With only thoughts of adventure playing in their minds, a group of young boys ascended the hillside of Arthur Seat in Edinburgh Scotland to hunt rabbits.

It was the summer of 1836, and the pleasant weather invigorated the lads as they searched for rabbit burrows along the rugged slope.

Eventually, they came across a small gap in the rocks, where a sort of miniature cave had been

created out of three pieces of thin slate.

The top of each slate was carefully cut into points, and they'd been placed in such a way

as to protect what lay hidden within.

With trials and hand, the boys made quick work of widening the opening and exposing the

mystery inside.

What they found was quite unexpected.

There, sheltered in a diminutive slate mausoleum, were 17 tiny homemade coffins. They were less than four inches in length, each having been hewn from

Scott's pine. The small wooden lids were inlaid with tin, decorated in metal studs and nailed shut with brass pins.

Unaware of any significance to their discovery, several of these little coffins were destroyed as the boys pelted them at one another and against the unforgiving rocky ledges.

Of those 17 coffins, only 8 would survive to make the trek back down the hill with them that day.

Eventually the coffins would find their way into adult hands.

One account being that they were given to the boy's schoolmaster, Mr Ferguson.

It was then that the coffin lids were first pride open,

and within were found small, wooden figures,

macabre little dolls, dressed in custom-made cotton clothing, and laid out as if

for burial.

It was clear, these objects were meant as proxies of the dead.

And that's when the questions began.

Who made these?

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