Through The Green’.
There are still copies available via Rick van den Boom, rvdboom@xs4all.nl, the author of the article.

Since the Scots have started to research the history of their golf game it became clear to them that golf was ‘invented’ between 1424 and 1457. In 1457, for the first time the word golf was used in the well-known act of Scottish parliament, in which the game was banned together with football.
However, some years ago the linguist Dr. Heiner Gillmeister from the English, American and Celtic Studies Department of Bonn University, Germany, disassociated himself from this Scottish conclusion. After linguistic research he concluded that golf mentioned in 1457 was not golf at all but a medieval, fairly aggressive kind of hockey in which two teams tried to gain possession of a ball. According to Heiner Gillmeister golf was much later introduced into Scotland from the Low Countries. The full text of the article was printed in the magazine ‘Sportimonium’ in 2003.
The article is written in the Netherlandish language with summaries in English and French.

In January we reported about this bronze slof (head) of a colf club which the seller dated from the period between 1586 and 1625 (see underneath).
Advancing knowledge however shows that this precious copper slof is not from that period. Experts from the ancient ‘Kolf society Aan is Winst’ in Venhuizen in the Netherlandish province of North-Holland had a good look at our photographs and had to come to the conclusion that ‘our’ slof was not from the above mentioned period.
In their knowledgeable opinion the slof is not a colf slof to play the long game of colf, (until the end of the 18th century) but a kolf slof for the short indoor game of kolf which came into view at the end of the 18th century. They have in their collection a kolf slof which looks identically to the slof on the picture and they have dated it from around 1874, the year that their society was founded. For more details about the indoor game, have a look at our book ‘Games for Kings & Commoners’, the chapter ‘From Colf to Kolf’.
The kolf players from Venhuizen are of the opinion that next to repairing the tear and wear of the sole, it could also be that the sole strip was added to manipulate the centre of gravity of the club head.

Under the heading ‘Mail’ we reproduced some weeks ago the first part of an extensive article about ‘jeu de mail’ by Henri Jakubowicz which was published in the magazine ‘Through The Green’ in December 2002. This first part dealt with the history of jeu the mail and the bibliography concerning part 1 and 2.
We now reproduce the second part of the article in which Jakubowicz reviews the game as it was played from the 16^th century till 1939 in the region of Montpellier in the southeast of France.
Several historians are of the opinion that jeu de mail was the origin of Scottish golf. Henri isn’t.
Happy reading!

We all know the world-famous paintings from Flemish and Netherlandish painters from the 16th and 17th centuries showing many skaters, including the colf players, enjoying themselves on the frozen canals, ponds, lakes and rivers.
Nothing has changed since then. We are today temporarily confronted which Ice Age temperatures in a larger part of Europe. Many Europeans are shivering from cold and prefer to stay indoors as much as possible.

But not the Netherlanders! Hundreds of thousands men and women, young and old, have taken their skates and face the cold with a smile to go and to enjoy themselves on the ice like their ancestors 400 years ago.
Alas, what we don’t see any more are the colf players as on the foreground of most of the ‘Golden Age’ paintings.

Some years ago Henri Jakubowicz, a knowledgeable French historian, wrote an extensive article about ‘jeu de mail’ for Through The Green, the magazine of the British Golf Collectors Society. Henri and the editor of Through The Green agreed that we would publish this article on our Ancient Golf web site.
Under the heading ‘Mail’ you will find the first part of this article, containing the history of the game and the bibliography. The second part we will publish within short.
Happy reading.

The 17th of January was once the special day to celebrate the patron saint of all crosseurs in the crosse region around the cities of Mons (South Belgium) and Maubeuge (North France) in the ancient county of Hainaut. On this day people from the region joined in a pilgrimage from Mons to the St Anthony chapel near the village of Havré to ask the saint for protection against the plague.
Also the many crosseurs joined in this pilgrimage holding proudly their crosse club over their shoulders. When they arrived after a walk of more than 10 kilometres they put a crosse club in the hand of the statue of St Anthony and they participated in a special mass.
After the religious duties in and near the chapel the people stayed to meet each other, to sing and dance, to drink and to play games. The crosseurs started to play their game in the fields around the chapel. The final target of the game was the door of the chapel. Late in the afternoon the crosseurs returned to Mons stopping at every tavern on its way to a traditional, copious meal of rabbit sprinkled with beer and wine. They sang over and over again the ancient song of St Anthony:

A Saint Antoine,                              On the day of St Anthony,
on va crocher,                                  we are going to play crosse,
avec ‘n soule et ‘n macquet.          with a ball and a club.

