Episode 450: Arthur’s Seat Coffins | Morbid

Hey weirdos, it's Ash.

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I have really, really cool news.

Okay, so about a year ago, I got to share the absolutely life -changing, mind -blowing, like universe warping news about writing my first book the Butcher and the Wren I could never have dreamed of the support that I received then and that the book continues to receive now from all of you you are amazing you set records with the numbers of pre -orders you made every edition a bestseller it's it's you guys you did it and it was even nominated recently for an audio award It's for best audiobook with a multi -voice performance.

Yup, yup, those voice actors are the best. And now I am so proud and so thrilled to share two pieces of incredible news with you.

I have been sitting on these two pieces of news forever and I can't wait to scream them to you.

So the first one is that The Butcher and the Wren is going to be out in paperback this summer on July 25th.

So you can finally get that paperback edition and to make this even cooler guess what the paperback edition is going to have what it's gonna have a sneak peek of a chapter from book two oh my god and guess what i got to read it and i can tell you it's a really good chapter it is that's right there's going to be a sequel it is coming you get to read part of it in that paperback if you get it and what's even better is that my publisher is giving away free signed copies of the paperback to the first 50 people who pre -order.

So if you want to pre -order the paperback with that sneak peek chapter of book two in it, you can go to tinyurl .com slash t -b -a -t -w paperback.

That's tinyurl .com slash t -b -a -t -w paperback.

Thank you guys so much. You're amazing.

Thank you so much for listening, listening supporting reading being the best weirdos that you ever could be I can't tell you how much I appreciate you and love you I just want to hug you all but I won't because it's virtual but like feel it okay I can't wait for you guys to read more Jeremy and Ren this summer and it's gonna be awesome just you wait kapowee hey weirdos i'm elena and i'm ash and this is morbid yay i love morbin i love morbid too i love you oh my god and i love all of you yay and you know what i wasn't here last episode uh you guys got caleb instead caleb kalib it was a fun episode

with caleb you were obviously very missed but it was a good time we love caleb yeah who doesn't him up he's literally like our brother in he's our brother in he's our what do you call him our brother in christ yeah i call him our brother in christ all the time yeah he's wonderful we love him um very thankful to him for stepping in when i had to dip out real quick what'd you do i went to new york city i i don't think i did a really great job of explaining like why you were gone i was like she's getting like honored at a gala um i don't know it's like a new york minute thing her and john are going

to be fancy yep that's pretty much it what i said uh no i got to go to the poet and writers gala and be a literary table host which was cool uh it was really fun and it was levar burton was the host yeah and he sang the reading rainbow theme song that's really fucking special that uh was worth its weight in gold um he was amazing and then we We went to the out, I think it's like the, I can never say it right, the Audis.

Or is it the Audis?

Audis. Audis. It's probably the Audis because it's Audis.

Audio. Audio, the Audis.

Yeah, the Audis. Yeah, but it looks like Audi, the car.

And that was us trying to figure out how to speak on a podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

But yeah, the Butcher in the Run was a finalist in the multi -voiced performance category.

Which is a big deal because there's only like 25 categories.

Yeah. Sophie and Joe, the narrators who did the narration for The Butcher and the Ren, the audio book, they were like, they did such a fucking awesome job.

Did you get to meet them while you were there?

I didn't. And you know what the thing is?

Here it is. Sophie, if you're listening right now, I need you to know this.

I don't think Joe was there.

But Sophie, I think I saw Sophie and I was with Sabrina, my wonderful literary agent.

And I was with John and I looked over and I said, I think that's Wren.

And they were like, what?

And I was like, I'm pretty sure that's Wren.

And then I was like, I'm scared to go up to her and say, are you Wren?

And have her be like, who the fuck?

No. Like, I don't know who you are.

I got very social anxiety about it.

But Sophia, I think I saw you and I, and it was exciting.

Cause I was like, that's so cool.

Look, it's Wren. And I didn't say anything and I regret it now.

I know exactly how that feels though.

Like I know exactly the feeling that you were feeling.

I get very intense.

Well, not exactly. Cause I never I've never read a book and had somebody narrate it, but I'm like, I know exactly what that's like when I go to these galas and I get on it.

But the social anxiety, you know, like it was intense.

And it was a very different vibe for me because it was such a fancy event.

Fence wall, fence wall.

But, you know, it was fun, but that was my outing for the year.

I don't blame you. I will not be doing anything else.

So there was that. So that was fun.

but yeah i had to miss the uh episode recording i know and caleb was like i got you yeah in fact that's literally what he said i got you quite literally said that so he said i got you doggy yep i got you doggy that's what he said verbatim um but this is this kind of works out because the last episode that i did was the burk and hair case i loved that well i didn't love that but But it was a fascinating case, right?

Like, it's a very interesting Scottish case.

One of the craziest Scottish crimes in Scottish history.

And this connects to it.

So it's like a fun little, like, continuation.

Little offshoot. This is actually, I'm going to talk about the Arthur's seat coffins today.

You, if you were at the obituary show, or if you have been at any of the obituary shows, I assume, they mention these little coffins.

Okay. And when I saw them, I was like, oh, I've been meaning to dive into those.

You actually leaned over to me and said that exact sentence.

I literally did. I was like, oh, that's one I wanted to put on the list to make sure I get to.

And when we decided to do Burke and Hare, which is another one I've been wanting to do forever, I was like, oh, these connect.

So we can just do them back to back.

And here we are. Hello.

So let's tell you what Arthur's Seat is first. Because you're probably like, what is that?

Yeah. So Arthur's Seat is the largest section of a three -part ancient volcano system that erupted more than 300 million years ago and is now extinct.

It was lit. It was very lit.

It's located about one mile east of Edinburgh's Old Town neighborhood, not very far from the coast. It has slopes and cliffs.

It's like very scenic.

and it basically combines with other hills and geological features like the Salisbury Crags and all these things together form Holyrood Park, which is one of Scotland's royal parks and the largest open space in Edinburgh.

That's really cool.

Yeah, it's very cool.

I don't think I realized that there were volcanoes in Scotland.

Yeah, they're like everywhere.

What a silly girl. Well, like they're in way more places than you think.

Yeah. Because a lot of them are extinct.

dinked right it's like you would never know that that was once a active volcano right or even a dormant one because now it's like it doesn't do that was me making the like it's dead she did the like hand across yeah yeah the visuals are hard around here they are they're hard on a podcast but here we are um also if you go on like tiktok or something while you can if you can and it's fingers crossed and you type in like edinburgh or you type in like arthur seat scotland you're You're going to get some really cool fucking videos of it.

If you type in Scotland into TikTok.

We were just watching Scotland TikToks, actually.

We were like, I want to go to there.

Planning a trip to you immediately.

But, yeah, it's wild.

And you see our car castle in a lot of them.

And I'm like, oh, OK, that's just my castle.

That's just Elena's ancestors.

That's just my ancestors.

Oh, wait, those are my ancestors, too.

No, they're just mine.

No, they're mine. I'm just kidding.

We can share them. So the area of Arthur's Seat has a lot of history.

