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The
Tradition of George Paterson
Tradition tells us that
after five years of hard labour, George Paterson, a blacksmith, completed
an underground dwelling house, hewn out of solid sandstone, the work being
finished in the year 1724.
It contains several
apartments, a forge, beds, stone tables and chairs. He lived in it until
1737, and the authorities were so impressed by his dexterity that they
overlooked the rates!
Each room is lit by a
skylight, and in one room carved into the stone table is a punch bowl.
This led him into trouble, as the house was for many years considered to
be a great curiosity to which people flocked from far and near.
As a result, Paterson was
compelled to appear before Liberton Kirk Session charged with supplying
people with liquor in his house on the Sabbath Day. He told the Session
that he always had a padlock on the door and always brought the key with
him to Kirk, but his wife had opened a back door to let them in. What his
wife did and said when he returned from the Session Meeting is not
recorded!
Pennycuik, the poet, wrote
an inscription which is later said to have been carved in stone above the
fireplace in the cave. It read:
"Upon the earth
thrives villainy and woe, But happiness and I do dwell below, My hands
hewed out this rock into a cell, Wherein from din of life I safely
dwell. On Jacob'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."
The earliest known written
account was produced by the Rev. Thomas Whyte of Liberton in 1782 in his
account of the Parish published in the first volume of Archaelogia Scotia
(p. 313).
Fact, however, is often
stranger than fiction, and F. R. Coles, Assistant keeper of the Museum,
Edinburgh, writing in 1897 raises some very interesting questions on the
whole background of the Cove.
Accompanied by J. Balfour
Paul, and George Good, FSA., Coles carried out an extensive three day
survey of the cave. He was of the opinion that the majority of the work in
the cave had been carried out at least a century earlier and backs his
theory by pointing out that the passages and chambers had been picked out
of the sandstone by pointed tools, not chisel worked.
He goes on to maintain that
the work could not possibly be completed in five years by one pair of
arms, and further states that the lines of the cave's recesses, its
passages and so-called ‘beds' and tables hardly fall into the practical
habits and methods of workings adopted by a blacksmith.
While great play has been
made in the past on Pennycuik's inscription, supporting the attribution of
the complete work to Paterson, this argument becomes rather doubtful when
one discovers that as far back as 1890 the inscription above the fireplace
was not there, although it must be admitted that there is a sunken panel
above the chimney breast.
There are, however, a number
of interesting features about the Cove. At the entrance to many of the
recesses there are Giblet Checks which must have been used for wooden
doors.
There are also several
pipe-like holes pierced in the rock in various degrees of inclination,
some of which appear to penetrate for many feet. It has been suggested
that these pipe-like holes were bored to convey liquors into the cave,
around the principal table with its appropriate ‘punch bowl'.
Carousals, or maybe secret
politico-masonic meetings of the Vehmqericht type were wont to be held. The argument, however, could just as easily be put forward that the
borings were for ventilation and would serve that purpose better than the
larger roof openings.
During some of the
excavations and clearing-up operations in the late 1970s, a beautifully
cut draining channel was discovered, running along the right hand side of
the passage-way, and in the middle of the same, directly opposite the
‘punch bowl' chamber, under about two hundred years of top soil deposit, a
two foot square cavity, the total depth of which is yet unknown. |
