Fore!

Today I feel impelled to tell the story of one of golf's most famous words, aptly pictured here:

The game of golf as we know it developed amid the coastal sand dunes of Eastern Scotland.  St Andrews is enshrined as the town most associated with the development of the sport that now spans the world.  And with it the shout, "Fore" as the now traditional warning.

At the beginning of April in 1877, Alexander Kilcallon was playing on the Royal  course when, like many before and since, he was struck by a ball 'inflicting a wounde grievusse'.  What was to make Alexander's story amazing was that exactly a year later to the day - this day - he was struck by another golf ball in a very similar way.  The duality seemed too much of a coincidence and he consulted the Minister of the Kirk (Church).  The Minister, Rev. Hamish Kincaird, was not at all sympathetic.  He despised the worldly pleasure of sport and pointed Alexander to a Biblical Proverb that occurs identically twice (in Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12) - identical verses for identical incidents. In the King James version it reads

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Perhaps it was the way that the Reverend Kincaird pronounced the word foreseeth to make his point, but Alexander Kilcallon took the word back to his golfing party as a cry of warning.  Presumably it was quickly reduced to the one syllable that any passing walker is wise to observe!

Not the intended application of the Proverb but very useful and undoubtedly the most shouted Biblical syllable on the golf course - though perhaps others are sometimes used in anger as well . . .