It was once home to the Votadini, I believe it's pronounced, an Iron Age era society of Britonic people who occupied the area until about the 5th century.

It has a position as the highest point in the region, which is good because it made it a really good location for a hill fort.

Because obviously from that high up, it would have been very defensible from all four sides.

And over time, the area has served a number of important social functions, too.

It was a super fruitful hunting ground.

It was the grounds of the Holyrood—Holyrood, I always want to say Hollywood.

Hollywood? Holyrood?

Yes, it's Holyrood Abbey, which was a haven for debtors during the Victorian era.

And it is among Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's favorite locations in Scotland.

Ooh. Interesting. In fact, Prince Albert felt so strongly about this region that he actually enacted programs to clean up the overly polluted Royal Park.

And he put in policies to protect, basically, its natural splendor.

That's really cool.

Yeah. Now, although the origins of its name are not, like, super...

We think we know where it came from.

But they're not, like...

It's solid. We don't have, like, the concrete evidence we need to be like, that's what it is.

We're making inferences.

We are. Inference -i.

There you go. And one of the most popular theories for where the name came from is that it was the site of Camelot.

Oh, okay. Home of King Arthur.

I know that. Knights of the Round Table.

Knife stuck in the rock.

You know, like it wasn't there was a, what's the knight's name in that?

Isn't it Camelot? Lancelot.

Lancelot. I knew it was a lot.

Exactly. It wasn't a Camelot.

Camelot was like the kingdom, I think.

Oh, okay. So Arthur's seat, King Arthur.

He sat there. makes sense that this area would be called arthur's seat for camelot i like it i think that is the the origin because it's fun and i can't think of any other origin no it's the it's fun it's whimsical i like it it's fantastical i like it yeah there are some less exciting theories of where it came from these following theories you know one of them is that it could be an evolution of an ancient scott gaelic word i'm gonna try it guys go for it ardna said i believe you which means height of arrows okay i you know yeah sure fun in a way yeah words in a different way you're literary yeah

you know i'm literate you're like you are indeed and it's and it's fun in like oh fun language and words way yeah but it's not fun in like a camelot nights of the round table kind of way if there's not a knight it's just like if there's not a knight what are we even here for that's you know like i'm a night owl oh me too but um but um uh but yeah and then you know like so there's that and then more theories are that it was once you know the home of an ancient dragon okay that's really fucking fun you're like fuck these following theories i'm like oh no this one's pretty good was daenerys there

perhaps and you know what this one i think you're really gonna like oh let's fucking go some people say that the dew on the morning grass contains magical properties that will keep you looking young and beautiful give me those motherfucking tuck everlasting drops and this dew magic actually is such a prevalent legend that many a young woman often climb the hillside on mayday and wash their faces in the morning dew do because youth what's mayday mayday is a day is it in may in may fuck because i want i think we're probably gonna go in summer if we go yeah because that's supposedly like the best

time to go yeah and like you know kids not missing school and stuff but like fuck i want to go on mayday i mean maybe you can just go and get the do anyway maybe it has the same i mean act like i'm not gonna act like i'm not gonna rub do on my face act like i'm gonna rub all the do on my face oh Yeah, you are.

Shit, I'm excited about that.

Fuck Botox. I think it's pretty great.

Yeah, just get some Arthur's Seat Dew.

I'm about to. Some Hollyrood Dew.

Hollyrood Dew. Any Scottish listener right now is like, my God.

They're like, can you believe?

My God. Also La Mer, step aside.

Exactly, there you go.

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head to Squarespace .com slash morbid for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code morbid to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi it's mine not yours just kidding you can have some too this is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough it's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli I'm obsessed.

It's pillowy, it's satisfying, I feel indulged.

I just love it so much. I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now.

My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece, which like hello, that's amazing.

My mochi is gluten -free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.

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and guess what my mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the u .s of a the strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing i love love love them after dinner this august look for the purple box of my mochi ice cream at your local grocery grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around my mochi so given its geographical prominence it's splendor it's aesthetic beauty it's magical properties it does make sense that arthur's seat would be a pretty significant piece of any any Scottish and Gaelic folklore.

It's like a perfect place for it.

It's like the fairy glens in the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

It's rife. Which she just told me about.

Yeah, go look at that, too.

The fairy glens. Or the whole Isle of Skye, really.

I'm getting the fuck out of America, you guys.

Yeah, I mean, you look at Scotland or really any of those kind of places and you're like, what am I doing over here?

If we get to go to there, I'm going to look at some real estate.

I want to go to there.

I'm not even joking around right now.

I want to go to there.

Bye, y 'all. Yeah. Interestingly, too, this place is so like magical and beauteous and wonderful.

It is attracted, you know, obviously it's been part of Scottish and Gaelic folklore, but it's also attracted non -European groups like the Mormon church. Huh.

Right. I said that, too.

Huh. That's exactly my reaction.

That's really all I know.

They incorporated it into their origins as far back as 1840.

So that's just like an interesting little thing.

um right now as we sit here it's a very popular like tourist destination that makes sense um and you can get there by a short hike you can get like it's not one of those things that you're like well you have to like free climb up a cliff to get there you know like it's not one of those you can just like run up that hill with you can just run it up that hill exactly uh so you're good uh but let's talk so now we know where author arthur seat is i almost said office Athos got really weird. Athos seat.

And now we know what Athos seat is.

We can now talk about the coffins, the Lilliputian coffins.

What is Lilliputian?

Thank you for asking that.

I don't know. That was really funny.

I really thought you were going to be like, thank you for asking that.

You walked me into my next statement and you go, thank you for asking that.

I literally don't know.

i'll look it up keep going i don't know why that was you know what it is i think i got so excited about the word lilliputian because it's beautiful it it feels great oh it's just it just means trivial or very small okay yeah there you go it's a very small person or thing there you go because you know like say lilliputian oh i will lilliputian doesn't that feel just like Like, anything usually that starts with Lil, I like to say.

Specifically, Shun at the end of things feels very like Yushun.

Yeah. Feels like blah.

Lil and Shun are very yummy names in my mouth.

It's got good mouth feel to it.

It does. I was going to shout out Ryan Lil really quick.

Oh, my God. Ryan Lil.

Yeah. I knew that you would be on board with that.

Can we for a moment just take a quick little detour?

Don't worry. I'm not going to like, we're not going to go forever.

Let us pray. like to ryan lil ryan lil we're gonna have to link his stuff in the in our show notes because so worth knowing this human um you need to check out his books which we will also um his newest one is i want to make sure i get the it's in the pines in the pines i just wanted to make sure i got the exact name right.

Yeah it's in the Pines.

In the Pines. He also has music.

Music. Is the song Adore Me that we like?

Oh my god. Or is it just Adore Me?

No it's Adore Me right?

Yeah. It's Adore Me.

It's he's just a very talented human being.

He's an amazing makeup artist. His other book is On the Wire that is already out I believe.

