How Golf Was Invented
This is an extract from my book Magnetite (available at Amazon’s) dealing with the various migrations the world has known. The Scottish Highlanders moving to the Americas. Africans being forcibly taken across the seas to become slaves of the white man. English so-called convicts being sentenced to transportation to Australia. Indian indentured labourers made to go the British colonies to grow sugar for European palates, among whose numbers my own ancestors can be found. In the following lines, we meet one Highlander who is struggling against all odds to eke out a living in the Highlands of his birth, but the laird wants him and his like out so they can … raise sheep on the land evacuated. The grazing area has been restricted and his two cows having strayed into “forbidden” territory, and unknown to him, have been poinded. He is looking for them.
Hugh felt so guilty about Martha having so little joy in her life. Next Sunday he would definitely go, and he would pray to the good Lord to see to it that his yet-to-be-born boy grow up healthy, and implore him that if he was ever minded to visit some ailment or misfortune on the boy, to direct his wrath against him instead. Why could he only contemplate having a boy? He must be careful not to air his preference in Martha’s hearing. It was selfish, but he could not control his thoughts. Yet it was not altogether selfishness, he was sure of that, for if anything should happen to him, a boy would be more able to look after his mother than a girl. No doubt Martha would be dreaming of a little girl, and he must do nothing to make her feel bad if it was a girl, he must watch his words. To be sure, I would love my little girl just as wholeheartedly. Would I though? he wondered. From a distance he could see Loch Morie, and the shiny sheet of gold floating on its surface told him that the sun was going to set shortly, and he knew that he would soon reach the place where he had left the cows to roam in the morning. Sniffer! She made him smile, always lifting her head and sniffing disdainfully.
He kept walking at a brisk rate, trampling over the heather, absently hitting
small pebbles with his walking stick, making them fly. On an impulse he decided to do the hitting with the knobby end, tightened his grip, chose a nice round granite pebble at his feet, and raising the stick above his head, he let go with all his might. The contact was perfect, he thought, and to his amazement the stone rose up in the air as if it had wings and flew away in a curve, landing at a good distance from him. Nice little game this, I’ll teach the boy, he thought. Now where were Big Eyes and Sniffer?
