Cairn

“ Then the track left the cliffs and began to climb up a sunless valley, across little burns beautiful with fading ferns, till between two great moorland crags it reached the pass, more a watercourse now than a track; and then came the cairn at the summit of the pass, with its glorious view of sea and mountain, and down at one's very feet the deep narrow valley that was Glenollisdal, seamed from crest to foot by its deep burn, which ran half its length through faded brown heather and then out to sea through a huge bed of dying bracken, the whole bathed in the bright morning sun. ”

“ And the spirits of the dead stirred in the cairn like ants; and they spoke: “You have broken the roof of our cairn and let in the noon between our ribs; and you have the strength of the still-living. But what virtue have we? what power? or what jewel here in the dust with us, that any living man should covet or receive it? for we are less than nothing. ”

“ A lonely cairn, erected by some long ago forgotten fishermen or sailors, stands upon the highest rock at the southeastern extremity; at its western end a few houses are scattered, small, rude dwellings, with the square old Haley house near; two or three fish-houses are falling into decay about the water-side, and the ancient wharf drops stone by stone into the little cove, where every day the tide ebbs and flows and ebbs again with pleasant sound and freshness. ”

“ It had seemed to him as if the creature came out of his mouth, had crossed the burn by his comrade's help, and had gone out of sight in a cairn. The watcher (who had had time to follow the bee to the cairn just hid by a rising ground, and not more than two hundred yards off) laughed at the story, but the elder man said that it must be true, and declared his mind to seek the cairn and its contents. High words followed, and the younger, drawing his sword, slew the man who had dreamt the dream of gold. ”

“ Peggy from time to time admonished me, that she trusted to me alone, as she was totally unacquainted with the hill. Having attained at last the summit of the steep, I expected to have found a cairn of stones, and, alongside of it a shepherd's shieling or turf hut, where he reposed at noonday, and shared his bread and milk with his faithful curs; but no such shieling or cairn was to be seen. ”

“ Then when this was done, the Medicine Men made the people bring stones to raise a cairn over the urn. First they laid large flat stones, building them like a little chamber about the urn; then they laid [172] six large blocks in a circle all round, and set others within the circle and piled them up into a great heap. These stones they brought from the river bed in the valley and carried them up across the hill-side to build the cairn. The building of the cairn was a work of several days; and every day until the work was finished, the women mourned and wailed in the village at sunset. ”

“ A cairn, of a pyramidal form, which had evidently been constructed with much care. The base consisted of a series of preserved-meat tins, filled with gravel and sand; and more tins were so arranged as to taper gradually upwards to the summit of the cairn, in which was planted the fragment of a broken boarding-pike. To all appearance it had been purposely raised for the reception of some documental record, yet nothing could be found in or about the spot, in spite of the most persevering efforts. But presently looking along the northern slope of the island, other strange objects caught the eye. ”

“ Pilgrims climb the steep ascent to lay their marigold garlands and burn their incense-sticks at the foot of the rude cairn erected in propitiation of the Divine wrath, typified by the cloud and tempest hovering round the jagged pinnacles of the volcanic range, which frowns with perpetual menace above the verdant loveliness of plain and woodland. ”

“ The butte itself, rising in the centre of the plain, and towering nearly two hundred feet above the general level, has all the semblance of an artificial work—not of human hands, but a cairn constructed by giants. Just such does it appear—a vast pyramidal cone, composed of huge prismatic blocks of granite, black almost as a coal—the dark colour being occasioned by an iron admixture in the rock. For two-thirds of its slope, a thick growth of cedar covers the mound with a skirting of darkest green. ”

“ The cairn is solid and will stand the ravages of frost and blizzards for many years to come.
It will be the first object picked out by any ship entering the harbour, and to anyone looking back as the vessel steams away it will stand out in lonely prominence long after the station has disappeared from view. It can be seen also from every part of the harbour. ”

