cairn

One of many cairns marking British mass graves at the site of the Battle of Isandlwana.

A cairn to mark the way along a glacier.

A cairn is an artificial pile of stones, often in a conical form. They are usually found in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops or near waterways.

Purpose

In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient times they were erected as sepulchral monuments, or used for practical and astronomical uses.

They are built for several purposes:

• They may mark a burial site, and/or to memorialize the dead.
• They may mark the summit of a mountain.
• Placed at regular intervals, they indicate a path across stony or barren terrain or across glaciers.
• The Inuit use cairns to look like a human figure, or an inukshuk.
• In North America, they may mark buffalo jumps or "drive lanes."
• In North America cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other animals.
• In North America cairns may be used for astronomy.
• In the Maritimes cairns were used as lighthouse-like holders for fires that guided boats, as in the novel The Shipping News.

Additionally cairns have been used to commemorate any sort of event, from the site of a battle to a place where a cart has tipped over. Some are merely sites where a farmer has removed large amounts of stone from a field.

They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of engineering. In some places, games are regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn. Cairns along hiking trails are often maintained by groups of hikers adding a stone when they pass.

History

The word derives from the Scottish Gaelic (and Irish) càrn which has a much broader meaning, and can refer to various types of hills and natural stone piles. The term tends to be used most frequently in reference to Scotland, but is used elsewhere.

Cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous regions, and also in barren desert and tundra areas as well as on coasts.

A cairn to mark the summit of a mountain.

Starting in the Bronze Age, cists were sometimes interred into cairns, which would be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above the village of the deceased. The stones may have been thought to deter grave robbers and scavengers. A more sinister explanation is that they were to stop the dead from rising. It is noteworthy that there is a Jewish tradition of placing small stones on a person's grave whenever you visit, as a token of respect. (Flowers are not usually placed on graves in the Orthodox Jewish tradition.) Stupas in India and Tibet etc. probably started out in a similar fashion, although they now generally contain the ashes of a Buddhist saint or lama.

In Scotland, it is traditional to carry a stone up from the bottom of the hill to place on a cairn. In such a fashion, cairns would grow ever larger. An old Scots Gaelic blessing is Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn, i.e. 'I'll put a stone on your cairn'. In the Faroe Islands (which are plagued by frequent fogs and heavy rain, and have some of the highest seacliffs in the world) cairns are a common navigational marker over rugged and hilly terrain. In North Africa, they are sometimes called kerkour. Cairns are also common on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

A collection of cairns on the island of Corsica.

Today cairns are often used to mark hiking trails or cross-country routes in mountain regions at or above the tree line. Most are small, a foot or less in height, but a few are built taller so as to protrude through a layer of snow. It is traditional for each person passing by a cairn to add a stone, as a small bit of maintenance to counteract the destructive effects of severe winter weather. Often the habit is to only add to the top, and to use a smaller stone than the previous top stone, resulting in a precarious stack of tiny pebbles.

In Scandinavia, cairns are still used as sea marks. They are indicated in navigation charts and maintained as part of the marking system. To increase visibility they are usually painted white.

Scotland and Ireland

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. It is mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters that, in 1225, the O'Connor was inaugurated on the cairn of Fraech, the son of Fiodhach of the red hair. In medieval times cairns are often referred to as boundary marks, though probably not originally raised for that purpose.

In a charter by King Alexander II of Scots (1221), granting the lands of Burgyn to the monks of Kinloss, the boundary is described as passing "from the great oak in Malevin as far as the Rune Pictorum," which is explained as "the Carne of the Pecht's fieldis."

In Scottish Highland districts small cairns used to be erected -- even in recent times -- at places where the coffin of a distinguished person was "rested" on its way to the churchyard. Memorial cairns are still occasionally erected, as, for instance, the cairn raised in memory of the prince consort at Balmoral, and "Maule's Cairn," in Glenesk, erected by the earl of Dalhousie in 1866, in memory of himself and certain friends specified by name in the inscription placed upon it.

Cairns as people

Inuksuit at the Foxe Peninsula (Baffin Island), Canada

The practice is common in English, cairns are sometimes referred to by their anthropomorphic qualities. In German and Dutch, a cairn is known as Steinmann and Stenenman respectively, meaning literally "stone man". A form of the Inuit inukshuk is also meant to represent a human figure, and is called an inunguak ("imitation of a person"). In Italy, especially the Italian Alps, a cairn is an "Ometto," or a "small man".

Other names and traditions

In some regions, piles of rocks used to mark hiking trails are called "ducks" or "duckies". These are typically smaller cairns, so named because some would have a "beak" pointing in the direction of the route. An expression "two rocks do not make a duck" reminds hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking.

The Finnish name for a cairn used as sea mark is "kummeli".

A traditional heap-like stone structure similar to a cairn is called ovoo in Mongolia. It primarily serves religious purposes, and finds use in both tengriist and buddhist ceremonies.

Cairns in legend

Cairns in Sedona, Arizona, USA, where New Agers claim they mark "vortices"

In the mythology of ancient Greece, cairns were associated with Hermes, the god of overland travel. According to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by Hera for slaying her favorite servant, the monster Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right, Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn.

Sea cairns

Similar structures can be found in water, especially in Scandinavia (there called kuml or kummel), often for the purposes of navigation (sea marks). They are indicated in navigation charts and maintained as part of the marking system. To increase visibility they are usually painted white.

In English, however, structures in/below water are not generally called "cairns".

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Cairns

Wikisource has an original article from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica about:

Cairn

• Cairn Terrier
• Cist
• Chambered cairn
• Clava cairn
• Court cairn
• Dolmen
• Hörgr
• Inukshuk
• Kerb
• Kurgan
• Ovoo
• Petroforms
• Stupa
• Tumulus

References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Pretanic World - Chart of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Celtic Stone Structuresbar:Stoamandlnrm:Mouaie

pms:Omèt

Donate to Wikimedia