II
There are many full-blooded golfers who, if in the light of knowledge and experience they could have their choice to live their golfing lives over again, with the special advantage of picking their own period and place for play, would hold up their hands for Leith and the closing years of the [seventeenth] century. They could be greatly earnest about their golf in those days, and there was colour and richness about it. Here it was that King Charles was playing his game when the news came to him, according to famous tradition, of the insurrection and rebellion in Ireland. And another future King of England is generally believed to have played great games on Leith links, and perhaps the most interesting monument of ancient golf that remains to us to-day is still to be found in Edinburgh, commemorating a great game that was once played, in which James, Duke of York, afterwards James II., had a hand. This house is that old one in Canongate which is numbered 77, on the north side a little above Queensberry House. On the wall above what at one time was the doorway of this house there is a stone bearing this inscription in Latin: “Cum victor ludo scotis qui proprius esset ter tres victores post redimitus avos patersonus humo tunc educebat in altum hanc quae victores tot tulit una domum”; and, separately, there is the line in English, “I hate no person,” which effectually settles the name of the man most concerned, as the letters of these words are nothing more than an anagrammatical transposition of the letters of the name of John Patersone, who is the hero of the story of the great game. High up, near the top of this five-storey building, is another tablet bearing a coat of arms, on which there are three pelicans and three mullets, while for crest there is a dexter hand grasping a golf club, and the motto is “Far and sure.” The point of the story is that this house was built by a poor cobbler out of a share of the proceeds of a wager won by the Duke on a foursome, in which he, the cobbler, was his partner.
The generally accepted story, in which there is no hole to be picked, is that one day, during their attendance at the Scottish Court, two English noblemen, who had played a little golf in their time, had a discussion, in which the Duke of York joined, as to whether it were more of an English or a Scottish game. Eventually it was determined that the question, so far as their own satisfaction was concerned, should be decided by an appeal to the game itself, that is to say, the Englishmen, who affected to be of mind that it was an English game, agreed that they would play the Duke and any other Scotsman that he would choose to partner him for a large stake of money. The Duke conceived that he could do himself a little good in the affair, since his acceptance of such a challenge and his standing forward in the name of Scotland would be good for the sustenance of his claim to the character of a Scot, and would please the people of the country. So the match being made, the Duke sent out agents to scour the town in search of the best partner for him that they could find, and when found he was to be brought forward, irrespective of his circumstances or his station in life. Eventually the man whom they selected for this onerous task was the poor shoemaker who went by the name of John Patersone. He was very fearful as to how he should perform with so much responsibility depending upon him; but the Duke was evidently a good golfer, to the extent that he encouraged his partner and did his utmost to make him feel comfortable, whereupon Patersone braced himself for the struggle and said that he would do his best. The Duke and the cobbler were easily victorious, whereupon the former gave his partner the half of the stake that he had won, and with this money the house in Canongate was built, the Duke himself causing the escutcheon, bearing the arms of the family of Patersone, to be fixed in the wall.