On a wire. On a wire and then in the next one is going to be coming out soon so look out for it we're just gonna link his um we're just gonna shout him out everywhere yeah we're gonna link his link tree in these show notes because i'm obsessed with him and so are you so he's a wonderful human and it's just like one of those people that you're like you know what yeah i just want you to be the happiest human yeah so follow ryan lill washington two l's and ryan lill on instagram yeah and go check the books are by the books.

Phenomenal. Listen to the music.

Can confirm. Watch the music video for Adore Me.

Watch the music video for Adore Me.

You showed it to me and I was over the moon.

Also just like scream out the lyrics to Adore Me.

Scream them. Whenever you can.

Scream them out your sunroof.

Because my god is it a bop.

While someone else is driving by the way.

But yeah so that's our short little detour.

But Lilliputian. Lil.

Lilliputian Coffins.

In late June 1836. So just you know a couple days years ago yeah uh a group of local boys do they were just venturing into a hollyrood park they were going to hunt for i can't help it now no i love it they were going to hunt for rabbits i hate that it was 1836 i mean i don't care i don't do that now i don't know why i'm acting like this isn't only 1830 i'm like it was 1836 when people hunted rabbits okay you know what i think this year rabbits have changed to my favorite animal whoa look at you i'm not even I believe that.

I am feeling a spiritual connection with rabbits lately.

You have been. But I'll shut up now.

I think you, yeah, rabbits and you, you're together forever.

But they were going to hunt rabbits, and as they arrived, they were, you know, looking for rabbits.

And as they did that, they looked for, they noticed a really small opening.

Which, when you read this story anywhere, it's commonly referred to as a cave. But, like, it's kind of just like a depression in the side of a mountain.

Yeah, don't set people up to be disappointed.

don't don't set people up thinking this is a fucking cave promise a cave of wonder just okay but yeah it's like i guess it's like a tiny cave but they notice this in the rock wall along the relatively secluded northeast side of the hill okay so they get closer and they notice that the opening is actually covered up by what was three thin pieces of slate stone rudely cut at the upper ends into a canonical form and then placed into a row so that's strange that's not organic somebody did this and they assume that this was likely done to protect whatever was inside from the effects of the weather the elements

all the or anything that would come from the outside so they removed these slabs of stone which like personally i think was the first of their bad ideas i'm gonna agree um i I think when when you find something that has been like purposely protected by slabs of stone in the side of a mystical hill.

Don't touch that. Just assume that it's meant to be there.

You know that expression like you break it, you buy it.

That doesn't mean necessarily that like you purchase it.

It means like that's yours now.

That's yours. And you fucked up.

You own whatever is happening now.

You own the mistake that you've created.

Little boys. They didn't do that.

that. They didn't listen to heat our warnings from 1836 because they moved them.

And inside, they discovered a 12 inch by 12 inch depression in the earth.

So they're like, what the fuck is this?

So they look in and inside someone had placed 17 Lilliputian coffins, 17.

And these tiny coffins had been arranged in two tiers of eight, each separated by a thin piece of slate.

eight and I know you're thinking two rows of eight is 16 because when I first read that I was like that's 16 I'm confused yeah but it was two rows of eight and then there was a third row that had begun with one okay so to me I'm like was there supposed to be more probably somebody was like obviously putting more and starting a new row I need to know more yeah and then they got just leave it like that got caught is that what you're telling me I'm saying so the that origin story how How they were found like that.

That's the one that is everywhere that is generally accepted as how they were discovered.

OK. But it wasn't the only story at the time that was circulated.

There was a couple more.

A short time after they were discovered, there was another story that went into a journal, a print journal, titled Notes and Queries.

And it was under the headline A Fairy's Burial Place.

Oh, bitch. I kind of love that.

that and like anytime you throw fairies into the mix I'm like oh okay let's go get into it yeah um and this one had a much more dramatic account of how they were found because that one's just like some boys were hunting rabbits and they went where they shouldn't have yeah but this one said in the print version while I was a resident at Edinburgh either in the year 1836 or 1837 I forget which a curious discovery took place which formed the subject of a nine days wonder and a few few newspaper paragraphs, some children were at play at the foot of Salisbury crags, when one of them, more venturesome

than the others, attempted to ascend the escarpment of the cliff.

His foot slipped, and to save himself from a dangerous fall, he caught at a projecting piece of rock, which appeared to be attached to the other portions of the cliff.

It gave way, however, beneath the pressure of his hand, and although it broke his fall, both he and it came to the bottom of the crag.

Nothing daunted sorry i had to swallow nothing daunted the hardy boy got up shook himself and began the attempt a second time when he reached the point from whence the treacherous rock had projected he found that it had merely masked the entrance to a large hole which had been dug into the face of the cliff okay so similar discovery yeah boys just less plays just a boy falling off the side of a craggy cliff just like yeah just that we just added some adventure to the whole thing yeah and this version of the story does add some more details about the coffins it says they have handles this isn't

true and can be easily disproven by just looking at the actual coffins and seeing they don't have handles so it makes this one feel more of like a jump off of that actual original discovery and trying to make it more exciting which i'm like you didn't really the original one's pretty fucking exciting i don't care what they were they could have been going there to blow their noses and finding that and i'd be like that's fucking awesome Like that was legendary.

Because they found 17 tiny coffins in the side of a fucking mystical hill.

You don't have to spice that up anymore.

You don't have to give me some crazy story.

That sentence alone is wild.

Right? Like that's wild.

Now the coffins themselves were roughly 3 .75 inches in length.

Oh my. So very small.

And each coffin was hand carved out of a single piece of pine.

Okay. With metal, which they thought was most likely tin, kind of adorning the lids.

So they had cut out tin and made, like, decorations on the lids of them.

So tin, metal, and what other?

Pine. Okay, okay. And they were held, this tin was held in place with wire springs or brass pins.

Inside each coffin was a hand -carved wooden figure of a human.

and they were quote dressed in custom -made clothes that had been stitched and glued around them this is freaky as fuck right and some of them had black boots painted on their feet hey now it wasn't they they described them as not being like some kind of ancient artifact like how most ancient artifacts are pretty crudely done yeah because different materials and materials and and skill sets, and all that.

These appeared to have a pretty orderly and neat way about them.

Like someone had taken really great care and meticulous time to do this, to create them and to place them where they had put them.

And they had not all been put into this little tomb at the same time.

And how could they tell that?

So according to news reports, quote, the rotten and decayed state of the first tier of coffins and their wooden mummies, the wrapping clothes being in some cases moldy, while others showed various degrees of decomposition.

And the coffin last placed as clean and fresh as if only a few days had elapsed since their entombment.

Oh, wow. That's how they were able...

Like that first tier was old.

That makes sense. And then it got less so as it went.

And that last row for it to be...

That's creepy to me that someone could have just been there placing that coffin days earlier.

really creepy because imagine if those boys had planned their hunting trip like days earlier and it caught the person doing that i wish they had because then maybe we would know i'm nervous like i'm kind of glad they didn't at the same time because i'm like what would have become of you yeah i don't know i mean they didn't they weren't really nice to the coffins they weren't boys um nobody really knows why or what they thought i don't know how old these boys were either maybe they were like rambunctious but it's like also like um you should know better uh it's because they nobody really knows

what they thought when they found these um but the earliest reports say that at least half were destroyed by the boys pelting them at each other as unmeaning and contemptible trifles why are boys so stupid yeah like what the fuck on the record why are they so stupid especially these boys like why were you so dumb silly of course the discovery was obviously significant enough for at least one of them to mention the Coffin to somebody else or we wouldn't know about them at all.

