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Hermit's Cave [Scotscraig]

Scotscraig, Newport-on-Tay, Fife.

Fissure cave in cliff-face.

"Nearly ½ a mile W.S.W. of the Mansion House of Scotscraig. A small cave in the face of a precipitous rock on Craig Law, it is about six feet above the base of the rock. It is about seven feet high, eight feet long and about four wide. It is supposed to have been inhabited at some period by Hermits, to which circumstance it owes its name.

It is a natural cave and there is no tradition in the locality as to its ever being occupied for any purpose or as to the circumstance which gave rise to the name. research has been made and no written account could be found relating to it." [OS Namebook]

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"... a great fissure yawns in the face of the precipice. One of these openings assumes the appearance of a small cavern, and is popularly known by the name of the 'Hermit's Hole'.'Beneath a mountain's brow, The most remote and inaccessible by shepherds trod,In a deep cave, dug by no mortal hand, A hermit lived; a melancholy man.'

How could he be anything else than 'a melancholy man' who could live in such a dreary spot remote from his fellow men? But who the hermit of Scotscraig was, and when he lived and died, no one seems to know. There is mystery about this hermit, as there is about hermits generally, but whoever he was he could not boast of spacious apartments, for there is barely room in the hole to admit two ordinary-sized mortals at one time. Perhaps the story of the hermit is a myth; but there is also a tradition in the locality that some of the persecuted Covenanters found a hiding place amongst these rocks and crags, and very likely the legend of the 'hermit' may have taken its origin from that circumstance." [Neish, 1890]

Alternative Names: Hermit's Cave, Hermits' Cave

Notes: Labelled on OS maps.