“ The cairn was of gradual growth, inasmuch as it was the custom for every passer by to fling an additional stone upon the common heap, out of reverence to the memory of the person who was interred underneath.
We are told however that when the practice of burying in churchyards became general, the cairn was condemned as fit only for great criminals. Hence the expression, “carn or dy wyneb” (may a cairn be upon thy face) , when one wishes ill to another man. In this case travellers cast their stones out of detestation. ”

“ The climber will know that he is at the top of Ben Muich Dhui, when he has to scramble no longer over scaurs or ledges of rock, but walking on a gentle ascent of turf, finds a cairn at its highest part. ”

“ That cairn which appears so entire and complete, of which the stones seem to have been huddled together without any reference to arrangement whatever, is, nevertheless, hollow underneath, and on occasions you may see—but only if you examine it narrowly—the blue smoke seeking its way in tiny jets through a thousand apertures. There is, in fact, room for four or five individuals. ”

“ The cairn has been almost levelled, but the ring of stones remains.
The Cnoc was a rounded, sugar-loaf mound of earth, and the Duma was a similar mound raised over a kistvaen.
The Cairn or Carn was a mere pile of stones, generally made over a grave, but sometimes having no immediate connection with one. Here is a curious [174] passage which will explain why some cairns contain no interments:—
"The plunderers started from the coast, and each man took with him a stone to make a carn, for such was the custom of the Fians when going to plunder or war. ”

“ At the farm the road comes to an end, and here the tor must be ascended. East of Down Tor is a very fine stone row, starting from a circle of stones inclosing a cairn, and extending in the direction of a large, much-disturbed cairn. There is a blocking-stone at the eastern end, and a menhir by the ring of stones at the west end of the row. ”

“ CAIRN (in Gaelic and Welsh, Carn) , a heap of stones piled up in a conical form. In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient times they were erected as sepulchral monuments. The Duan Eireanach, an ancient Irish poem, describes the erection of a family cairn; and the Senchus Mor, a collection of ancient Irish laws, prescribes a fine of three three-year-old heifers for “not erecting the tomb of thy chief.” Meetings of the tribes were held at them, and the inauguration of a new chief took place on the cairn of one of his predecessors. ”

“ We climbed a hill, about three miles from Lerwick, to a cairn which presents a fine view of the indented coast of the island, and the distant isles of Mousa and others. Unfortunately the day is rather hazy—return by a circuitous route, through the same sterile country. These muirs are used as a commonty by the proprietors of the parishes in which they lie, and each, without any regard to the extent of his peculiar property, puts as much stock upon them as he chooses. The sheep are miserable looking, hairy-legged creatures, of all colors, even to sky-blue. ”

“ Aided by Yamba and other members of my family, I constructed an immense shaft-like cairn, mainly composed of loose pieces of shale intermixed with sandstone. I put in the sandstone and other stones, partly in order that the blacks might not notice the uniform construction of the cairn; and partly also because I knew that when the ordinary stones were heated, they would probably burst or explode with a loud sound, and so terrify the superstitious onlookers. ”

“ So if you go from the Gled to the Aller, and keep far over the north side of the Muckle Muneraw, you will come in time to a stony ridge which ends in a cairn. There you will see the whole hill country of the south, a hundred lochs, a myriad streams, and a forest of hill-tops. There on the very crest lies the old man, in the heart of his own land, at the fountain-head of his many waters. ”

“ No habitation now exists near the spot, but there were many in this strath, which may account for destruction of stones in former times. A few hundred feet farther north is the huge horned cairn described by Mr. Anderson, and at 436 feet N.N.E. from the small cairn is the round chambered cairn described in the same paper.
Circle at Achanloch, Estate of Forse, in Parish of Latheron. ”

“ The view from that point ten thousand feet above the sea must be left to the imagination of those who have been in like places. A cairn was built, and then we hurriedly roped, for there were only four hours till nightfall and it had taken eight to make the ascent. Clouds were whirling about us now, and a storm was evidently coming on.
How we made the nerve-racking descent of that arête, and how once the front of our line went into one of those crevasses and was rescued, cannot be related here. ”