Yeah. According to a report from the mid -1950s, the following day after they were discovered way back in 1836, this was, so we didn't find out about this, like how this all went down until the 1950s.

Oh, shit. They said that the boys, one of the boys at least, told one of their schoolmasters, a a man named Mr. Ferguson, who was a member of a local archaeological society that they had come across these.

It really is just taking everything in me right now not to say Turd Ferguson.

Thank you, bye. Go ahead.

There you go. You're like, you're 12.

Shut up. But you said it.

I told you. So later that day, Mr. Ferguson, a very Scottish name, he retrieved the remaining coffins from the cave in the hillside, and he took them home and then shared them with other members of the archaeological society because once he had heard this story from the kid he's like are you fucking kidding me yeah like i can't imagine how pissed he was hearing that they had broken half of these seriously i feel like are you kidding me have i taught you nothing like you just tossed them around like they were trash what a bunch of idiots now it should be said that the original accounts of this whole

discovery don't mention a school teacher oh and they don't provide any details about how those coffins went from Arthur's Seat to the town below.

But I believe in Ferguson.

Well, so the original one doesn't say it, but we know they somehow got from A to B.

And then in the 1950s, that's when the story came out about Mr. Ferguson, the local archaeological society, you know, all that stuff.

La -di -da -do. And it was in an article by Robert Chapman that was circulated among the regional Scottish papers at the time that according to Mike Dash, who I will um I'm gonna put the the the reference there we go for what this is for he said a search of the contemporary street directory shows that two school masters named Ferguson were working in Edinburgh in 1836 okay George Ferguson as a classics master at Edinburgh Academy and Findlay Ferguson as a teacher of English and math at Easter Duddingston I want it to be Findlay so I know I love that name same so so there were two Mr. Ferguson's in the area at that time

working as school teachers so that this lines up yeah now it wasn't long after they'd been dug out of the hillside that the Edinburgh press jumped on this mystery of these tiny little coffins so they of course put forward a ton of theories the Scotsman reported a few days after the discovery quote none of the learned with whom we have conversed on the subject can account in any way for the singular fantasy of the human mind and in the article they said our own opinion would be had we not some years ago abjured witchcraft and demonology that these are still some of the weird sisters hovering about muscats

karn or the or the windy gowl who retain their ancient power to work the spells of death by entombing the likenesses of those they wish to to destroy literally love i right i'm saying i think it's cairn i think i said cairn it was cairn you did your muskats cairn now i immediately wanted to know what muskats cairn is i don't know about you i do uh so i looked it up just got to talk about what muskats can is and why that makes any sense why this would be like a weird thing so at the eastern part of hollyrood park uh there There is a seemingly innocuous, to this day, pile of rocks that is actually a cairn.

A cairn serves as some kind of landmark or memorial.

Sure. It's like a pile of rocks.

In this case, I suppose it's both.

Because, see, on October 17th, 1720, a surgeon named Nicol Muscat, he lured his 17 -year -old wife, Margaret, into that spot and murdered her in cold blood.

Well, fuck him. Slit her throat.

Jesus Christ. her dying words were my love my love do not murder me yeah oh i'm saying god no he had an accomplice in the crime named campbell who apparently was sent to australia after this i really want you to do this next right it's a wild intrigued he had apparently been trying to get rid of his wife and or kill her for a while but had failed several times he tried to force infidelity on her to force a divorce at first and when that didn't work like he tried to like get get her drunk and like throw a man at her you wanted to make her infidel yeah so that he could divorce her without like having

any kind of like issues because back then you couldn't just divorce yeah no i know so it's like he wanted the infidelity thing to be like oh she cheated on me wow and it's like that's weird but then when that didn't work he tried to poison her and only ended up making her extremely ill he did that several times then he tried to get her super drunk and drown her in a pond he then planned to have her he put her on horseback and was going to tie her like not well into the saddle she would fall and have her horse his horse like flip her off and kill her what the fuck that's not even like guaranteed

either for all this you just didn't like her he had grown weary of her weary of her yeah i'm just i'm kind of over it i'm tired of it can't you leave her for no reason that's why he was trying to force just lie why i'm saying like i'd rather you be a liar than a murderer a vicious murderer for real he confessed after he actually killed her at this muscat now what is now called muscats cairn um i wish it wasn't named after this fucker i know and he confessed and during his confession he said he never loved her and was ashamed of her visiting him before they were married but out of him right like

he like further shits on her memory name this after her right and that's the thing like it's kind kind of lost to history her name like it's margaret margaret hall but what was her name oh but it's like that's that's not part of the thing it's frustrating name it maggie's cake karen yeah and he said he married her out of convenience he's a fucking pig but he was hanged for his crime in grass market in edinburgh and like scandal the cairn right the cairn was created in her honor good so and it still remains there you can see it i just like name it something what's What's sad is, like, that's the place

she was murdered. Like, that very place where that Karen is.

Oh, gosh. But that was just interesting to me.

But back to the coffins, shall we?

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Lilliputian or Pution?

Lilliputian. Excuse me.

Don't say it wrong.

Don't say Lilliputian.

Excuse me. I know that's such a good word. I know.

Uh, the Dundee courier suggested that maybe they were an example of an ancient custom in Saxony in which one would bury a miniature, miniature effigy for departed friends who had died in a distant land.

That's beautiful. Which is beautiful.

But the courier couldn't help, um, put forth like another romanticized version of this theory gotta sell the papers baby of course saying and this is also just like what we find out is not true um they said that it could be a superstition which exists among some sailors in this country where the wives of the sailors who had been lost at sea would bury a tiny like proxy basically um to cut to kind of like make a christian burial burial oh like happen yeah yeah so they could actually like if they had drowned you know like it just kind of like it's like an effigy i like that now a watch was kept

on the hillside at arthur's seat for days after the discovery discovery because they knew that last one had been placed there rather recently but now it's all over the papers that it's been discovered thank you and that's why i'm like guys you ruined it you ruined it no additional coffins were placed of course because they were already been fucking out there this person's reading the papers come on Now, within a few weeks of the discovery, the public's interest apparently kind of, like, died down.

What the fuck happened to make their interest die down?

Which I'm, like, shocked because I'm still not over it.

Like, it is 2023 and I'm not over it.

Something had to have happened.

But apparently the coffins, what were left of them, made their way into the private collection of Robert Frazier, who was an Edinburgh jeweler at this time.

Why did he get them?

robert frazier apparently he bought them i guess but he displayed the coffins in his private museum on south andrews street and then he retired in 1845 they were there all the way up until there um and then he quote the celebrated lilliputian coffins found on arthur's seat sold to a private buyer for just four pounds how much is that that's like four almost five bucks american oh Oh, that's it?

