The Miniature Coffins of Arthur’s Seat

At the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh are a set of eight miniature coffins carved in wood and decorated with tinned iron. Each coffin contains a tiny wooden figure, with a painted face and dressed in clothes that had been stitched and glued around them. Since their discovery in a cave by a group of young lads one June afternoon in 1836, the miniature figurines have been a source of much fascination and mystery. The boys had been out all day hunting for rabbits on the slopes of a rocky peak known as Arthur’s Seat, when their attention was drawn towards a small cave hidden behind a slab of slate. After pulling back the slab of stone, the boys found seventeen little coffins inside, each barely 4 inches long, arranged in three tiers—two rows of eight, and a solitary coffin at the top. The discovery was important enough to find a place in the July 16th edition of The Scotsman , year 1836. The paper reported : Each of the coffins contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently "laid out" with a mimic representation of all funeral trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead. The coffins art about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lids and sides of each art profusely studded with ornaments formed of small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great cart and regularity.