“ In the cairn of Get we have a shorter and wider example of the horned type. Another type is circular or elliptical. In a cairn of this sort at Canister an iron knife was found. On the Holm of Papa-Westra in the Orkneys there is an elliptical cairn of this kind containing a long rectangular chamber running along its major axis with seven small circular niches opening off it. The entrance passage lies on the minor axis of the barrow.
[40] The megalithic monuments of Ireland are extremely numerous, and are found in almost every part of the country. ”

“ Even in this wilderness there are cairns covering the dead. One is led to suppose that they cover peculiarly restless beings, who were taken as far as possible from the habitations of men. I remember seeing a cairn in Iceland in a howling waste that in historic times was raised over one Glâmr who would not lie quiet in his grave, but walked about and broke the backs of the living, or frightened them to death. ”

“ Here a cairn marks the spot where a rough path starts down the cove. We descend only fifty feet or so, and then turn round to the left and skirt along the north-east side of the fell. It is unsafe to attempt the traverse for the first time in a mist, but with clear weather the various cairns that mark successive points on the route can be easily discerned, and a half-hour’s walk brings us to the wide scree gully running down by the eastern side of the Shamrock. To reach the foot of the Pillar Rock is a simple matter. ”

“ On the summit of this ridge are seven cairns, the first one only a few feet from the edge of the cliff, the last one about 300 feet back, near where the ground begins to ascend toward the plateau. They are small, none more than 3 feet high, and all have a depression in the top where the stones have been thrown out from the center toward the outside by relic seekers and rabbit hunters. ”

“ At Kirrit there is a well in which a very ancient cross has been carved in the face of the rock. Crowning nearly every prominent hill in the countries named is a cairn or pile of stones, each stone being, roughly speaking, about the size of a man’s head. ”

“ It is a cairn composed of sandstone, perfectly circular in plan, with a central chamber, and a number of cists, placed almost equally distant from each other, and ranged just within the outer edge of the mound, which measures 50 feet in diameter, and is at present about 10 feet high. The central chamber is of an oval form, 6 feet by 4 feet, and 4 feet in height. It is covered by two large flagstones and a number of smaller ones. Its greater axis extends exactly east and west. Of the surrounding cists​—​probably eighteen in number​—​but three remain in a tolerably fair state of preservation. ”

“ That was in more ancient times; not in the battle of Clontarf. In the first place, there were more than twenty thousand warriors, and four thousand fell here; this cairn is not large enough to have served as a tally of the men killed in battle. And it is too symmetrically built. Hardly a stone has fallen away in all these centuries. ”

“ In the other long cairn, which was opened in 1792, a similar chamber enclosed both urns and human bones. Various other cairns still remain unopened in the same district; and many of equal magnitude are to be met with in different parts of the country. The well-known antiquary, Mr. Joseph Train, furnishes an interesting account of several remarkable cairns in the parish of Minniegaff, Kirkcudbrightshire. One of these, called Drumlawhinnie, on the moor of Barcly, measures 891 feet in circumference. ”

“ A cairne is a heap of stones thrown upon the grave of one eminent for dignity of birth, or splendour of atchievements. It is said that by digging, an urn is always found under these cairnes: they must therefore have been thus piled by a people whose custom was to burn the dead. To pile stones is, I believe, a northern custom, and to burn the body was the Roman practice ”

“ The wind was too cold to permit of a very long stay on the summit, and having added a proper number of stones to the cairn, a ceremony as indispensable as the cutting of a notch in the mainmast when the traditional fisherman changes his shirt, we descended rapidly to the point where it was necessary to quit the ridge. Down the first portion of the steep [pg 49] rock slope we passed with great caution, some of the blocks of stone being treacherously loose, or only lightly frozen to the face. ”