Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
History
Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Folklore
"On the 12th of June," says the Minister of the parish of Kilsyth,
in a letter to J. Garnet, M.D., "when I was from home, great crowds
assembled, and would not be denied admission. At all hours of the
night, as well as the day, they afterwards persisted in gratifying
their curiosity. I saw the body of Lady Kilsyth soon after the coffin
was opened; it was quite entire. Every feature and every limb was as
full, nay, the very shroud was as clear and fresh, and the colours of
the ribbons as bright, as the day they were lodged in the tomb. What
rendered this scene more striking and truly interesting was, that the
body of her son and only child, the natural heir of the title and
estates of Kilsyth, lay at her knee. His features were as composed as
if he had been only asleep. His colour was as fresh, and his flesh as
plump and full, as in the perfect glow of health; the smile of infancy
and innocence sat on his lips. His shroud was not only entire, but
perfectly clean, without a particle of dust upon it. He seems to have
been only a few months old. The body of Lady Kilsyth was equally well
preserved; and at a little distance, from the feeble light of a taper,
it would not have been easy to distinguish whether she was dead or
alive. The features, nay the very expression of her countenance, were
marked and distinct; and it was only in a certain light that you could
distinguish anything like the ghastly and agonizing traits of a violent
death. Not a single fold of her shroud was decomposed nor a single
member impaired.
"Let the candid reader survey this sketch; let him recal to mind the
tragic tale it unfolds; and say, if he can, that it does not arrest the
attention and interest the heart. For my own part, it excited in my
memory a thousand melancholy reflections; and I could not but regret
that such rudeness had been offered to the ashes (remains) of the dead,
as to expose them thus to the public view.
"The body seemed to have been preserved in some liquid, nearly of
the colour and appearance of brandy. The whole coffin seemed to have
been full of it, and all its contents saturated with it. The body
had assumed somewhat the same tinge, but this only served to give it
a fresher look. It had none of the ghastly livid hue of death, but
rather a copper complexion. It would, I believe, have been difficult
for a chemist to ascertain the nature of this liquid; though perfectly
transparent; it had lost all its pungent qualities, its taste being
quite vapid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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