After the hanging, a doctor declared Dickson dead, and her family argued with the medical students, who then were only allowed to dissect criminal corpses, so her body was taken back to Musselburgh on a cart. However, on the way there, the story was that her family went for a wake at an inn (possibly Sheep's Heid Inn, Duddingston) when they heard noises from the coffin as she awoke. Under Scots Law, her punishment had been carried out, so she could not be executed for a second time for the same crime (only later were the words "until dead" added to the sentence of hanging). Her "resurrection" was also to some extent seen as divine intervention, and so she was allowed to go free. In later life (and legend), she was referred to as "hauf-hingit Maggie" and attracted curiosity as she was seen back in the Grass-market in October 1724, with an item about a crowd forming to see her in the Scots Magazine. She remarried her husband (as ‘death’ had parted them) and lived another 40 years. A poem in Scots appears in a book Quines by actress Gerda Stevenson. "Hauf-hingit Maggie Deith is wappin when it comes – like birth, I ken – I hae warstled throu, an focht wi baith. She wis blue, ma bairn, blue as the breast o a brid I seen oan the banks o the Tweed thon day; then grey, aa wrang, the naelstring windit ticht aroon her neck; I ettled tae lowse it, aince, twice, but it aye slippit – ma hauns couldnae grup, ma mind skailt frae the jizzen fecht, ma mooth steekit: no tae scraich, no tae scraich, let nane hear… I stottered oot, doon tae the watter, thocht tae douk her in its cauld jaups, but ower late. I laid her quate in lang reeds, achin tae hae a bit basket tae float her oot like Moses, aa the wey tae England an the sea, gie her a deep grave, ayont kennin; but they fund her, still as a stane whaur she lay; an syne me, wannert gyte agate Kelso toun. “Murther!” they yaldered, “Murther!” like dugs. Embro Tolbooth’s a dowie jyle. An mercy? Nane they gied me at ma trial—the verdict: hingin. The duimster slippit the towe ower ma heid, drapt the flair – but I’d lowsed ma hauns, I gruppit thon raip, aince, twice, thrice at ma