Right? The fuck? I was shocked by that.

I'm like, is that right?

At 1845. Okay, I'm going to do the conversion.

Now, once they went into the hands of this private buyer, they kind of disappeared for a while.

No one knew what really happened to them.

That was until more than 50 years later.

So the coffins appeared again in 1901.

Okay. this was when a private donor actually ended up gifting eight of them to the museum of the society of antiquaries of scotland oh that's a beautiful thing to say and scotland you know i just love all these words yeah um this would eventually become the national museums um the national the national museum of scotland uh there's no way to know like basically how much how or exactly who donated these to the museum.

Yeah, they probably passed hands like so many times.

Yeah, and basically, like at first, because of this, a lot of people were like, are they the actual coffins or are these like, you know, something else?

But apparently, according to Smithsonian Magazine, it said circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that these coffins were the same group as the one Frasier obtained in 1836.

6 um and that's really all they're going off of i trust the smithsonian yeah i trust them so i think it's right um but the coffins coming back into the fold kind of it sparked a new interest in them again finally people were finally thinking about to get out of them again because i'm really sad that they like just got forgotten about yeah these are fascinating they were found in the side of a mystical fucking craggy rock how do we let that go how do we just like lose interest in it But that speaks to the fucking human psyche.

Human, like, just, yeah, human condition.

But it wasn't long before they were back in the news again.

So in 1906, five years after they had been donated, there was an article that appeared in the Scotsman, and it proposed a new and very unverifiable theory as to their origins.

But according to the article, a woman living in Edinburgh at the time said that shortly after they were found, Her father, who was only called Mr. B, had been visited several times at his business by a, quote, daft man.

And during one of these visits, the man produced a hand -drawn picture of three small coffins.

Under those coffins were written the dates 1837, 1838, 1840.

Now, there was no context or explanation, so Mr. B just kind of dismissed this picture as like, you know.

This is Mr. B. This is just crazy.

Yeah, he's just like, I don't know.

And so, whatever. But the following year, 1837, a relative of Mr. B died.

Mrs. B? Who knows? Another B.

Mr. C. And this was followed by the death of another relative in 1938.

Mr. D. And then the death of his brother in, or excuse me, it was 1838.

And then the death of his brother in 1840.

Now, according to the man's daughter, the mysterious man that came with this picture, he appeared at her father's business shortly after his brother's funeral and was quote glowering at him before disappearing and was never seen again so they believe basically the Scotsman said that it is not possible is it not possible that this man was the maker of the Arthur C.

Coffins driven mad by the loss of his treasures or was the whole story nothing but coincidences so they think that this whole thing somehow is connected to the things that this guy was making these little treasures right they were discovered possibly that was the private donor who had them and he was pissed and you know maybe i mean it's not like totally unthinkable but there's just not enough yeah there there's better theories one of which includes birken hair but you're like that's my fucking theory that's my favorite now throughout the 20th century the coffins continued to make huge fantastical

theories crop up everywhere a lot of supernatural explanations like in 1978 Walter Havernick who was the director of the museum of Hamburg history he suggested the coffins could be kind of a talisman like the totems carried by German sailors for luck now according to German folklore sailors would carry mandrake root or some form of a doll in a small coffin as a protection at sea oh that's cool and he theorized that these arthur sea coffins could be quote a horde of lucky charms hidden in the hillside by a merchant to be sold to sailors all right this all sounds great that kind of like okay yeah

maybe yeah but the national museum of scotland pointed out that quote while the use of charms persisted in scotland well into the 19th century no evidence of this particular seafaring tradition has ever been found so i think while While that sounds like it would have been a good little thing, it was made up.

That's not a real tradition.

That's a bummer. So I kind of love it because although that's like a nice like fun, I love a seafaring spooky sailor siren song tradition for sure.

Like any of those stories are fun.

Like that song Brandy.

I don't know what that is.

Yeah, you do. I can't sing it right now because I have Florence and the Machine stuck in my head, but we can just move past it.

Okay, cool. I'm sure I know what it is, but I don't.

I'll sing it to you later when I can.

You know when a song is stuck in your head and then you can't get past it?

You're a fine girl, such a fine wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady is the sea.

I've literally never heard that in my entire life.

No, you absolutely have. Papa loves that song.

And then it goes...

I'm probably not doing a good job.

I wish you guys could see the head motion that's happening right now.

like it's very much like a night at the roxbury kind of head motion right now i'm gonna have to find it on is it on spotify of course it's on spotify i'll play it for you later and you're gonna be like oh i didn't know if this was like a salty sailor tune that i couldn't find on spotify it's about a sailor because the the his his life his lover his lady is yeah she has she is she has been she she like brandy she works at the bar i feel so crazy i'm literally screaming it at you and they're probably yelling at me for not doing a good job of singing i gotta find it somewhere okay we gotta find it

all right i'm so sorry of it or something can we do that can we play a second of it i'm sure we can play a second okay let's play a second i don't i just sang half i was gonna say i don't even know if they're i And that's what I mean like I love like on TikTok The sea shanty That sea shanty shit Like that kind of shit I'm like I'm into it and I love Oh I know you know this song.

It sounds familiar now I don't know Hold on it's sounding a little familiar Oh yeah but I never I didn't know any of the lyrics to that song Really?

Yeah. All right. Well, that's the song.

I thought it was going to be a sea shanty that you were yelling at me.

No, just about a sailor.

That's all. Just about a sailor who likes this girl who works at a bar, but he can't be with her.

See, I'm like, I like those old timey.

Like when we did, we put a sea shanty in one of our - Exactly.

Like our house. We did like, yeah, for those ones, I think we did some sea shanty things.

But that's, I like those.

I like like a legend, like a seafaring legend.

I like a seafaring monster.

I like a siren. Oh my God, Nessie, I mean.

I'm not one of it. I'm on the scissor today.

You love a sea serpent, a lake monster, if you will.

I like those kind of things.

So that's fun to me.

I like that theory.

But it's not as troubling as the Burke and Hare one would be.

I'm nervous about where.

where like yeah are we gonna yeah now so because they were so popular and that people were so kind of like obsessed with them for a while and there was such mystery surrounding these it's pretty surprising that like throughout the decades and decades that they were trying to figure out what these were no one really performed any kind of thorough analysis of the arthur c coffins like they just they were like i wonder what these are yeah huh then they would just like he throws him off to the side and it's like do you guys want to like science it a little bit like just maybe not a lot of science

going on someone put on some glasses and just take a closer peek at these well i bet ferguson did i you know i'm sure he did just like maybe didn't write down enough info it wasn't until the 90s kevin it was the 90s yeah i'm talking about the 1990s shit that anyone really gave these their due attention huh so the examination of the remaining Maining Arthur C.

Coffins was done in the early 1990s by Alan Simpson, who was the former president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.

Bitch. He was joined by Samuel Menefee, a senior associate of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia.

Bitch. Both of them were visiting fellows at the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh at the time.

Bitch. There you go.

