Cairn

Cairn, or CARN, a Celtic word signifying a protuberance, a heap, a pile, appears in names of hills and rocks in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany; but in archaeology, 'cairns' are artificial heaps of unhewn stones. Externally all cairns are very much alike, the only differences discernible being those of size and basal outline. Internally they vary in their construction according to their purpose and period. Prehistoric cairns are usually sepulchral, but any dry-built structure, such as a broch, a bee-hive house, or even an early Christian church in a condition of ruin, may assume the appearance of a cairn. Sepulchral cairns of the prehistoric period are divisible into two classes—chambered and unchambered—the former being characteristic of the stone age, the latter of the age of bronze and later times. The chambered cairn may be circular, oval, or oblong on the ground-plan, sometimes with concave or convex ends. The passage, roofed with flat stones, leads into a chamber which may either have a roof of Bee-hive (q.v.) construction as in the British Isles, or of megalithic construction of immense blocks laid from wall to wall as in Brittany and Scandinavia. The chamber is sometimes subdivided by partitions of slabs set on edge in the floor, at other times there are smaller chambers opening off three sides of the main chamber, the fourth side being occupied by the entrance-passage, as at Maeshowe in Orkney. Both burnt and unburnt human remains are found in these chambered cairns, which seem to have been family sepulchres used for long periods consecutively. They are often of great size, and conspicuously placed on eminences, or associated in groups as tribal cemeteries like those of Tailten, Cruachan, and Brugh, so often referred to in the early Irish annals as 'the three cemeteries of the idolaters.' The external configuration of the cairn is usually defined by a single or double retaining wall, and the site is sometimes surrounded by a ditch, or by a ditch and rampart of earth, as at Maeshowe; or by a single or double circle of standing stones, as at Clava in Strathnairn; or it may be associated with an alignment, or group of standing stones arranged in rows, as at Callernish in the island of Lewis. The chamber is always small in comparison with the vast size of the cairn itself. In Caithness an oblong cairn 240 feet in length had a chamber measuring only 12 feet by 6. Maeshowe (a circular cairn covered with earth), 92 feet in diameter and 36 feet in height, has a chamber measuring only 15 feet by 14 feet 10 inches, entered through a passage 54 feet in length. Gavv Innis in the Morbihan, 197 feet in diameter and 30 feet high, has a chamber measuring only 9 feet by 8, entered through a passage 44 feet in length. In this case both passage and chamber are lined with great stones elaborately sculptured with groups or patterns of irregularly circular, spiral, and wavy lines. In a cemetery of about 30 cairns at Loughcrew, in Ireland, there are several of 120 to 180 feet in diameter, the chambers of which are lined with sculptured slabs of somewhat similar character. The great chambered cairn of New Grange, one of a group of three situated on the banks of the Boyne, near Drogheda, with a diameter of 315 feet and a height of about 70 feet, has a chamber of about 13 feet diameter, with side recesses of smaller size. The passage is 63 feet in length, and many of the great stones lining the passage and chamber are sculptured with incised patterns of irregular spirals and zigzags. The site of the cairn is surrounded by a circle of standing stones. It is on record that these cairns were opened and plundered by the Norsemen in 862 A.D. The unchambered cairns of the bronze age and later times are usually smaller in size and mostly circular. Instead of a passage and chamber they contain in their interior, sometimes on, sometimes under the surface level, one or more burials, burnt or unburnt, inclosed in cists formed of unhewn flat slabs. There is in the church of Penmachno, in Wales, an early Christian monument which states that 'Carausius lies here, in this cairn of stones,' 'Carausius hic jacit in hoc congeries lapidum (sic).' Adamnan in his life of St Columba mentions that a converted chief in Skye was buried by his followers under a cairn. There is an old Gaelic proverb, Cuiridh mi clach 'ad charn, 'I will add a stone to your cairn,' and in the north-west Highlands it is still the custom to erect cairns of stones at the halting-places on the journey to the cemetery. Cairns, apart from their original purpose, have been used as boundaries, or as the meeting-place of a tribe, or the inauguration-place of a chief. The Cairn-na-cuimhne, near Balmoral, was the mustering-place of the men of Strathdee. Occasionally a cairn may be raised to commemorate some event, or to mark a spot traditionally connected with a deed of fame or of horror. A familiar instance of the latter class is found in Mushet's Cairn in the Queen's Park, Edinburgh, where a wife was murdered by her husband in 1720 (see Scott's Heart of Midlothian); to the former belong the Jubilee cairn on Ben Ledi, and the numerous cairns round Balmoral. Cairns are most frequent in stony countries. Where stones are scarce, the earthen mound or Barrow (q.v.) came in place of the cairn, from which it differs only in the materials. See CALLERNISH, MAESHOWE.