Arthur's Seat coffins

Discovery

On 25 June 1836, a group of boys climbing Arthur's Seat found a small hidden niche containing seventeen miniature coffins. The first news report, in The Scotsman, stated the boys were searching for rabbit burrows on the north-eastern range of the hill. An account in Notes & Queries placed the discovery at the foot of Salisbury Crags, while the Caledonian Mercury reported it occurred at the back of Arthur's Seat, which historian Mike Dash located on the southern side.

According to Notes & Queries, one boy dislodged a protruding rock while grabbing it to break his fall, revealing the niche. The Scotsman described the opening as closed by three sheets of slate cut into a conical shape at the upper ends. After removing the slate, the boys found a niche about one square foot in size, though the Edinburgh Evening News gave its dimensions as about a foot in height and 18 inches wide. Inside, the coffins were arranged in three tiers: two tiers of eight coffins each and a top tier of a single coffin.

Description

The coffins vary in size from 95 to 104 mm in length, 18 to 30 mm in width, and 20 to 26 mm in height. Each was carved from a single piece of Scots pine, with lids attached by brass pins, some bent or missing pinheads from being pried open. Both lids and sides bore small lozenge-shaped tinned iron ornaments identified as latches from late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century shoe buckles, though coffin No. 3 had latches cut from a brass sheet, possibly from a mirror plate.

Six coffins had nails of the same material as the latches, also linked to leather working. The coffins appear in two shapes: five have squared edges tapering toward the ends, while three have prominently rounded edges and ends, suggesting two different makers. Red or pink paint is visible on the exterior of coffins 2 and 4, both square, and coffin No. 2 is the only one lined with woven paper, probably post-1780 rag fiber. Each coffin held an anthropomorphic figure of close-grained white wood, described as excellently carved.

The figures, identified as former toy soldiers, are nearly identical in height (81–86 mm) and detail, likely from the same set. Their straight backs, open eyes, lower bodies shaped as if in tight knee breeches and hose, flat blackened feet resembling boots, blackened hair areas, and a hat-line around the head support this identification. Facial features are remarkably similar despite variation in head size and shape.

Provenance

The day after the discovery, the boys' schoolmaster, Mr. Ferguson, retrieved the coffins. He pried them open with a knife and brought them to a meeting of an unidentified local archaeological society. Mike Dash identified two possible Fergusons: Findlay Ferguson, a teacher at Easter Duddingston, and George Ferguson, a classics master at Edinburgh Academy; neither belonged to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland or the Bannatyne Club. Dash considered Findlay Ferguson the more likely, as Duddingston lies near the southern face of Arthur's Seat.

The coffins later appeared in the private museum of Robert Frazer, a jeweller and seal engraver who was an elected member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Frazer's museum housed items deemed unsuitable for the Society's collection, and the coffins may have been rejected as mere curiosities. After Frazer retired, his museum closed, and its collection was auctioned in late April and early May 1845. Lot 300, described as the celebrated Lilliputian coffins found on Arthur's Seat in 1836, sold for £4 8/- to an unknown bidder.

Menefee and Simpson suggested that Edinburgh publisher Thomas Clark may have purchased them, as his daughter, Christina Couper of Tynron Manse, donated eight coffins to the National Museum of Scotland in 1901. The donation also included the display information card and one of the three slate pieces that closed the niche, a small dark-gray slab shaped like a headstone, presumably from the West Highlands or Ballachulish quarries. The coffins have been on almost constant exhibit at the museum since the donation.

Interpretations

The purpose of the coffins remains unknown, and several theories have been proposed. The original Scotsman report suggested a connection to witchcraft, with the figurines as effigies for sympathetic magic, but no signs of deliberate mutilation are evident on the figures, unlike documented Scottish corp creadh. The Edinburgh Evening Post proposed on 20 August 1836 that the coffins continued an ancient German-Saxon custom of burying effigies for those who died overseas, but no known catastrophe claimed 17 lives to justify such a response, and the coffins were buried together, not individually.

The Caledonian Mercury suggested on 25 August 1836 that Scottish sailors left effigies with their wives to be buried if they died at sea, but Menefee and Simpson doubted this custom's existence, noting the lack of other evidence and the burial location outside a traditional graveyard. The 1902 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland proposed an honorific burial by a mentally impaired individual, a theory difficult to disprove but lacking proof or rationale.

Walter Hävernick compared the find to coffins from Lübeck dated to 1710 and 1711, suggesting an occult practice of placing a mandrake in a coffin as an oracle or talisman, possibly hidden by a merchant for sale. However, the Lübeck coffins were constructed differently and buried about a century earlier in a different country.

Did You Know?

• The clothes on the figurines were sewn with cotton thread, which replaced linen thread in Scotland from about 1800, and one suit used three-ply thread, not seen before 1812 and popular in the 1830s.
• The coffins figure prominently in the 2001 crime novel The Falls by Ian Rankin, which was adapted for television in 2006.
• No carbon dating or dendrochronological analysis has been carried out on the coffins.