I had to wait for that.

now they all looked pretty identical but simpson and mennefy did note that there were some some variations okay so the dimensions did vary a little bit in size from 3 .7 to 4 .1 inches long anywhere within that thing they would vary i wonder why uh 0 .7 to 1 .2 inches wide and 0 .8 to one inch deep so that's like so little that i could have just been like hey i made this one i put it in the hill i'm doing this one off of memory and i'm like a little off to me that's the thing there's a lot of these things where i'm like well i think it's this i'm gonna ask a question i who knows if i'll have the answer

really do you know if they had rulers back then when did the ruler rulers were like i mean they had ruler instruments yeah long ago okay so that That was my question.

But I don't know when.

I don't know when that began.

Like what year, an actual ruler.

When did the rulers really get popular?

When did the rulers start to rule is what I want to know.

Oh my goodness. That's what I want to know.

What they also found out was that most of the coffins' insides were made of rag fiber cloth.

But one was lined with paper.

Huh. Which was interesting.

Two of the coffins were originally painted pink or red.

Okay. But they generally were two kind of shapes.

Most had square cut corners, but three had rounded corners, which could suggest two things to me.

They think it suggests that more than one person did it.

Okay. Which absolutely could be true.

Like Burke and Hare?

Or it could be that, well, I don't think both of them did it either.

Oh, shit. Or it could be that, like we were just saying, the variations in these things are like, well, I just put one in the hillside a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. I'm going to do this one.

I don't remember if I rounded off the edges or not.

Sure. I think we're not giving people enough credit for being somewhat lazy and inconsistent as humans.

I think we're just not giving us that much. I think we're like, it must be more than one person.

It's like, no, it could just be the same inconsistent fuckery.

I'm super inconsistent, so I get it.

It happens. Now, the dolls contained within the coffins did appear to come from a set of figures with flat feet and arms that would swing.

so they thought that those could have been toy soldiers originally oh i'm gonna have that stuck in my head now i immediately did it we're getting so sued the eyes of each figure were open oh i don't like that which they said made it unlikely that they were designed as corpses yeah i don't think i agree because almost every corpse i worked on in the morgue had open eyes really yeah i hate When people die, a lot of times their eyes stay open.

Yep, they sure do. And if these are designed as corpses, then this person who made them might have seen these people when they died and their eyes were open.

Yeah. I'm just saying we can't totally be like, I don't think these were corpses, guys.

The eyes were open.

Like, I don't think that's – Yeah, we need a little more.

We can't completely discount that as a thing.

Now, some of the figurines were also missing their arms. they believed that maybe they were removed so they would fit better into the coffins my opinion maybe it was representative of injury or dismemberment but that's just my sick ass mind that you do have a sick ass that these are supposed to represent murder victims perhaps or just dead people then maybe they're being representative of what injuries they had perhaps i don't know i'm just saying my mind is a weird place but i bet it is it is a strange place you You don't really want to be in there.

But when it came to identifying who might have carved the coffins, there was really no clues for an actual identity.

But they were able to take a little bit from some of the adornments, like the tin adornments on the coffin lids, because they said that it's the use of applied pieces of tinned iron as decoration which struck them.

And it's similar to the type of tin used in contemporary shoe buckles.

so shoe buckles you say this could mean thank you that it could be someone who was a shoemaker or a leather worker i don't know if everybody remembers this but berky berk berk berk was a shoemaker but he was a cobbler him right he was a cobbler but i have a the i have something to you know that's something to say so a shoemaker they were saying would have the skills to make these coffins but they weren't a carpenter they didn't have carpentry tools so they wouldn't have made them as perfect and identical as you would think and that's why maybe they're a little inconsistent now when it came to

the figures themselves they said that they still think that these are supposed to be like toys of some kind or representative of living people this is what they initially thought not you know effigies for dead people because they said that they could see strong lines across some of their brows which indicated that they had hats at one point and that there was carefully carved lower bodies formed to indicate tight knee breeches and hose below which the feet are blackened to indicate ankle boots i still think these could be dead bodies i don't see why that changes things i don't think so if they

were originally toy soldiers that they changed into these little dolls then they maybe removed a helmet or hat of some sort and and that's what those are from agreed but uh Simpson and Menefee used the figures appearances to date them back to 1790s at the earliest oh wow now the clothing on the figures which apparently had been like sewn and glued into place like very carefully it represented a style of dress that didn't um correlate to period grave clothing so they said it it was looked like it was supposed to be representative of everyday wear and not like funeral wear like what somebody died

in thank you because they said that they were probably done just to cover the figures decently and not to represent any kind of specific period or occasion but if they were murder victims like you said then they would be dressed in the clothing that they died in guys they wouldn't be in proper burial clothing and if they were broken hairs victims i would think that they They probably all had similar shoes because they all came from a similar place.

Exactly. And if you look at the pictures of these little dudes, when I first read the description, I was like, oh, so they have like clothing.

That's why. When you look at it, you're like, clothing is a loose term.

Like coverings, I would say.

Oh, okay. That were glued and sewn on.

Yeah. I keep meaning to look at pictures.

Yeah. So the ragcloth lining of the coffins was dated to the period after 1780.

Okay. But they believed that all the coffins were created probably no earlier than 1800.

And they said that the deposit into the hillside, they believed, wasn't done until after 1830.

And so that kind of makes sense because that would be within five years of the discovery, which is when that first tier makes sense that it wouldn't put it in there.

so naomi tarant who is the curator of european textiles at the national museum of scotland she said that based on relatively good condition of the fabrics that they were definitely buried in the early 1830s okay yes and in several of the cases they were sewn using three ply thread which wouldn't have been manufactured until after 1812 so this does line up okay now in the the conclusion of their report on the analysis of these little coffins.

Alan Simpson and Samuel Menefee noted, quote, that the problem with the various theories is their concentration on motivation rather than on the event or events that caused the interments.

The former will always be open to argument, but if the burials were event -driven by, say, the loss of a ship with 17 fatalities during the period in question, the speculation would at least be built on demonstrable fact stated another way what we seek is an edinburgh related event or events involving 17 deaths which occurred close to 1830 and certainly before 1836 go ahead one obvious answer springs to mind the westport murders by william burke and william hare in 1827 and 1828 yep these are creepy as fuck very creepy and follow so i'm going to give you a quick little little like like lesson second

lesson of burke and hare in case you didn't listen to it you should go listen to it but in case you're here and you're like oh shit i want to finish this first and then go listen to that yeah yeah um so following the death of a boarder at william hare's lodging house in november of 1827 and this will be quick don't worry if you've already listened to the episode burke and hare realized you know what it's a sign of the times so we can make a ton of money selling corpses to the edinburgh medical college this was a very big thing at the time They were called resurrection men, these people who did

this. And they prompted, this prompted the two of them to go on a murder spree because what is, you know, why wait for people to die?

Why not just murder them?

And they killed at least 16 people and sold their bodies to local surgeon and instructor Dr. Robert Knox.

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Now Burke and Hare, remember, they killed 16 people, sold that first one.

That is 17 altogether.

