CAIRN, or CA11N, a Celtic word, signifying a protuberance, a heap, a pile. In that sense, it appears in the names of hills and other natural objects in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. It is also applied to artificial heaps of unhewn stones, which, among archaeologists, have come to be generally known as "cairns." There are several kinds of cairns. The simplest and most common form seems to be a conical pile of stones of no great size. Next is what may be called the fence or ringed C.—a heap of stones girdled round by large unhewn stones set upright in the ground. Some cairns have two, and a very few have three such concentric girdles; in some there are concentric rows of upright stones within the cairn. Many cairns are found in the neighborhood of the circles of unhewn stone pillars which antiquaries used to style "Druidical." In a few instances, cairns are found at the end of an avenue of standing stones. Some cairns are fenced round by a narrow ditch and a small earthen rampart. A very few cairns have unhewn flat stones on their tops; a still smaller num ber are surmounted by an unhewn stone pillar. A few are oblong in shape.
Cairns were erected, doubtless, for several purposes. It appears from record that they were often raised to distinguish the marches or boundaries of lands. One C., near Balmoral, on the Highland Dee, is said to have been erected as a mustering-place for the men of Strathdee, who took its name, Cairn-na-ertimhne, or "C. of remembrance," for their slogan or war-cry. In later times, places where great crimes had been committed were marked by cairns; thus, "Musket's C.," in the Queen's park at Edinburgh, shows the spot where a wife was murdered by her husband, under circumstances of peculiar atroc ity, in 1720. But that the great purpose of the C. was sepulchral, is shown by the human remains found in so many of thein. "Dkiertis et erutm, oft8a inreniuntur, et qui baddam honor nomints adhuc man-et," says Robert Gordon of Straloch, writing of Scotch cairns in 1654. "For the cairns or heaps of stones in several parts of Ireland," wrote 'I'hady °Toddy in 1617, " some of them were heaped as monuments of battles, some made in memory of some eminent persons buried in such a place." A Highland suppliant would have said to his benefactor: Curri nci clock er do Mamie, "I will add a stone to your cairn." The bones found iu cairns are generally calcined or half-burned, and inclosed either in what are called ei,sts--small rude coffins of unhewn stones—or in urns of earthenware, which, again, are in many cases protected by stone cists. Along with the bones are often found flintarrow-heads, flint axe-heads, stone hammers, stone rings, glass beads, implements of bone, bones of horses and oxen, spear-heads, and other weap ons of bronze. In some instances, human bones are found unburned, inclosed in stone eists about 3 ft. long, or, more rarely, of the full size of a man. In one case, as many as seventeen stone cists were found in one cairn.
Many cairns are of considerable size. Each of three cairns at Memsie, near Fraser burgh, in Aberdeenshire, was about 300 ft. in circumference, and about 40 ft. high. A C. in the parish of Miunigaff, in Galloway. was 891 ft. in circumference. Several of the larger cairns are what is called " chambered "—that is, have internal galleries or cells. Of three large ringed cairns at Clava, on the banks of the Nairn river, near the battle field of Culloden, one was found to contain a gallery, about 2 ft. wide, leading from the s. side of the C. to a circular chamber in the center, about 15 ft. in diameter, built of unhewn and uneemented stones, each course overlapping the other so as to meet at the top in that sort of rude dome which has received the name of the " beehive house" (q. v.).
The Boss C., on the moor of Dranandow, in the parish of 31innigaff, had two galleries crossing each other—each 80 ft. long, 4 ft. wide, and 3 ft. high.
But all the "chambered " cairns, the most remarkable is that at New Grange, on the banks of the Boyne, near Drogheda, in Ireland. It is 400 paces in circumference, and about 80 ft. high, and is supposed to contain 180,000 tons of stones. In 1699, it was described by Edward Llhwyd, the Welsh antiquary, as " a mount or barrow, of very considerable height, encompassed with vast stones, pitched on end, round the bot tom of it, and having another, lesser, standing on the top." This last pillar has disap peared; of the outer ring of pillars, ten still remain, placed at about ten yards one from another. "The cairn," says Mr. Wakeman in his Arehaologia Ilibernica (Dublin, 1848), " in its present ruinous condition, presents the appearance of a grassy hill partially but, upon examination, the coating of earth is found to be altogether super ficial, and in several places the stones, of which the hill is entirely composed. arc laid bare. The opening [which is nearly square, and lined by large flags] was accidentally discovered about the year 1699. The gallery, of which it is the external entrance, com municates with a [dome-roofed) chamber or cave nearly in the center of the mound. This gallery, which measures in length about 50 ft., is, at its entrance, 4 ft. high; in breadth about 3 feet. Towards the interior, its size gradually increases; and its height, where it forms the chamber, is 18 feet. The chamber is cruciform, the head and arms of the cross being formed by three recesses—each containing a basin of granite. The sides of these recesses are composed of immense blocks of stone, several of which bear a great variety of carving, supposed by some to be symbolical. The majority of these carvings.must have been executed before the stones had been placed in their present positions. The length of the passage and chamber from n. to s. is 75 ft., and the breadth of the chamber from e. to w. 20 feet. Of the urns or basins in the recesses, that to the 0. is the most remarkable. It is formed of a block of granite, and appears to have been set upon, or rather within, another of somewhat larger dimensions." The Irish antiquaries believe that the chambered C. of New Grange—"the cave of Achadh Aldai," as it was called, from Aldai, the ancestor of the Tuatha De Danaan kings—was opened and rifled by the Norsemen in 862. About a mile from it, on either side, are other two cairns of nearly equal size, named Knowth and Dowth. The latter was opened in 1847, and found to contain a gallery, a cruciform chandler, a basin or sarcoph agus, and carved stones, all of the same type as those of New Grange. Engravings of the sculptures, in both cairns, are given in Mr. W. R. Wilde's Boyne and Blarkwater, pp. 192-207 (Dublin. 1850), and some of them are obviously of the same character with sculptures found in Scandinavia; at Locmariaker, and at Gavr Innis, in the Morbihan, in Brittany; in one of the cells of a tumulus opened in 1853 at Pickaquoy, near Kirk wall, in Orkney; among the ruins of an ancient fort at the Laws, near Dundee; at the ancient forts at IlowtinLynn, and Old Bewick. in Northumberland; and on one of the standing stones near Pettrith in Cumberland, called "Long Meg and her Daughters." Cairns are most frequent in stony countries. Where, as in many parts of England, stones are scarce, the barrow or earthen mound came in place of the C., .from which it differs only in the materials of which it is made. So also in Scandinavia. Cairns, or dyner, as they are there called, are rare in Denmark, but of more common occurrence in Sweden and Norway.