I am, by nature, rather lazy and disinclined to put myself through physical exertion unless I really have to, but every time I have climbed that ancient extinct volcano in the centre of my city, I have marvelled at the glorious sight of Edinburgh spread out like patchwork on all sides: the sea of grey slate roof tiles, the rooftop gardens, the sooty towers reaching high, the castle upon the hill.
I have huffed and puffed my way to the top, treading well-worn paths and navigating equally sweaty crowds of tourists jostling for prime position on the peak, but I have never discovered anything more than a few candy-bar wrappers, cigarette buts, and empty Tennent’s cans on these journeys.
Scrambling up the rocky slopes in search of rabbits on a warm summer’s day in 1836, the children stumbled upon a small cave on the northeast slope of the hill. Inside this little recess were 17 tiny wooden coffins, carefully arranged in three tiers — two rows of eight, and one incomplete row of just one coffin.
Each little coffin was about 9cm at the widest and 14.5cm long, made of pine, and cradling a small human-like wooden figure dressed in hand-stitched cotton clothing. Seventeen coffins, 17 little bodies, one enduring mystery.
Many of the coffins were already suffering from damp and decay by the time the boys found them, and several were lost almost immediately when the children reportedly threw some into the air for sport. Eight coffins have survived to the present day and may be seen in a little glass case on level four of the Scotland Galleries at the National Museum of Scotland.
The discovery of the coffins gripped the city immediately. Edinburgh in the 1830s was a city of darkness and intrigue, where the murders of Burke and Hare were fresh in memory, and whispers of body-snatchers lingered in every close and alleyway.
At the time, it was suggested the coffins were made for the purposes of witchcraft: on 16 July 1836, The Scotsman cried "Satanic spell-manufactory" before remarking: "Our own opinion would be — had we not some years ago abjured witchcraft and demonology — that there are still some of the weird sisters hovering about Mushat’s Cairn or the Windy Gowl, who retain their ancient power to work the spells of death by entombing the likenesses of those they wish to destroy."
The Edinburgh Evening Post meanwhile wondered whether the coffins might represent "an ancient custom which prevailed in Saxony, of burying in effigy departed friends who had died in a distant land."
A later theory suggests a link to the notorious Burke and Hare murders in 1828. The two men supplied Edinburgh’s Medical School with cadavers, murdering 16 people after first selling the body of a lodger who had died of natural causes.
Burke and Hare’s murder victims however were predominantly female, while the surviving coffins house male effigies. Still, the numerical parallels are tempting — 17 coffins against 16 murder victims and the lodger. Perhaps the caskets represented substitute graves for those denied the dignity of a proper burial.
The coffins passed into the hands of private collectors and remained hidden from public view until 1901, when eight were donated to the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and from there to National Museums Scotland.
In 1906, The Scotsman revived interest in the coffins with a curious tale from "a lady residing in Edinburgh" who recalled that her father, a certain "Mr B", had occasionally received visits at his workplace from a "daft deaf mute" man.
This man sketched for Mr B three tiny coffins, inscribing beneath them the dates 1837, 1838, and 1840. In each of those years, Mr B. lost someone: first a "near relative", then a cousin, and finally his own brother. After the first funeral, the mysterious stranger reappeared, fixed Mr B with a "glowering" stare, and vanished forever.
The Scotsman’s newsroom must have buzzed with speculation — was this mysterious figure the craftsman behind the coffins, "driven mad by the loss of his treasures?" Was it a series of uncanny coincidences? Was it a mere hoax?
The mystery endures to the present day. In 1976, Walter Havernick, director of the Museum of Hamburg History, proposed the Arthur’s Seat coffins were not memorials at all but a stash of talismanic charms — tiny figures in coffins of the kind once carried by German sailors.
In 1994, Prof Samuel Menefee and Dr Allen Simpson of the University of Edinburgh and National Museum of Scotland respectively, conducted the first detailed study of the coffins. They concluded the figures were likely carved by the same hand, perhaps that of a shoemaker, and may originally have been toy soldiers repurposed as effigies.
In 2014 a later investigation confirmed the coffins were hand-carved from Scottish pine using simple tools like pen knives, and microscopic analysis again pointed to toy soldiers refashioned into miniature burials.
Part of me thinks what great fun it would be to create a mystery like the Arthur’s Seat coffins — a puzzle that bewilders generations.
These days it seems to me almost everything is catalogued, explained, and dissected in excruciating detail. We’re in danger of forgetting the pleasure of the unknown.
Mysteries such as the Arthur’s Seat coffins are those glorious parts of life that spark imagination, invite speculation, and make for the kind of conversations best had late at night, perhaps at a party with much wine and nonsensical chatter.
I remain struck not only by the strangeness of the coffins’ purpose, but by the remarkable craftsmanship that produced them. Today, these coffins could be conjured with a 3-D printer in a mere afternoon; in 1836 they required patience, skill, and care.
Perhaps we will never know the secret of the coffins on Arthur’s Seat, and that’s OK with me. To me, the coffins are remnants of an unfinished story, suspended between history and imagination.
Perhaps they were memorials, perhaps they were charms or tokens of witchcraft, perhaps even quiet acts of penance. I don’t know.
What I do know, however, is that as long as I continue to live in Edinburgh, I will visit the little coffins in their final resting place at the Museum of Scotland, and I will continue to wonder about and rewrite their stories.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