Sure is. Burke and Hare were eventually caught when a lodger in William Burke's house discovered the body of an elderly women woman that they had killed and they they both confessed to the murders of 16 people but hare definitely blamed burke it was a whole thing definitely listen to it because it's very interesting what happened with them um so they were they confessed to the murders of 16 people in the unlawful sale of the body of the lodger at the boarding house and given that they were all marginalized people that were victims simpson and menifee think that the coffins could Could have served

as like a proper burial at Arthur's seat because these people wouldn't have gotten a proper burial to begin with.

I think I see where you're going.

He said, considering beliefs such as the alleged mimic burial given to Scottish sailors lost at sea, it would not be unreasonable for some person or persons in the absence of the 17 dissected bodies to wish to propitiate these dead, the majority of whom were murdered in atrocious circumstances, by a form of burial to set their spirits at rest. That makes sense.

Well, it is always possible that that other disasters could have resulted in an identical, identical, casual, identical.

I don't know why that was hard to say.

It's casualty list. The Westport murders would appear to be a logical motivating force.

Now, in 2005, producers from the National Geographic Channel, they convinced the curators at the museum to allow forensic science service expert Mike Barber to test the coffins for potential trace DNA.

uh they were hoping to match it to burke basically oh and so they have some of his dna they have his body um so they have his skeleton i didn't know that oh yeah now the tests on the coffins didn't turn up any trace dna that they could use which is sad and neither did the figures but and the museum wouldn't allow barber to take the kind of samples that he would usually use for that kind kind of analysis so it's like not really even a really good test really right and they would have to take dna from the skeleton of william burke and he is kept under lock and key at edinburgh university oh which is very

interesting did i forget that i don't think i mentioned it in that episode um or maybe i did i'm not sure but either way they weren't gonna let him do that they're not gonna let him you know denigrate that dna now despite the dna test finding finding absolutely nothing, quote, unquote, Mike Barber is pretty convinced that it was Burke who created the coffins.

And it makes sense.

So he said, I think it's pretty clear.

He told this to the Edinburgh Evening News.

The people I've spoken to during filming believe that it was hair who was the real bad one.

Yeah, I believe that too.

And Burke was easily led and copped to it when he was shopped by Hare.

Yeah. What they believe is that basically William Burke had some kind of guilt and was making these to give them a proper burial.

And sorry, was he the shoemaker?

He was the shoemaker.

That's all I could think of this entire time.

And while it's possible that they could have been placed there by Burke or Hare, probably Burke if we're really going to talk about it, But I think there's a better theory that is still connected to William Burke and William Hare.

So William Burke was tried and executed not very long after his arrest for the 16th murder.

So that was my problem.

That's the part that gets me.

I was like, when would he have done that?

Especially like that last one is what you're saying, right?

And William Hare, as well as both of their ladies, they were run out of Scotland by an angry mob.

as soon as they were released from police custody.

So it's pretty unlikely that they would have been able to place them there without somebody seeing them and killing them.

But another similar explanation was offered in 2005 by George Dagliash, I believe it is.

I know, right? He's a curator of Scottish history at the National Museum of Scotland.

And he said he thinks the coffins were made by a close associate of Burke and Hare who, quote, had a strong motive to make amends for their crimes.

The doctor. The possible explanation put forth by Dagley, Dagley -ish, I'm sorry, seems very plausible, and it is that Dr. Robert Knox, Called it.

to whom the bodies were sold, he stayed in Edinburgh for many years.

We talked about this.

After Burke's execution, he presumably felt some kind of guilt for his participation in the whole thing and before his arrest and execution actually William Burke like we said was a shoemaker so he would have had acquaintances with other shoemakers yeah who could have done this but either way either a shoemaker who knew about what was going on and worked with Burke or Dr. Robert Knox makes so much sense to me yeah because we don't know really much else about Dr. Knox and like what his hobbies were and things like that exactly we don't know i i kind of i like the nox theory i do too i think it

really makes it's like him making amends for it and it makes sense and i kind of it kind of makes me feel better yeah it would it would honestly be like not that it's not that it like it doesn't sound exactly like it would be at least something they're like i'm point to because you're like i'm glad you had had some kind of conscience yeah like you felt guilt now they do point to one thing that could stray away from this theory but i don't think it's an issue to be honest they said no fewer than 12 of burke and hair's victims were female we know that but they said the clothes bodies found in the coffins

were dressed in male attire the clothings used to dress the figures definitely definitely were like crude and not like fully clothed and in my opinion much more crude than they're giving them credit for yeah um but they said that they would have been pretty easy for them to put a dress on it rather than pants and a shirt but if you look at it they kind of just put onesies on all of them they really just covered up their limbs yeah with cloth yeah i agree and And to be honest, a lot of these victims were found, were brought to Knox nude.

So it's like, this feels like it was just kind of a, like, they clothed these dolls in very, very simplistic shrouds.

Yeah. A little bit.

Like, that's what it looks like to me.

If you look them up, that's what it looks like to me.

That's what I. That they are neither, I don't believe they are gendered clothing.

thing i believe they're very like just down the middle could be either i agree with you and it's also really hard to tell on most of them like fabric a lot of them have like molded away exactly so you don't know well these things freak me out they're really creepy this the one that specifically terrifies me is wrapped up in like all white and this the figure's eyes are still so prominent i know it's so creepy yeah yeah now and they also pointed out that you know 17 bodies were sold by Burke and Hare but they only confessed to killing 16 but I don't think that's an issue because of that other body

to me that makes sense because you have the two rows of eight which would be who they killed and then you have that one standing alone which to me makes sense like that's the lodger that's the beginning but they put it as the end I think it's definitely related to Burke and Hare I don't know who I believe did it, but I definitely think it's related.

Right. It just makes sense.

Yeah. Now, the scientific analysis of the Arthur C.

Coffins was definitely able to reveal like a pretty good deal about the construction of them, the time period where they were made.

And it gave a little bit of insight into the type of person who likely would have been able to make them.

But it didn't really explain their original purpose.

Yeah. That's what everybody was trying to figure out.

and it kind of only like deepened the mystery and when you connect it to burke and hare it almost makes it more mysterious because it's like what was the purpose of these was it to give them a proper burial like i need to know what or or was like was this somebody you remember if you go back to the episode they involved a few people in their scheme yep and it's like were these people who felt guilt were these people who were involved in it and decided to do this as some like weird like count of the victims you know what i mean like yeah it could mean a lot of different things it definitely could but the other

thing that i can think of is that um the guy who was involved in that one murder with them and that maybe that one coffin could represent that one murder that's true it definitely could but i lean more toward the the 16 that they did that they murdered and then the one yeah they sold that was natural yep but despite their inability to actually solve the mystery like concretely yet right uh the arthur c coffins are like still so popular and yeah and by late 2000 the scottish tourism industry began to like really embrace scotland's dark history and dark tourism um and they would like cater to people who were interested

in the birkenhair case mary queen of scotts the hellfire club like all that stuff we i need to go there close Mary King's Close, Mary King's Close.

And this was really just like tourism.

But in 2000, actually, a popular Scottish crime novelist, Ian Rankin, he decided to incorporate the coffins into his novel.