When diseases like the plague became more and more under control the interest in making pilgrimages to Havré dwindled and eventually stopped. The crosseurs however continued for many years to come to hold a pilgrimage to the chapel to celebrate St Anthony who had become their patron saint. After the Second World War when also the interest in the game of crosse declined as well as the interest in the pilgrimage to Havré.
Today the chapel is in a dilapidated state and the door seems to be definitely closed.

Just a few days ago we received an interesting email from Andrew Gauld, Scotsman and a golfing pro in Germany, the author of the ‘Golfer’s Pocket Referee/Der kleine Platzrichter’. Some time ago he acquired an ancient colf slof (the metal head of a colf club). Finding such colf slofs is not extremely exceptional. The game was very popular in the Low Countries between the 13th and 18th century. However this slof was made of bronze while normally a tin-lead alloy was used. The size of the slof is 14 centimetres; the weight was not less than 500 grams.

To get to know more about this interesting find we brought in our friend and colf/kolf expert, Do Smit, member of the Kolf Society St Eloy Utrecht, member of the Foundation Early Golf and webmaster of the Royal Netherlandish Kolf Federation’s Web Museum. He examined the pictures of the bronze slof and came to the following findings. The slof was made for a left-handed player because the right side is flat while the left side has a mussel back.
Normally such slofs were made of a tin-lead alloy and therefore not so exceptional to find them. Slofs were also made of bronze and copper while children often played with wooden slofs.
Copper and bronze ‘heads’ were more uncommon because the material was more expensive and furthermore casting moulds were needed. The tin-lead heads were often just cut out of flat plates and folded or slipped around the end of a wooden shaft.

The most interesting part of this slof is the sole. Looking at the lines at the side of the slof and the difference in colour it looks like that an additional plate of another material was fixed to the bronze sole. This is unique. It could be that this iron plate was attached because therefore the slof could perhaps more glide somewhat easier over the ice.
On the other hand, the striking face is slightly damaged which could imply that the colf club was used mainly on land. Based on material found at the excavation place the club could be dated between 1585 and 1625. This period lies still somewhat before the real start of the Little Ice Age (1650 until the end of the 18th century), so probably the colf club was used more on land than on the frozen canals, lakes, rivers and ponds.
The slof was probably found near the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands.
Its size (14 centimetres) and weight (500 grams) are also remarkable for not many slofs of that size have been found so far.

If you found or possess a colf slof please tell us about where you got it, the kind of material (if you know) and the size and weight of the slof.

Already in the late 15th century and the early 16th century pictures were drawn or painted of colf players. These representations in the form of decorative miniatures in religious books were made by artists and monks, mainly from Flanders, the cradle of the colf game. These religious books, called ‘books of hours’, were written and painted by hand mainly for royals and nobility.

The best known colf miniature dates from around 1500 and was represented in the so-called ‘Golf Book’. It shows colvers swinging, approaching and putting a colf ball. Less known is a similar illumination in the so-called ‘Other Golf Book’ (or ‘Quaritch Book of Hours’ or ‘Book of Hours of Charles V’). This illumination dates also from around 1500 and was discovered and written about some 100 years ago.

We thought it of interest to show you the article about this illumination published in the American magazine ‘Golf Illustrated & Outdoor America’ in August 1915, written by the chief editor Max Behr.

Happy reading!

For colf historians the year 2011 was a special year. Exact 750 years ago colf was mentioned in the medieval poem of the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant. He used the words ‘mit ener coluen’ (with a colf club).
Some years ago the meaning of these words were questioned. Not colf (the one target stick and ball game) was meant, but the aggressive precursor of modern hockey.
On the defence of the ‘colf cause’ our publication in the English language appeared in the magazine Golfika and in our book ‘Games for Kings & Commoners’.
On the special anniversary occasion of Netherlandish colf we have added a Netherlandish version to the ‘colf’ part of our website. This version is already included in the web museum of the Royal Netherlandish Kolf Bond at www.colf-kolf.nl.