Muschat's Cairn - Edinburgh, Scotland
N 55° 57.264 W 003° 09.500
30U E 490113 N 6201015
Muschat's Cairn is located in Holyrood Park, a royal park in central Edinburgh, Scotland.
Waymark Code: WMEKGV
Location: Southern Scotland, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/09/2012
Views: 14
"This cairn is situated by the Duke's Walk at the eastern (Meadowbank) end of Holyrood Park. It commemorates an event on 17 October 1720 when Nichol Muschat, a surgeon, dragged his wife to a nearby spot and brutally murdered her. He was eventually tried and hanged for this crime. At his trial he said that he had simply tired of her.
The present cairn consists of boulders cemented together and was erected in 1823 replacing an earlier cairn which had been removed c.1789. This earlier cairn was formed over several years by the tradition of laying stones on the cairn "in token of the people's abhorrence and reprobation of the deed". It was situated some way to the west of the present cairn with Sir Walter Scott placing it about a furlong to the east of St. Anthony's Chapel. Scott mentions the cairn several times in the novel, The Heart of Midlothian, by siting Jeanie Dean's tryst with the outlaw, George Robertson, at this spot."
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