Oh, shit. Which I think is cool.

That is cool. It's called The Falls.

And he was introduced to them at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.

And he said, quote, this curator pulled me aside and said, here, you like this kind of stuff?

And he showed me the the coffins i was just knocked out by them by the idea that these small objects could generate so much mystery for so long yeah i love that he put them in a novel i think that's cool wicked cool and in 2018 the coffins actually came back into like front page news this time there was a claim that the mystery had been solved so after he'd spent months studying the case a scottish -american and writer and amateur historian Jeff Nisbet claimed that the coffins were definitely a memorial to the event this event known as a radical war of 1820 this wasn't really a war it was more

like an uprising okay but it refers to a period of civil disobedience in 1820 which was motivated basically by bad working conditions for laborers and they were basically commencing an uprising to call for improved working conditions, more rights, among several other things.

And they came to, the uprisings came to an end pretty quickly, not long after they started.

And it was when three leaders of the movement were executed for their activities.

And many others were sent to a penal colony in Australia.

I don't know why I said October.

But the following year, a group of unemployed weavers were put to work by the Crown building building a path around Arthur's Seat, and it was going to be known as Radical Road.

I want to live there.

Radical Road! And according to Nisbet, the coffins, he thinks, were placed in the small cave in this place where these weavers were doing labor, building the path around Arthur's Seat.

They were put in this small cave as a coded memento to the ideals behind the labor struggles in Edinburgh.

And in an interview with The Herald, he said, by the time the coffins were discovered the rebellion had been largely largely forgotten saved perhaps by those whose loved ones had been either lost by the hangman's noose or a ship bound for australia and so it's my theory that the artifacts raison d 'etre was to honor the radicals and that they were later resurrected in an attempt to keep the flame of rebellion lit in a land too quick to forget an attempt that ultimately failed as evidence for this theory he says quote all appear to be male and have their eyes open represent men men not dead yet

sure maybe yeah another clue can be found in their clothes made by from a type of cloth the levers would have been familiar with okay interesting his theory suggests that he's here's it's like he's definitely familiar with that time period this is a good theory yeah the fact that he's able to like say that the cloth is pretty representative of what these weavers that were there at the time building this path would have been able to work with all of that makes sense the fact that they're you know technically they think that they're a bunch of male dolls but i think that's really like a loose yeah

confirmation i agree with that and that their eyes are open like sure you can you can definitely put it in there and make it fit it's a decent one but But I think experts are pretty unconvinced by this.

The principal curator of the National Museum of Scotland's Scottish History, David Forsyth, told the Herald, I wouldn't scoff at this theory, and it's interesting to hear another idea about where the coffins come from.

But Mr. Nisbett's idea is outside the established canon that surrounds the coffins.

And I think that the connection to the victims of Burke and Hare remains the most likely explanation.

I agree. so even the principal curator of the national museum of scotland scottish history thinks that there is a connection to birken hair then i'd put my money on it and to me nisbet's theory i think is a great one yeah i think it's like when you put it all together you're like all right yeah it's a strong theory for sure and if it actually ended up being the origin story i'd be like you know what that makes sense i believe that still cool origins right but i can't i think it's Pittsburgh and hair related.

I think that it's the 17.

Well, he didn't explain the 17.

I was waiting for that part of the explanation.

So you got the three, the leaders who were killed.

I'm sure there was more than 17 people involved.

That's the thing. So I'm like, what's the 17?

And why would they be placed at different times?

Exactly. It's like, I don't know.

And why is one alone?

Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me.

So nearly two centuries after they were found in in that mystical hillside in hollywood park the authors damn it i almost said it again the athos seat coffins remain much a mystery to this day as they were that day that they were pulled out when those kids were either rabbit hunting or free climbing a cliff who knows what they were but the that analysis that was done in the 90s was really the only thing that gave us any insight about when and by maybe by whom they were created they should try to do something now that like technology has advanced even more i want to keep looking into this i feel

like we can figure this out and the the real the big theory for their creation is definitely the connection to the birken hair the 17 just sticks too strong i think it sticks to everybody else it's a plausible theory um but either way no matter what they were they were totems that were tucked away in a secret location carved out of an ancient volcano that alone is all you really need to tell people and it's like what a period right at the end of that sentence was it wise to remove them ready ready say it with me no i don't think it was take things from ancient places one more time we don't take things

from ancient places maybe just you know don't touch that peek in you can take a look see you know what you do you got one of those little dental mirrors where they it's like the big long mirror that they can look in the back of your mouth with yeah gross stick it in there and go, ooh!

And maybe take a little picture if you want to.

Maybe, even that's kind of going far.

But then, get out of there.

Scoot on out. Get out of there and go, I wonder what those are.

Just say, whoa, I saw those.

And that's the thing.

Crazy. That would be my ideal situation with this, because I think, like, I don't know what these were and I don't know if it was a good idea to move them.

Who even knows if man placed them there in the first place?

There you go. Maybe it was Beast. Maybe it was Faye.

maybe it was fay maybe these are fairy coffins i don't know i don't know maybe we don't know did we fuck around and find out maybe we didn't find anything out that was the problem maybe we like fucked around and found out like we didn't find out the things we wanted to find out we found out yeah dude like i don't know and that's but now that we have removed them and it's been you know a little bit maybe we should put them back maybe we should i don't know i don't i don't think that's how it works though i don't think it's like gives these backsies i think like it's i think they're like i don't

we don't play that way yeah they probably don't but like if it's not that maybe it's been centuries my guy no gives these backsies me it's like leprechaun and like gives these backsies my lad my lad you know but i think now that we have them out of the uh ancient volcano on a mystical arthur seat we've already fucked around we've done it we fucked around so now let's find out i'd like to i'd like to find out what these are i think we should keep looking into them i'd like more to come out because a lot of people are like we will never know and it's like that i don't think so they said about a million gajillion things

they thought we'd never figure out somerton man here we are exactly i think we'll know so many things yeah every every problem has an answer there you go that's part of snoop dog's affirmations affirmations for kids they're great you should do them if you want affirmations for kids there you go they're really fun my kids love them yeah we listen to that song so many times problem has an answer yeah Yeah.

Yeah. Anything is possible.

There you go. My family loves me.

I love that. My feelings matter.

I love it. But yeah, so that's the story of the Arthur C.

Coffins. They're wily.

Like a coyote. I think we're going to figure out what they are, and I think it's going to be either Birkenhair -related or Faye -related.

I agree. That's just me.

That's where I'm at, too.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah. We hope you. keep it weird wow that's bad not so weird that you forget how to end your show yeah i think that's been the not so weird a lot lately but definitely not so weird that you take anything from an ancient place put it back yeah put it back keep it so weird that you listen to your mamas over here and you put it back look with your eyes not with your hands yes okay friends yes yes Yes.

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[The Mystery of the Lilliputian Coffins of Arthur's Seat]-[Episode 450: Arthur’s Seat Coffins]

📋 Summary

The Discovery of the Lilliputian Coffins

Theories of Origin: From Folklore to Murder

The Burke and Hare Connection

A Lingering Mystery

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript