Earth-houses

Earth-houses, or YIRD-HOUSES, the name which seems to have been generally given throughout Scotland to the underground buildings, which in some places are called also 'Picts' Houses' (q.v.), and in others, it would appear, 'Weems,' or caves. Martin, in his Description of the Western Islands, printed in 1703, when their use would appear to have been still remembered, speaks of them as 'little stone-houses, built under ground, called earth-houses, which served to hide a few people and their goods in time of war.' The prehistoric earth-house of the Scottish mainland, however, is a long narrow gallery of a curved form, increasing in height and in width from the entrance to the farther end. These cave-like structures, which are sometimes over 60 feet in length, are built of unhewn and uncemented stones, roofed by unhewn flags, and entered usually at the narrow end. When the chamber is unusually wide, the side-walls converge, one stone overlapping another, until the space at top can be spanned by stones of 4 or 5 feet in length. In some cases the earth-house shows two or more chambers, communicating with one another by a narrow passage. Occasionally, as many as forty or fifty earth-houses are found in the same spot, as in the moor of Clova, not far from Alford, in Aberdeenshire. They are generally so near the surface of the ground that the plough strikes upon the flagstones of the roof, and thus leads to their discovery. The objects most frequently found in them are those of domestic use or personal ornament, and the refuse of food. The indications afforded by the character of the relics assign the occupation of the earth-houses in Scotland to post-Roman times. Occasionally, the surface of the ground beside the earth-house shows vestiges of dwelling-houses, and folds or inclosures for cattle. This, with other things, would indicate that the earth-houses of Scotland and Ireland (for they are found also in that island) were put to the same purpose as the caves which, as Tacitus (writing in the 2d century) tells us, the Germans of his day dug in the earth, as storehouses for their corn, and as places of retreat for themselves during winter, or in time of war. For plans and descriptions of many earth-houses in Scotland, see Anderson's Scotland in Pagan Times: the Iron Age (1883).