The Het Girdle fits in admirably as a description of the fifth hole. Sir Walter Scott in the "Black Dwarf" makes Elliot say of the apparition "She hirples like a hen on a het girdle." But what, you enquire, does one do when one "hirples," and why on "a het girdle"? If you can frame in your imagining a picture of a hot frying pan with no confining edge, a flat round of iron such as is used in Scotland for the firing of oat cakes and bannocks, you get within striking distance of understanding. To "hirple" is to limp, almost to jump, as in the familiar Scots proverb "a hen on a het girdle," is supposed to do. Hens shew no partiality for the exercise credited to them, but the golfer playing to the hole will agree that the simile drawn on does not lean to exaggeration, but is justified in full. The confronting difficulties are poignantly described in the lines:

O' girdle green sac fair and finely set

Thy e'esome form a sicht for een that's sair A' gou fFers ken why thou'rt the Gridle Het

For fashions "bogey" burdens them wi' care; l'rae tee tae green looks no that il' to get

The wee white ha' yaes Heeing' i' the ait-Its gait weel paved wi' guid intent and yet

The end no unconnectit wi' despair.

A graphic picture that ! But, as the old proverb has it, "the hack's aye made for the burden "; the difficulties of the I let Girdle are not insurmountable.