Gnonpnte.] JVHN PATERSON. I1
The latter is an anagram on the name of ?John
Paterson,? while the quatrain was the production
of Dr. Pitcairn, and is referred to in the first
volume of Gilbert Stuart?s Edinburgh Magazine
andRevim for 1774, and may be rendered thus:
--?In the year when Paterson won the prize in
golfing, a game peculiar to the Scots (in which his
ancestors had nine times won the same honour), he
then raised this mansion, a victory more honourable
than all the rest.?
According to tradition, two English nobles at
Holyrood had a discussion with the royal duke
as to the native country of golf, which he was
frequently in the habit of playing on the Links of
Leith with the Duke of Lauderdale and others,
and which the two strangers insisted to be an
English game as well, No evidence of this being
forthcoming, while many Scottish Parliamentary
edicts, some as old as the days of James II., in
1457, could be quoted concerning the said game,
the Englishmen, who both vaunted their expertness,
offered to test the legitimacy of their pretensions
on the result of a match to be played by them
against His Royal Highness and any other .Scotsman
he chose to select. After careful inquiry he
chose a man named John Paterson, a poor shoemaker
in the Canongate, but the worthy descendant
of a long line of illustrious golfers, and the association
will by no means surprise, even in the present
age, those who practise the game in the true old
Scottish spirit The strangers were ignominiously
beaten, and the heir to the throne had the best of
this practical argument, while Paterson?s merits
were rewarded by the stake played for, and he
built the house now standing in the Canongate.
On its summit he placed the Paterson arms-three
pelicans vuZned; on a chief three mullets ; crest,
a dexter-hand grasping a golf club, with the wellold
and well-known tradition, Chambers says, ?it
must be admitted there is some uncertainty. The
house, the arms, and the inscriptions only indicate
that Paterson built the house after being victor at
golf, and that Pitcairn had a hand in decorating it.??
In this doubt Wilson goes further, and believes
that the Golfers? Land was Zmt, not won, by the
gambling propensities of its owner. It was acquired
by Nicol Paterson in 1609, a maltman in Leith,
and from him it passed, in 1632, to his son John
(and Agnes Lyel, his spouse), who died 23rd April,
1663, as appears by the epitaph upon his tomb in
the churchyard of Holyrood, which was extant in
Maitland?s time, and the strange epitaph on which
is given at length by Monteith. He would appear
to have been many times Bailie of the Canongate.
known mOttO-FAR AND SURE. Concerning this
Both Nicol and John, it may be inferred from the
inscriptions on the ancient edifice, were able and
successful golfers. The style of the bNilding, says
Wilson, confirms the idea that it had been rebuilt
by him ?with the spoils, as we are bound to
presume, which he won on Leith Links, from ?OUT
auld enemies of England.? The title-deeds, however,
render it probable that other stakes had been
played for with less success. In 1691 he grants
a bond over the property for A400 Scots. This is
followed by letters of caption and hornhg, and
other direful symptoms of legal assault, which
pursue the poor golfer to his grave, and remain
behind as his sole legacy to his heirs.?
The whole tradition, however, is too serious to
be entirely overlooked, but may be taken by the
reader ?or what it seems worth.
Bailie Paterson?s successor in the old mansion
was John, second Lord Bellenden of Broughton
and Auchnoule, Heritable Vsher of the Exchequer,
who married Mary, Countess Dowager of Dalhousie,
and daughter of the Earl of Drogheda. Therein
he died in 1704, and was buried in the Abbey
Church ; and as the Union speedily followed, like
other tenements so long occupied by the old
courtiers in this quarter, the Golfers? Land became,
as we find it now, the abode of plebeians.
Immediately adjoining the Abbey Court-house
was an old, dilapidated, and gable-ended mansion
of no great height, but of considerable extent,
which was long indicated by oral tradition as the
abode of David Rizzio. It has now given place
to buildings connected with the Free Church of
Scotland. Opposite these still remain some of
the older tenements of this once patrician burgh,
distinguishable by their lofty windows filled in with
small square panes of glass ; and on the south side
of the street, at its very eastern end, a series of
pointed arches along the walls of the Sanctuary
Court-house, alone remain to indicate the venerable
Gothic porch and gate-house of the once famous,
Abbey of Holyrood, beneath which all that was
great and good, and much that was ignoble and
bad have passed and repassed in the days that are
no more.
. This edifice, of which views from the east and
west are still preserved, is supposed to have been
the work of ?the good-Abbot Ballantyne,? who
rebuilt the north side of the church in 1490, and
to whom we shall have occasion to refer elsewhere.
His own mansion, or lodging, stood here on the
north side of the street, and the remains of it,
together With the porch, were recklessly destroyed
and removed by the Hereditary Keeper of the
Palace in 1753.
