Gilmerton.; THE HOUSE IN THE ROCK. 345
character or by the stronger claims of natural affection.
Choosing, therefore, a dark and windy night,
when the objects of his vengeance were engaged in
a stolen interview, he set fire to a stack of dried
thorns and other combustibles, which he had caused
to be piled against the house, and reduced to
a pile of glowing ashes the dwelling and all its
inmates.?
In 1587 Gilmerton Grange was the property of
Mark Kerr, Master of Requests in 1577, and for
each apartment there was a skylight-window. It
was all thoroughly drained and finished about the
end of 1724.
Alexander Pennicuik, ?? the burgess-bard of
Edinburgh,? furnished the following inscription,
which was carved in stone over the entrance :
?? Here is a house and shop hewn in this rock
with my own hand.-GEoRGE PATERSON.
?? Upon the earth there ?s villany and woe,
But happiness and I do dwell below ; 1
DRUM HOUSE.
whom Newbattle was erected into a temporal lordship
in 1591. He died first earl of the house of
Lothian.
The soft and workable nature of the sandstone at
Gilmerton tempted a blacksmith named George
Paterson, in 1720, to an enterprise of a very remarkable
character. In the little garden at the
end of his house he excavated for himself a dwelling
in the living rock, comprising several apartments.
Besides a smithy with a forge, there were
a dining-room fourteen feet six inches long, seven
feet broad, and six in height, furnished with a bench
all round, a table, and bed recess; a drinking
parlour, rather larger ; a kitchen and bed-place ; a
cellar seven feet long ; and a washing-house. In
140
My hands hewed out this rock into a cell,
Wherein from din of life I safely dwell :
On Jamb?s pillow nightly lies my head,
My house when living and my grave when dead :
Inscribe upon it, when I?m dead and gone,
? I lived and died within my mother?s womb.? ?
In this abode Paterson dwelt for eleven years.
Holiday parties came from the city to see him and
his singular house, and even judges of the courts
imbibed their liquor in his stone parlour. ?The
ground was held in feu, and the yearly duty and
public burdens were forgiven him, on account of
the extraordinary labour he had incurred in makig
himself a home.?
He died about 1735, and his cave is occasionally
346 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Drum.
the resort of the curious still, according to Fullarton?s
?Gazetteer,? and a long description of it
appeared in the Courant for 1873.
Gilmerton was long characterised simply as a
village of colliers of a peculiarly degraded and brutal
nature, as ferocious and unprincipled as a gang
of desperadoes, who rendered all the adjacent roads
unsafe after nightfall, and whose long career of
atrocities culminated in the execution of two of
them for a sipgularly brutal murder in 1831. Its
coal-which is of prime quality-was vigorously
worked in 1627, and is supposed to have been
famous a century earlier ; but its mines have been
abandoned, and the adjacent lime-works-the
oldest in Scotland-were worked from time immemorial.
Half a mile to the eastward lies the ancient
estate and manor-house of Drum, the residence of
old of the Somerville family, secluded from the
highway and hidden by venerable trees-a Scoto-
Normah race, whose progenitor, William de Somerville,
came into Scotland during the reign of David
I., who made him Lord of Carnwath, and whose
descendants figured in high places for several
generations. His son obtained from William the
Lion a grant of Linton in 1174, for slaying-according
to tradition-a monstrous serpent, which
was devastating the country. William, fourth of that
name, was a commander at the battle of Largs;
Thomas, hi9 son, served under Wallace ; and his
son Sit Waltet, the cqmrade of Bruce, married Giles,
the daughter and heiress of Sir Johr. Herring, with
whom he obtained the lands of Drum, Gilmerton,
and Goodtrees, in the parish of Liberton.
Unlike most Scottish titled families, the Somervilles
were ever loyal to king and country.
John: third Lord Somerville of Drum, led the
Clydesdale horse at the Battle of Sark, in 1449,
and his son, Sir John, fell at Flodden, by the side
of his royal master. James, sixth lord, served in
the queen?s army at Langside, and was severely
wounded. Hugh, his son, recovered the lands of
Gilmerton and Drum-which had gone into the
possession of the Somervilles of Cambusnethan
-and built the mansion-house of Drum in 1585 ;
and four years after it was the scene of a sad family
tragedy, which is related at some length in the
? I Domestic Annals of Scotland.?
Hugh, eighth lord, who died there in 1640, in
his seventieth year, was buried in Liberton Church;
and James, his successor, served with distinction
in the armies of France and Venice.
?( James Somerville of Drum ? (twentieth in
descent from Sir Walter Somerville), ? and tenth
lord of that ilk,? says the ? Memorie of the Sommer-
*
viles,? ?died at Edinburgh 3rd January, 1677, in
the 82nd year of his age, and was interred by his
ladye?s syde in the Abbey Church ok Holyrood,
maist of the nobilitie and gentrie in tome being
present, with two hundred torches.??
James, the tenth lord, was lieutenant-colonel of
the Scots Guards, in which his son George was
adjutant.
His eldest son, James, when riding home to
Drum one night from Edinburgh, in July, 1682,
found on the way two friends fighting, sword in
hand-namely, Thomas Learmonth, son of an
advocate, and Hew Paterson younger of Bannockburn,
who had quarrelled over their cups. He
dismounted, and tried to separate them, but was
mortally wounded by Paterson, and died two days
after at Drum, leaving an infant son to carry on
the line of the family.
A son of the twelfth lord-so called, though
four generations seem to have declined to use the
title-was killed at the battle of St. Cas in 1758 3 and
John, the fifteenth lord, is chiefly remarkable as
the introducer of the breed of Merino sheep into
Britain ; and by the death of Xubrey-John, nineteenth
Lord Somerville, in 1870, the title of this
fine old Scottish race became dormant.
Though a little beyond our radius, while treating
of this district it is impossible not to glance at
such classic and historic places as Hawthornden
and Roslin, and equally of such sylvan beauty as
Iasswade.
Situated- amid the most beautifully wooded
scenery in the Lowlands, the Castle of Roslin,
taking its name from Russ, a promontory, and Zyn,
a waterfall, crowns a lofty mass of insulated rock
overhanging the Esk. This mass is bold ?nd
rugged in outline, and at one time was convertible
into an island, ere the deep and moat-like gulley
on its western side was partly filled up.
Across this once open fosse a massive bridge of
one arch has now been thrown, and to this the path
from the village descends a rapid incline, through
leafy coppice and by precipitous rocks, overlooked
by the lofty hill which is crowned by the wonderful
chapel.
Built of reddish stone, and luxuriantly clothed
with ivy, the massive ruins form a most picturesque
object amid the superb landscape. For the most
part, all that is very ancient consists of a threefold
tier of massive vaults, the enormous strength and
solidity of which put even modern Scottish builders
to shame. Above these vaults, and facing the
vast windows of what must have been a noble banqueting-
hall, is perched a mansion of comparatively
modern date, having been erected in 1563, and
